Mentoring and Inclusion

Académiques Latinxs 

I co-founded and lead the interdisciplinary peer-support academic network for Latinx graduate students and alumni. UCIrvine students and alumni come together weekly to discuss our writing projects, to write in community, and to discuss the ups and downs of academic life. We also share strategies for developing and sustaining healthy writing habits and navigating the hidden curriculum of academia. This is a multilingual space that uses Spanglish, Spanish and English interchangeably. 

This Writing Workshop is part of the Cascading Mentoring Program run by Cognitive Sciences (and Social Sciences Associate Dean) Barbara Sarnekca. Barbara's program introduced me to many strategies for maintaining a healthy relationship to graduate school and academic life. The goal of the program is to foster a community of academics from many levels so that a "cascade" of mentorship can develop. We even have a Rejection Collection where we reframe our view of rejection by celebrating them!  In Spring 2022, I completed the Cascading Mentorship Certificate and now jointly lead the Académiques Latinxs Writing Group with other cascading mentorship fellows.

Spanglish Creative Writing Contest

I collaborated with peers in my department to hold the first ever Spanglish creative writing contest for undergraduates. This effort was a way to celebrate linguistic fluidity and innovation in the creation of hybrid Latinx identities at UCI.  

I served as my department's DECADE (Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience) representative (2019-2022), a collaboration between faculty, staff, graduate students and alumni aimed at creating an inclusive climate within University of California. In this role, I focused on making the hidden curriculum of academia explicit as a way to make academia more accessible to first-generation graduate students in my department. I worked with faculty in my department to host professionalization workshops to discuss strategies for writing  academic abstracts. I also collaborated with other DECADE representatives across campus to hold informational events for first-generation undergraduates to learn about and to secure funding for graduate school.