Thirty years ago today Ernesto Nieto created the National Hispanic Institute (www.nhi-net.org) as a mechanism to prepare aspiring young men and women to lead the future U.S. Latino community to new heights of prosperity. NHI, like all of the other six million U.S. Latinos born in the 1970s, entered an American landscape that had only quite recently began promoting equal access to our nation’s educational resources and positions of power.

We must recall that Latino degree completion rates remained disproportionally lower than all other racial groups in the United States during the late 1970s. Latino educational performance and postsecondary degree completion did not begin to climb until the mid-1980s and then plateaued at levels comparable to those of African American students by the end of the Clinton administration.

In 1979 Ernesto recognized that learning achieved within rigorous high school classroom settings combined with knowledge derived from engaged family members and active community figures, whether civic or religious in their orientation, has historically produced advantages for foreign-born and generational U.S. Latino students throughout the country. Adding further exposure to competitive NHI learning environments that challenge participants to recognize, predict, and maximize the opportunities as well as the resources that Latino communities contain innately, whether local or global, has been the model that has been utilized throughout the last three decades. This model for producing young leaders has been evolving throughout the generational shifts that have occurred across Latino teenagers nationwide since its origin.

The Institute began in downtown Austin, Texas and immediately created opportunities to expose high school and college students across the city to leadership and public communication training. Nationally and internationally recognized leadership programs such as the Young Leaders Conference/Great Debate (YLC) for 9th graders, the Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session (LDZ) for 10th graders, and the Collegiate World Series (CWS) for 11th graders were first to emerge throughout central Texas and the Rio Grande Valley shortly thereafter, and eventually began to impact El Paso high school students by the late 1980s.

Since its creation NHI has impacted over 2,000 graduates of nearly every public and private high school in El Paso County and another 80,000 throughout Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Panama. Additionally, the Institute has partnered and conducted leadership programs with over 150 selective institutions of higher learning across the United States, Mexico, and Panama during its thirty year history.

In stark contrast to all other Latino organizations that exist in the United States, the educational outcomes for alumni of the Institute are truly remarkable: over 98% graduate from high school and immediately enroll in an institution of higher education, over 90% complete their undergraduate degree programs within five years of study, and over 60% eventually complete graduate degrees. Exemplary academic performance and heightened civic participation are primary characteristics of NHI alumni and are exhibited across the majority of each cohort from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Today throughout the country, alumni are celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the National Hispanic Institute. Ernesto and the rest of the staff of the Institute continue to prepare young men and women for future leadership roles and positions of authority in communities throughout the western hemisphere, and several El Paso high school participants are joining in celebration today at the Texas LDZ hosted by Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Please take a moment to congratulate the president, Ernesto Nieto, for this incredible achievement and contribution to our community as well as to communities across the country--he can be reached directly at 512.357.6137 or at nietoe@aol.com.

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Joseph P. A. Villescas, Ph.D. is an alumnus of NHI, Project Administrator for the El Paso Young Leaders Conference, and owner of Villescas Research, Media & Instruction, LLC.