Who Can Use CLACS Resources and What Does CLACS Offer?

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at the University of Illinois serves students, faculty, and scholars from across the University of Illinois campus, as well as communities across Illinois and the Midwest. Its stated purpose is to promote innovative research, specialist teaching, and public awareness of the Latin American and Caribbean region. If you are looking for an academic center that connects university expertise with broader public engagement on the region, CLACS is designed to serve exactly that mix of audiences.

Who CLACS Serves

According to the center's own description, CLACS directs its work toward four overlapping groups:

• Students at the University of Illinois, who can engage with the center's teaching and programming.
• Faculty and scholars from across the campus, who participate in research and specialist teaching.
• Communities across Illinois, who benefit from public-facing programming and awareness efforts.
• Communities across the Midwest, extending the center's reach beyond the immediate campus area.

This is not a single-audience unit. It is structured as a regional resource that bridges campus scholarship and public knowledge.

What Kinds of Engagement CLACS Offers

The center describes three main areas of activity:

CLACS holds a National Resource Center designation for the 2022–2026 period, supported by the U.S. Department of Education under Title VI funding. That designation signals that the center meets federal criteria as a national resource for language and area studies, which typically corresponds to a broad mandate for outreach, teaching, and research support.

Where to Start on the Site

The homepage points to several entry points depending on what you need:

• Community Resources — for community members and regional partners looking for materials or connections.
• Subscribe to CLACS Newsletter — a mailing list signup for updates on events, news, and programming.
• Donate — for those who want to support the center financially.
• Faculty Highlights — a running section that profiles recent achievements of affiliated faculty.

The faculty highlights give a concrete sense of the center's academic range. Recent items include:

• Professor Gisela Sin (Political Science, CLACS Director) receiving the Jewell-Loewenberg Prize from the American Political Science Association's Legislative Studies Section for the article "Line-item Vetoes as a Coordination Mechanism," recognized as the Best Article in Comparative Politics published in Legislative Studies Quarterly in 2025.
• Professor Marc Hertzman (History) named a 2026–2027 University Scholar, with research on Brazil and Latin America focusing on race, the African diaspora, culture, slavery and its legacies, labor, and gender. His 2024 book After Palmares won the American Historical Association's 2025 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and the Brazilian Studies Association's 2026 Roberto Reis Book Award.
• Professor Ramón Soto-Crespo receiving the James M. Benson Professorship.

These profiles are useful if you want to understand what kind of scholarship the center supports and who is affiliated with it.

What to Check Before You Act

The homepage provides an overview and starting points, but specific program details — course listings, event schedules, funding opportunities, community resource contents, and eligibility for any particular offering — should be checked directly on the site. The newsletter subscription link is available if you want ongoing updates, and the Community Resources section is the natural first stop for public-facing materials.

If your question is whether CLACS is relevant to you: it is if you are a student, faculty member, scholar, or community member in Illinois or the Midwest with an interest in Latin American and Caribbean studies. The center's mandate explicitly includes all of those groups.