Silver City, NM – S. Otto Khera, Western New Mexico University Director of Grants and Rural Initiatives and the Title V/Con Ganas project in External Affairs has been selected by the USDA to participate in the 2023 E. Kika De La Garza Fellowship Program. Says Dr. Magdaleno Manzanarez, Vice President for External Affairs to whom Khera reports, "We are delighted to see Otto get recognized formally for his commitment to HSIs and his achievements. He is a team player, and we are excited to see someone from WNMU selected for the first time for this prestigious fellowship."

Nationally, 20 fellows were selected. Khera is one of only five Education Fellows in the group. Since 1998, the annual fellowships have recognized highly accomplished staff and faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) – accredited, degree-granting institutions of higher education with a full-time Hispanic student enrollment of 25 percent or more.

Khera is Project Director of the Con Ganas Title V initiative and since 2021 serves as Director, Grants and Rural Initiatives at Western New Mexico University. He is completing his dissertation focused on HSI student travel mobility as a social framework of belongingness across physical and virtual domains and is a published research scholar with award-winning journal articles focused on teaching and learning and mobility.

Khera has served as PI or "Principal Investigator" and Co-PI on USDA grants and several federal and private grants, including a current USDA grant focused on designing an interdisciplinary food and agriculture curriculum targeting New Mexico HSI learners. Khera is passionate about all aspects of food, agriculture, mobility and space as social constructs, rural and urban identity, and how people learn across modes of instruction.

He is currently collaborating on an undergraduate curriculum with Rutgers University focused on rural mobility and its relationship to workforce and economic development. The hybrid course engages students in qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis relating to different forms of mobility and public perceptions and behaviors across mobility modes within a rural context.