About ten students are hanging out in the Center for Mexican American Studies on the ground floor of Langner Hall. The sofas are comfortable, and they can meet up with friends there. The walls are painted in bright colors and dotted with cultural artwork. Sophia Sauceda, a senior Applied Physics major and former president of the Mexican American Student Association, has said that people think of it as a second home. Established in the 70s, it is the second oldest CMAS in the state—behind the University of Texas.
When people talk about “community” on the Texas Lutheran University campus, they’re often referring to small class sizes, personalized attention, and the chance to swim in a small pond, so to speak. When Dr. César Silva, Assistant Professor for Mexican American Studies and the Director of CMAS talks about community, he is referring to something altogether different—and it has more to do with those ten kids hanging out in the CMAS, and more to do with their families back home.
“Our community is everybody,” says Silva. “Not just the kid in front of you.”
And he has a deeply held belief that building a new kind of community—one that includes students’ parents, grandparents, siblings—will be a principal factor in breaking old cycles within the Latinx community, where college retention rates still tend to be lower.
Silva grew up the tenth of eleven kids down south in Mission, Texas. His family didn’t have money. They weren’t college educated. They worked in the fields even as children. Silva managed to go to college, Texas State University, with plans to become a football coach, but he quickly flunked out with a 1.75 GPA. It was then that he was diagnosed with ADHD and given a second chance—with one huge condition: he would be allowed to return to college, but he would have to maintain a 4.0.
“I dug a hole. I had to dig myself out,” he says. He buckled down and pulled it off. Plans of being a football coach melted away as he realized he wanted to go in a different direction. “I wanted to reach the people who reach the people.” And for him, that means working with students who will, in turn, go out and become the coaches, teachers, principals, the leaders in various realms—the next generation of scholars within the Latinx community and beyond.
So he went on and got his master’s degree in Spanish Language and Literature, then his doctorate in Transborder Studies with an interdisciplinary focus in political science and anthropology, specifically on issues related to the Chicanx/Latinx community.
He was teaching at Northern Arizona University when his mom got sick and needed to be put on dialysis. That led him home to Texas, and he arrived at TLU in 2023.
He has a passion for getting his students engaged, because he believes that engagement is what creates the framework they’ll need to walk through their college years and cross the finish line with a degree. Engagement involves things like those comfortable couches in the CMAS, and it involves events that welcome the whole family. “Community is everybody,” he says again, “And that means bringing the families along.”
One of the things that excites Silva about all of this is the warm reception CMAS is beginning to see as it becomes more and more active around campus. “At first, we’d talk to people and say things like we’re going to have this event or that event.” In the beginning, this kind of conversation might
have been met with a bit of a blank stare—so many new things going on. “But now, there’s a hint of something . . . They’re looking forward to what we’re doing.” And that’s a great feeling for the new guy on campus who’s looking to help his students blaze trails.
Silva has co-authored a book: Empowered!: Latinos Transforming Arizona Politics published by University of Arizona Press. He’s also written a soon-to-be-published article. And when he’s not teaching, writing, directing CMAS, or overseeing events, it goes back to family—spending time with his partner Leah and their kids. Getting out to play basketball or softball. And coming up with new ways to build family, to encourage his community, and to light the path for his students—so that they can do the same for all those who come after them.