A Boricua Tradition: Perseverance and Education

By Carletta Joy Walker

Manhattan Library and Learning Resources

June 17th, 2011 marked the thirty-fifth commencement exercise for Boricua College. Another year of commemorating and celebrating the women and men passing through the campuses to receive recognition for their achievements. Associate's, bachelor's and master's degrees were ceremoniously conferred upon the classes of 2011 after which each graduate's name rang through St. Bartholomew's Church as they walked up and across the stage to receive their piece of paper, their handshakes, broad smiles and hugs.


September 2011 welcomes the new and the continuing students in their march toward commencement. Perseverance and Education: Pillars of Democracy, an accurate theme for this year's graduation, as it would be for any previous or future year. The descriptive I would confer to accompany that solemn intonation is jubilant, because there was indeed much triumph and delight walking with the consistency and discipline required of each individual to achieve their goal. Family, friends, faculty, administration and all staff being ingredients in the triumph and sharing in the delight of another year of obvious success.

The delight at times barely containable, as smiles percolated into wide grins and gestures expressing the happiness felt at the completion of this milestone in the journey. A solid core of the graduating class are people familiar with journeying, college coming while already working, and after one or two or three or more children now reached an age that allows for school. Some of these students come as part of a progression, a rotation—first one spouse/partner then the other.

And the younger graduates a mix of those beginning to uphold a tradition, they being the children of graduates—what a smile that is—as well as other students of the Puerto Rican/ Borinqueños dispersion, the Spanish speaking students from the Americas and also in the mix African American, African immigrants, Whites and Asian immigrants recognizing and wanting the tradition of learning that is the "Boricua system of instruction, based on a fundamental humanistic principle of educating the whole person to become self-motivated, independent, life-long learner, with awareness and commitment to maintain a healthy symbiotic relationship with their environment."

Jubilance come with the grand story and with the personal stories contained within the class. Jubilance, pride and triumph to Pomp & Circumstance as the Academic Procession begins with President Alicea in full intellectual, physical and Boricua College historical splendor leading the procession of trustees, vice presidents, faculty, administration and graduates in this pinnacle cyclical event representing Boricua College achievement .

Tone set, an unfolding of choral excellence, keynote exuberance, professional recognition inspiration, academic award honoring, presentations and farewell from student continuing to carry the baton follows. Within the many special honors bestowed, the remembrance of Jose "Pepe" Morales, Jr., former Chairperson, Board of Trustees, with the In Memoriam: Lifetime Achievement Award holds particular poignancy. His wife of fifty year accepts this lifetime honor …

Consistent with the founding Borinquen values, the overriding message of the president, honored guests and students is one of conscious learning, community well-being, service, active citizenship and participation. A humbling message needing to be appropriated by those local and national companies and politicians infested with greed and fear. And, a fitting launch, aspiring to provide inspiration to the graduates in their next steps, as well as to the academic procession and other staff working tired and tirelessly in support of a community and a vision rather than the highest pay or greatest individual accolades.

La lucha continúa, pero la felicidad está aquí. Welcome.

Carletta Joy Walker- Artist Profile

Carletta Joy Walker


Text and Photography By: J. Wesley Beeks

We celebrate the diversity of the Boricua College staff with a profile on Carletta Joy Walker an artist, creator, intellectual moderator , poet, and surveyor of cultural, experiential, and theoretical studies. Graciously sharing her artistic installations the Boricua College community was invited to take an elaborate journey inside her visual perspectives of the world at large.


What is your position at Boricua College? What makes Boricua College unique from other institutions of higher learning?

My “position” is one of seer, contributing to illuminating and honoring the mission of Boricua College and its founders. I work in the Manhattan Library and maintain the Instructional Modules Library.



How do you see library science changing with technology and electronic media?

I see Library Science in the role of facilitating order in this vast new expanse of information made available as a result of technology. Also, integrating and co-relating the cataloguing systems made for maintaining order in physical buildings and spaces to the evolving types of electronic publications existing in virtual realities.



How did you develop your artistic perspective?

It is more that my artistic perspective developed me: an acute awareness of the elements comprising my internal and external sight and sense wanting expression.



Did you incorporate the Taxonomy of Bloom in the creation of your art and the placement of it in the gallery?

No, not in a conscious way since my art existed and started being expressed long before I had an intellectual awareness of the Bloom Taxonomy

You work is being featured at the Gallery in the school can you describe the elements in your art work and it was received by the students and faculty.

The physical elements are paper, leads, fabric, oil pastel, paint, ink, wood, canvas, computer, thread, glue and then there are things used which help create the art but are not seen in the finished piece, i.e. scissors or a brush. The elements of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and sense are in my art work. The work often, perhaps most often begins, is initiated by a feeling in concert with—with a sight, a sound, a sense of something wanting expression. The art is a manifestation, perhaps sometimes a translation of a feeling or a vision.

The reception: what I saw was engagement with the “elements” and their composition that made them my particular artistic expression and engagement with the tone, spirit and informational substance--form and content engagement. It was very moving seeing, hearing and feeling the various responses.



Name three individuals in that have inspired you from their works in Black History and how contemporary society can learn from them.

Fredrick Douglas, Fannie Lou Hammer, Aesop with directness, simplicity, nuance, spirit illumination in concert with action.



Name three individuals that have impacted Hispanic History.

Arturo Schomberg, Frieda Kahlo, Pedro Pietri with directness, simplicity, nuance spirit illumination in concert with action.



What is the correlation between art, technology, and education?

Art manifests inside technology and education; in it most beautiful functioning technology and education are art forms. Art thinking facilitates the learning of the various disciplines contained in Education and Technology.



What role does the Arts play in the continuity of community and global development?

Art is elixir, art carries cultural story that contributes to words written and not written. Art unites, creates individuality and community. Art helps heal microscopic splits and wounds as well as macroscopic explosions and devastations.



What are some of the elements you incorporate in your art.?

Animals, orbs, bikes, cars, beings, geometric shapes, motion, color, spirit, story…



Would you describe your artistic style as unorthodox?

In the creative atmosphere very little is unorthodox. There is balance, harmony, color and tone sensibility form evolved out of creative soup content: content being shaped by material substance… iAmArtIsTheUnity.



What are some of the advantages a graduate of Boricua College may have over traditional academic systems?

Boricua College graduates have been encouraged to value their thought in relationship to existing bodies of knowledge and information. The educational method encourages and supports thorough intellectual understanding in the context of a necessary and evolved cultural, physical, spiritual mores. This is a tremendous asset because Boricua College endeavors to graduate whole/humanistic human beings.



Who are three artist that we should know of and their relevance.

I’m not big on “shoulds”… my thinking about artists to know, hmm. Know oneself, ones own art expression, which, in my way of thinking will open one to the unity of the art one is in the midst of. Next, look at the different art that arises from and is integrated into the cultures of different geographical areas and historical periods, learn the named and unnamed artists.





When did you know that you were an artist?

I fully claimed being an artist when it felt safe, when I was able to separate being that from some of the prevailing baggage like poverty and insanity.