In the early summer of 2017, Dr. Leslie D. Gonzales, my mentor and an AAHHE Faculty Fellow alumna, introduced me to the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education’s Graduate Fellows Program. Just a year into my Ph.D. program in higher education and graduate certificate in Chicano/Latino Studies, I eagerly applied, receiving a kind rejection letter a few weeks later. However, searching in earnest for an academic home and professional community, I secured funding from my institution’s Chicano/Latino Studies program and attended part of AAHHE’s 2018 conference. Time-constrained, I did not engage in many sessions or connect with many in attendance. And yet, I left knowing that AAHHE cultivated a unique and powerful space unlike that of other associations and that I wanted to return.

With this goal, the subsequent year, I leaned on my doctoral advisor, Dr. Patricia Marin, who graciously and meticulously reviewed my materials. She also shared with me that she had been one of AAHHE’s first graduate fellows in the late 1990s. This struck me, not because I thought it offered me any particular “in” so to speak, but because her long-standing relationship with AAHHE evidenced to me the program’s enduring history, evolution, and national reach. Accepted into the 2019 cohort, I arrived that following February curious about what connections I would forge and how this experience would inform my professional identity and research agenda.

Although raised to work and live in service of my community, it was not until relatively recently that I understood how to translate this – my most enduring commitment – into my research and long-term work as an aspiring academic. Indeed, my dissertation, which focuses on Hispanic-Serving Institutions and, in particular, on the equity of Title V, only took shape within the last year. Even still, I constantly (re)negotiate the kind of scholar I want to be and the types of scholarship I want to pursue.

I did not leave a jam-packed week full of workshops, social hours, and even a research symposium with settled answers, but I did depart with a larger professional community and a greater sense of sureness in my work, as well as in my place within the academy. To this growth, I attribute the AAHHE community and my cohort, especially. Illustrative of the supportive space opened by this fellowship was, for example, the symposium, where fellows presented their research to cohort members and faculty mentors. Here, AAHHE curated an intentionally developmental opportunity, where we could serve as critical, but caring, friends to one another, celebrating and challenging each other from the vantage points of multiple disciplinary backgrounds. All told, the AAHHE Graduate Fellows Program serves as a beautiful embodiment of collaborative uplift, where we exchange resources and encouragement.

As I prepare for a faculty career, I now know others, both in the field of higher education and across other disciplines, who are likewise committed to the Latina/o/x community. Plainly, my cohort fellows are some of my smartest and dearest colleagues, collaborators, and co-conspirators. As a collective, we are already forging a more just academy and working toward bringing into existence a world where we can all be free. •