As an undergraduate, Anay Baez, ’16, enjoyed attending the annual New England LatinX Student Leadership Conference. This year, she was able to bring the event to her alma mater.
Through the initiative of Ms. Baez, BSU served as this year’s host of the conference, which provides students from Latin American backgrounds a chance to learn leadership skills.
About 200 students attended the two-day event, one of many leadership conferences for undergraduates held annually around the country by the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, or NASPA. The LatinX student conferences are organized by NASPA’s Latinx/a/o Knowledge Community.
“The goal is to empower our youth to prepare them to make decisions that will also impact society,” said Ms. Baez, who spearheaded the university’s successful application to host the conference, and worked with a committee of current BSU students to organize it.
The event, held at the Rondileau Campus Center and Moakley Auditorium, included a welcoming dinner and networking, 18 workshops on varied subjects, and a keynote address by state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.
“I was very happy with how it went,” said Ms. Baez, who was inspired to bring the event to BSU in part because she felt the conference deserves the type of quality facilities the university offers.
The Dominican native and Brockton resident said her career goal is to be a teacher, a student affairs professional, and one day a college president.
Ms. Baez currently teaches at a Boston public school through a two-year fellowship with Citizen Schools, an organization that provides enrichment to students in low-income communities. Recently she enrolled in a master’s degree in secondary education program that University of Massachusetts Boston offers Citizen Schools fellows through a partnership with the group.
A math major at BSU, Ms. Baez said the university prepared her well for her work.
“Bridgewater State taught me how to be a professional,” she said, noting that her academic work and various extracurricular activities trained her in “time management, organization, and public speaking.”