EL PUENTE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

Role: Graduate Research Fellow and Mentor

My philosophy in working with underrepresented students is that providing mentorship, guidance, and resources is needed for students of color to succeed. I learned that close mentorship of underrepresented students is connected to the personal development and self-esteem of students. Guidance includes leading students to asking the right kind of questions, pushing students to think critically, instructing on diverse approaches and methods, and fostering an educational space that is conducive of intellectual stimulation. Guiding students to resources requires the right type of mentorship that ensures underrepresented students feel comfortable in academic spaces in order to ask the right type of questions, seek proper assistance, and network with future mentors that will help them navigate their educational careers. The majority of students we serve are intellectually and academically cable of performing at any competitive graduate level expectations; the biggest challenge is to mentor students to overcome an inferiority complex that many students of color face at most institutions.

I have had the fortune of serving as a Graduate Research Fellow for the El Puente Research Fellowship for the last three years (2015-2018). The fellowship is organized by the Ethnic Center, El Centro de la Raza at the University of New Mexico. The fellowship takes undergraduate sophomores and juniors and teaches them research processes and applying to graduate school. Unlike many of the research program available at the institutional or national levels, El Puente’s curriculum teaches research practices from a cultural standpoint and a community based approach.

Visit the El Puente Research Fellowship page here.