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Students enrolled in CUST 2370 make connections in the Oak-Cliff Dallas community in support of various class activities and assignments.  While they may select a fellow student or other college resource as the subject for the genealogy project, many solicit the support of contacts found in the neighborhoods of Oak Cliff.  They also move out into the college service area for the development of their observations for the academic journal they are asked to create as a major course activity.
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Community contacts lead students to a more specific sense of the history and cultural distinctions of the various ethnicities, found even within the greater Latino society of Oak Cliff.  For their journal observations, students may visit local markets and grocery stores, restaurants, galleries, community events, movie houses, churches, and schools.  These same locations are targets of class visitations from time to time during the semester.
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The research center for the course, the "field house," is located in a suburban neighborhood that is largely Latino in population.  It is a rental property in a very traditional Oak Cliff subdivision.  Neighbors visit the house frequently where a husband and wife team of researchers, Drs. Victor Garcia and Laura Gonzalez, conduct their activities and where they live.  Students of area universities and campuses within the Dallas County Community College District frequent the house along with civic, political, and social leaders from around Dallas and North Texas as well as from around the world.  Mexican President Vicente Fox is only one of several notable world leaders and scholars who have made trips to the field house.

Since 2005, the "field house" is the offices of the Oak Cliff Center for Community Studies, a non-profit organization created by Drs Alexander, Grimes, Gonzalez, and Garcia as a way of preserving and continuing the educational initiatives made possible by the original FIPSE grant from the United States Department of Education awarded to the School of Social Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas in 1998 to assist the University in attracting Latino students to continue their studies at UT-D.  Today, the Oak Cliff CCS has very active programs with the Dallas County Community College District and particularly, Mountain View College.

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This page is was last modified on January 31, 2007,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey Grimes.
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