Tim Ulrey - My project is called ‘How Latinos add culture to Indiana.' This is a pretty arbitrary title to a project. Now that I have progressed, the project is developing into something more specific. I have been and plan to continue researching how organizations in 4 different sizes of cities in Indiana affect the Latino community and what they do to the community as a whole (whether they promote the understanding of the Latinos to the non-Latinos). My new theory to the question “How Latinos add culture to Indiana” is that it’s through organizations and businesses. Organizations and businesses can be anything from small Latino community centers to a large chain of Latino-owned stores.

On the former extreme, a more social-based culture can be added to Indiana: food, dance, music, movies, etc. On the latter extreme, business culture is experienced by people who interact with the Latino business owners. For example, if two businesses (one of them being Latino) wanted to merge in order to reach a broader customer base, the non-Latino company would have to know and understand how Latinos do business; this is a part of their culture. In addition to the business aspect, a more social-based culture is brought to exposure to the new customers of the conglomerate company. Imagine a typically non-Latino scene having many Latino products in it, whether it is food, CD’s, or what have you.

I plan to do this by scheduling interviews with influential people in Latino organizations and/or restaurants in cities such as Indianapolis, Bloomington, Lafayette, and Crawfordsville. Those four cities represent the four different sizes of towns that I want to investigate. However, the list of the cities to which I may travel are not limited to these four.

My final product will be a website and a presentation. I wish to reach out to anyone interested in the Latino communities. I will do this by culminating all the information that I will have. That information will include such things (but not limited to) the following: what the organization does, how it reaches out/ helps Latinos, their view on how Latinos add culture to Indiana, a comparing-contrasting view of what different sized cities offer Latino communities (advantages/disadvantages), among other ideas that will come to me as I progress.