[one_half]Jose Guillermo Zapata Calderon is an Emeritus Professor in Sociology and Chicano Studies at Pitzer College and President of the Latino and Latina Roundtable of the Pomona Valley and San Gabriel Valley. He received an A. A. from Northeastern Jr. College, a B. A. from the University of Colorado, and a PhD from UCLA. As an immigrant and the son of immigrant farm workers, he has had a long history of connecting his academic work with immigrant rights organizing, student-based service learning, participatory action research, critical pedagogy, and community-based coalition building. After graduating from the University of Colorado, he devoted fourteen years to community organizing efforts, particularly in Northern Colorado. While working on his PhD at UCLA, between 1984 and 1991, he helped organize multi-racial coalitions to defeat an English Only movement in the city of Monterey Park and to elect various local leaders to political offices. More recently, he has connected his academic work with community organizing in California’s Inland Empire region. [/one_half][one_half_last]Between 2004 and 2006, he was the inaugural holder of the Michi and Walter Weglyn Endowed Chair in Multicultural Studies at Cal Poly University, Pomona.In the American Sociological Association, he has served as chair of the Latino/a Section and was part of the Program Committees for the 2010 Annual Meeting in San Francisco and the 2011 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. For his work in building partnerships between communities and higher education, the California Campus Compact has honored him with the Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence and Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education. In January, 2009, he was presented with the “Unsung Hero and Dreamkeeper Award” by the California Alliance of African American Educators. For his “dedication in serving the community by inspiring the pursuit of higher education and advocacy for human rights,” he received the Goddess of Pomona Award from the City of Pomona. The United Farm Worker’s Union has also honored him with their Si Se Puede award for his life-long contributions to the farm worker movement.[/one_half_last]
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