Event Date
🌟 Presented by Inclusive Excellence (Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate initiative)
The Office of Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate presents
Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Seminar Series featuring
Katherine Arias Garcia, PhD
Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow and former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Irvine, School of Education
Transforming Higher Education - Centering Cultural Assets of Latinx Premed Students
This presentation examines how cultural assets shape the educational pathways and aspirations of Latinx and first-generation premedical students. Drawing on critical and asset-based frameworks, this work examines the ways students draw from family, community, and lived experiences to persist in premedical studies where they remain underrepresented. Through culturally-relevant pláticas methodologies that honor students’ voices and lived experiences, the presentation highlights how cultural assets, such as giving back, linguistic knowledge, and familial ways of knowing, inform Latinx students’ motivations, sense of purpose, and visions for addressing health and educational inequities in their future careers as physicians. By centering Latinx students' cultural strengths, the presentation contributes to broader conversations about equity in higher education and underscores the importance of culturally responsive structures that support the success of Latinx and first-generation students in health-related fields and STEM.
Everyone interested is welcome. Lunch served starting at 11:30am, research talk with Q&A from 12:00 - 1:00pm
About
Dr. Katherine Arias Garcia is a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine School of Education and a former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow (CPFP) in the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research examines the persistence of Latinx and first-generation students pursuing premedical fields. Using critical and asset-based frameworks such as Latino Critical Race Theory and Chicana/Latina Feminism, her work centers Latinx students’ cultural knowledge, familial experiences, and community-based values that inform and sustain Latinx student’s aspirations toward the health professions. She received the 2024 American Educational Research Association Latinx Interest Group Outstanding Dissertation Award. Dr. Garcia’s research agenda bridges the fields of Higher Education, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Medical Education. Her scholarship has been published in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Education, and the Journal of Latinos in Education. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. With over 15 years of professional experience in higher education, she collaborates closely with faculty, students, and community partners to build culturally relevant programming to support the next generation of Latinx physicians.
Check out the other series seminars:
STEPHANIE KEENEY PARKS
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of African American Studies, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Beyond the Clinic, Beyond the Classroom: Black Families Rewriting Possibility in Autism Care
January 28 • 12:00pm • King Hall, Room 1001
STEPHANIE SANDOVAL-PISTORIUS
Postdoctoral Scholar, Starr Lab, University of California, San Francisco
From Mutation to Modulation: Deep Brain Stimulation and Multiscale Dysfunction in Monogenic Parkinson’s Disease
February 18 • 12:00pm • 300 Aggie Square, Room 2220
MARIA JOSE ECHEVERRIA LANDETA
Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering, California State University, Sacramento
February 25 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.
DIEGO ELLIS SOTO
Postdoctoral Scholar, Environmental Science, Policy & Management, UC Berkeley
March 11 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.
DEBORAH SOUTHERN
Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
April 29 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.