IWU Grad Awarded Genius Grant

An Illinois Wesleyan University graduate is among this year's MacArthur "genius" award recipients. One of the $625,000 fellowships goes to Juan Salgado. He's a community organizer in Chicago who runs the Instituto del Progreso Latino. That group tries to boost English language skills for Latinos to make upward mobility easier, particularly in healthcare and manufacturing. Salgado says urban development to him means growing human talent, not bricks and mortar. Salgado says he hopes the MacArthur fellowship will allow his institute to have its model adopted outside the Chicago Little Village neighborhood. Salgado graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1991.