Teaching Statement
I became a professor because college provided a critical space to understand my experiences as a woman of color and learn to combat structural inequalities. My teaching continues this tradition to provide course content that reflects my students’ backgrounds. I seek to harness and validate students’ experiential knowledge while also intentionally stressing the diversity of Latina/o/x experiences and providing comparisons to other racial groups. I developed the first courses at UC Irvine that explicitly focus on undocumented immigrant experiences; it responds to undocumented students’ demands to learn about their community and empowers students to identify how personal experiences are shaped by laws and other social structures.
As one of the few people of color in almost every classroom I attended as a student, I am committed to increasing the number of historically underrepresented students pursuing higher education. I care deeply about providing students with opportunities to build desired skillsets and preparing them to challenge inequalities. I regularly invite undergraduate and graduate students to join my research teams and oversee students’ independent research projects. The Undocumented Student Equity Project I lead has become an important mode of creating research and professional development opportunities for underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students, particularly those who are undocumented.
My teaching and mentorship has been recognized with multiple awards including:
- Dynamic Womxn of UCI’s Academic Achievement Award for Faculty for my commitment to creating a space to advance womxn in academia
- Associated Graduate Students of UCI’s Kathy Alberti Faculty Award for outstanding commitment to improving graduate student experiences
- School of Social Science’s Dean’s Award for Outstanding Mentorship
- UCI Latino Excellence and Achievement Dinner (LEAD)’s Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award for mentoring Latinx graduate students
- UCI Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program’s Faculty Mentor of the Month
Courses
Undocumented Immigrant Experience (Chc/Lat 169/ Soc 179/ Pol Sci 129/ Soc Sci 179)
Upper Division Undergraduate course
Research Seminar (Chc/Lat 102W)
Upper Division Research Writing course for Undergraduates
Theoretical Issues in Chicano/ Latino Studies (Chc/Lat 200A)
Graduate Seminar
Undocumented Migration (Soc 289/ Chc/Lat 289)
Graduate Seminar