SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) today welcomed U.S. Coast Guard Captain Adolfo Ramirez as a new in-house Executive on Loan to help HACU promote U.S. Coast Guard college and career opportunities to the country’s youngest and largest ethnic population.

“We are delighted to have Captain Ramirez on board at HACU. The U.S. Coast Guard and HACU share a proactive commitment to diversity that led to this extraordinary partnership, which brought Captain Ramirez to the national headquarters of HACU to help us enhance the college and career success of our Hispanic students,” said HACU President and CEO Antonio Flores.

“We are deeply grateful for the leadership of Assistant U.S. Coast Guard Commandant for Civil Rights Walter Somerville for making this unique partnership a reality. Assigning a decorated officer to a Hispanic higher education association is evidence of the Coast Guard’s organization-wide support for diversity in its military and civilian ranks,” Flores said. “We are indebted to Assistant Commandant Somerville for proving a true champion of Hispanic higher education success, and look forward to working with Captain Ramirez.”

HACU represents more than 330 colleges and universities serving the largest concentrations of Hispanic higher education students in the United States.

“HACU is the premier organization for tapping into the Hispanic education community. My role is to explain the wonderful college programs, and military and civilian career opportunities the Coast Guard can provide to our Hispanic communities in education, and in service to the country,” Ramirez said. “The culture of the Coast Guard is very similar to the culture of Hispanics in that family and country are paramount. In the Coast Guard family, we look to how we can best serve our country,” Ramirez said.

The assignment of Captain Ramirez to HACU represents the first time the Coast Guard has placed an officer in a nonprofit organization as an Executive on Loan.

“This organization, like any other organization, has a recruiting office, but it takes the entire organization to make diversity happen,” said Tina Calvert, Director of External Civil Rights Compliance and Outreach Programs for the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights. “Captain Ramirez was an outstanding candidate to assist the Coast Guard, with the help of HACU, to make our organization as diverse as possible.”

In addition to the Coast Guard’s prestigious Officer Candidate School, the Coast Guard Recruiting Initiative for the 21st Century was established to recruit outstanding minority students, male and female, to the renowned U.S. Coast Guard Academy. The Academy, which consistently ranks among the top colleges in the nation, offers full scholarships in majors in engineering, naval architecture, government, operations research, management, and marine and environmental sciences fields.

U.S. Coast Guard Captain Adolfo Ramirez is a decorated officer whose U.S. Coast Guard career has included assignments as Chief of the Investigations Office in Los-Angeles-Long Beach during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and to the National Strike Force Pacific Strike Team, an elite environmental response team. As Assistant Chief for the Coast Guard’s National Response Center for 1998 to 1991, he was responsible for daily briefings concerning the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. He later supervised Coast Guard responses to devastating flooding along the Mississippi River in four states.

Captain Ramirez wrote the first penalty assessment under new Oil Pollution Prevention Measures adopted after the Exxon Valdez spill. He was responsible for the Coast Guard’s “Workforce Cultural Audit” report on diversity. In 1996, he was chosen to serve as Ethnic Policy Advisor to the Commandant of the Coast Guard. In 2001, he helped develop plans for the Coast Guard’s Homeland Security for the Pacific Area.

A graduate of the Coast Guard’s Officer Candidate School in Yorktown, Virginia, Captain Ramirez has been awarded two Meritorious Service Medals, two Coast Guard Commendation Medals, two Coast Guard Achievement Medals and numerous other personal and unit awards.

For more information, contact Captain Adolfo Ramirez at HACU national headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, at (210) 692-3805.Or visit www.hacu.net.