As the first in my family to obtain a higher education degree, I always believed that no matter the circumstances, higher education is a transformational experience for students that leads to endless opportunities. Yet over the years, I have become increasingly aware that not everyone gets such opportunities, which led me to pursue a Ph.D. in educational policy and apply for the AAHHE (American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education) 2018–2019 Graduate Student Fellows Program. At the time, I was a full-time doctoral candidate at Arizona State University and an aspiring tenure-track faculty member. My experience in the AAHHE Fellows Program has been immensely valuable.

I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 conference and network with other scholars who are also working toward the advancement of Latinxs in education. I also learned best practices to prepare for faculty recruitment and negotiating job offers – and was provided a supportive space to present research findings to my fellow cohort members and faculty mentor. I received affirming and valuable feedback on my presentation and manuscript draft, which helped me better develop the product. Most importantly, I built an academic familia that has continued to support me in my personal and professional endeavors, especially as I embarked on the faculty job market.

For as long as I can recall, my interest in working toward the advancement of other Black and Brown individuals has been a passion of mine. As a new tenure-track faculty member at the University at Buffalo, I plan to continue working directly with different student communities and engage in research centering on the experiences and policies affecting Latinxs. Some of my recent work explores the academic outcomes for first-generation Latinx students via their participation in Latinx-based organizations, how Latinx collegians navigate a hostile racial campus climate, and demystifying the writing process for scholar-practitioners – a collaboration with members of the ACPA-College Student Educators International Latinx Network.

Currently, I am working on projects focused on Latinx Ph.D. students’ experiences with mentorship and student activism. Further, I have collaborative projects centering on the lived experiences of Afro-Latinx student affairs professionals and institutionalized support for undocu/DACA collegians. As a result of the discriminatory political actions taken under the Trump administration targeting those in liminal legal statuses, I conducted a critical ethnographic study for my dissertation focusing on the effects anti-im/migration policies have on Mexican undocu/DACAmented collegians. Guided by critical and asset-based frameworks, this study sought to answer the following: how race and racism shape their collegiate experiences, where these collegians find or construct spaces of belongingness to persist while navigating an anti-im/migrant sociopolitical climate, and how these students exercise agency via their activism efforts. 

I believe that creating such opportunities and spaces as those provided by the AAHHE Fellows Program is key to assisting graduate students’ engagement and work toward their professional goals of becoming faculty. Being an AAHHE Graduate Fellow has provided me with opportunities to build upon my knowledge of the societal issues pertaining to the growing Latinx population, in addition to receiving mentorship from others who are equally as passionate about the advancement of these communities. I am excited to continue learning from, and growing with, other AAHHE fellows for years to come.