SAN BERNARDINO – The second annual Latino Education and Advocacy Days summit will be held at Cal State San Bernardino on Monday, March 28, in the Santos Manuel Student Union Events Center.

    Keynote speakers scheduled to present at this year’s LEAD summit include U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will deliver the morning keynote address from Washington, D.C., via live web cam.

    Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, who was the 2010 summit keynote speaker, will again join LEAD this year as moderator of one of the summit’s panels.

    Among the other featured speakers will be California State University Chancellor Charles Reed via live web cam and University of California, Riverside Chancellor Timothy White. CSUSB President Albert K. Karnig will greet conference participants and give the welcome address.

    Last October, President Obama signed the executive order to renew and enhance the White House Initiative to better serve communities across the country by engaging them in the process of improving the education of Latino students.

    As a result of last year’s summit and the collaborative efforts between CSUSB’s LEAD conference and the White House Initiative, the Inland Empire has been selected by the initiative as one of 10 regions throughout the country that will participate in this project.

    Under the LEAD umbrella, the new collaborative project, called the Inland Empire Regional Affiliate Network, and the local Federation for a Competitive Economy will work to engage educational and community leaders in discussions focused on the critical education issues affecting Latinos. FACE is a coalition of higher education institutions, K-12 education, government, media, healthcare institutions, labor, business, faith-based and community-based organizations partnering to help Inland Empire students succeed academically.

    The executive director of LEAD is Enrique Murillo Jr., an associate professor of education at CSUSB.

    “Our goal this year is to double the participation of last year’s nearly 184,000 viewers,” said Murillo. “LEAD’s purpose is to continue promoting awareness of the crisis in Latino education and to enhance the intellectual, cultural and personal development of our community’s educators, administrators, leaders and students.”

    Online registration is now open at the LEAD website at http://lead.csusb.edu.