Contact:	Rose Diaz, 277-3570 Jason Gil Bear, 277-5813
May 23, 2002 NATIVE GALLUP RESIDENT ATTENDS HISTORY CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. Seeing the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. is one of the greatest experiences UNM students Sandra Martinez, Jacobo Baca and Aaron Blecha say they will remember after visiting the nation's capital recently. The three students are research assistants for New Mexico Political Archive in Zimmerman Library. They visited Washington, D.C. from April 11-14 to observe a conference of historians from around the country who discussed and presented their research in different fields. Martinez is a native of Gallup, Baca and Blecha are from Albuquerque. "We learned about some of the information that the historians were in the process of publishing, and most interestingly, how they begin their research and what they find fascinating about history," Baca said. The conference is an annual event that draws in about 2,000 people from across the country. The three students wrote a proposal and submitted it to Tobias Duran, director of the UNM Center for Regional Studies, and were given a grant to visit the nation's capital. Rose Diaz, research historian for the New Mexico Political Archive, said the students got a first hand experience of political process in Washington, D.C. and were able to see and talk to professionals in many different fields. "None of the students have ever participated in a meeting of this level and it allowed them to be apart of the big picture and be apart of a broad discipline," Diaz said. Baca said if it weren't for the generosity of Duran they wouldn't have had enough money to pay for air flight and hotel accommodations. "Observing the huge scale of political process in Washington, D.C. helps to put in perspective the task that lies before us at the New Mexico Political Archives and the task common to all historians," Baca said. Baca said he wants to graduate and become a high school history teacher. "I think the experience that I have had by going to the nation's capital will make it more real for me and my future students," he said. "It was worthwhile." Blecha said he got a very encouraging experience by going to Washington, D.C. and said he was pleasantly surprised with what he saw. "I have done some studying on architecture and I found that the monuments were amazing and I loved seeing some of the best architecture in the world," Blecha said. Sandra Martinez said she learned a lot in Washington, D.C. and plans on visiting again in the future. "We stayed at a hotel that was at the center of the capitol and we were in walking distance from so many museums and monuments," Martinez said. She said she was fascinated with the Arlington National Cemetery and the Library of Congress. ###

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