Our Lady of the Lake University has shut down its Center for Mexican American Studies and Research and is spreading the center’s work across different parts of campus, according to university leaders. Administrators say the center’s physical space and archival collections will stay intact, with oversight shifting to several academic and administrative units. The decision has alarmed former staff members and scholars who worry that, without a dedicated hub, long-term focus and funding for Mexican American history could slowly fade.
According to San Antonio Report, OLLU’s library will now oversee the center’s special collections, including the Mexican-American collection, the Spanish Colonial collection and the María Antonietta Berriozábal papers. Library Director Maria Cabaniss and special-collections librarian Liana Morales told the outlet they plan to catalog, conserve and digitize the materials, and that they have applied for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to help pay for preservation work.
Former center director Christopher Carmona said he was notified in March that his position would be cut, and that the university later offered him a teaching contract he turned down because it came with a steep pay cut, as reported by the Express-News. Carmona told reporters he believes the university’s public explanation does not fully reflect what is happening, and that he is most concerned community partnerships and specialized programming will lose momentum without a stand-alone center to anchor them.
University Calls It Integration, Critics Call It a Slow Fade
In a May news release, OLLU described the restructuring as a way to broaden Mexican American studies across campus and said the field should be “woven throughout the life of the university,” as detailed by OLLU’s Lake Weekly. The administration says academic departments, student groups and campus engagement offices will share responsibility for programming, fundraising and public events, with the goal of increasing visibility and access to the collections and related coursework.
Budget Squeeze and Enrollment Slide Set the Stage
University officials have pointed to financial strain and shrinking enrollment in recent years as reasons for wider restructuring. The Express-News reported that OLLU’s student headcount fell from about 3,334 in 2015 to roughly 1,800 by fall 2025. Critics say that drop, along with an earlier round of cuts that wiped out 16 degree programs, left ethnic-studies efforts exposed and made it tougher to justify a separate center.
For now, San Antonio Report notes that the special collections remain spread across three locations on campus while library staff work on plans to centralize everything in a single, upgraded repository. Librarians and community advocates say the real test will be whether OLLU follows through on promises to digitize the archives, maintain staffing and keep outreach to researchers and the surrounding West Side community front and center over the long haul.
