Saludos!

I am an Assistant Professor in Higher Education at Loyola University Chicago. I completed a Ph.D. in Higher Education also at Loyola University Chicago in 2020 after a twenty-year-long career in student affairs. As a first-generation to college Latina, I have been committed to doing diversity and equity work as a student affairs professional and now as an academic.

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My research agenda is focused on how power manifests in higher education and how the development of a critical consciousness can advance equity and inclusion while navigating and dismantling that power. One strand focuses on the role of critical consciousness, which means the ability to understand, analyze, and confront political, social, and economic oppression, in the academic identity development of Latinx college students. A current research project, in collaboration with the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University, explores how a sense of belonging on campus might contribute to closing political equity gaps for students of color. In a similar vein, another research strain considers how organizational theory informs change efforts for underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

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I grew up in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago before going off to rural Massachusetts to attend Williams College. This stark college experience inspires a lot of my research and because I met my life partner there as well, holds a special place in my heart. We are now raising two teenagers who are thinking about college, so the next few years will be interesting for me as a higher ed researcher.