What does it mean to be a Hispanic Serving Institution?

National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month/El Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana provides a fitting moment to recognize Latinx contributions to our school, university and nation. But it also offers the opportunity to move beyond easy expressions of appreciation and into the more difficult work of critically evaluating our school and university contributions to Latinx success and wellbeing. As you will see in the stories featured below, our Latinx faculty, staff and students play an irreplaceable role in the school’s research and teaching missions, while also assuming much of the often-invisible labor of empowering the Latinx and underrepresented minority leaders of tomorrow.

Angelica Garcia Macias and Geidy Mendez, University of California, Irvine political science graduate students, have been named as 2021-22 American Political Science Association Spring Diversity Fellowship Program recipients. The honor, awarded each semester to a select group of political science graduate students across the nation, comes with a $2,000 award.

Orlando Lara
photo: Steve Zylius/UCI

UCI doctoral student in anthropology explores the experiences of undocumented people and exposes their mistreatment

Michael Méndez. Photo by Han Parker

Michael Méndez, assistant professor of urban planning and public policy, has received a $400,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Faculty Award for research on underrepresented disaster victims.

A first-generation college student, Professor Contreras will be the first Chicana/Latina dean to head a school of education in the University of California system.

NCAA member schools across all three divisions nominated 535 female student-athletes for the 2021 Woman of the Year award. Of the 251 Division I nominees, Villanueva was one of eight from the Big West Conference.

Law Student Sandra K. Guzmán  named the recipient of the 2021 Sidley Austin LLP Scholarship awarded by the Mexican American Bar Foundation.

L to R: Adriana Villavicencio, Adeyemi Adeleye, Vibhuti Ramachandran, Celia Symons, Judit Romhanyi, Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, Christopher Seeds

Seven assistant professors at UCI will receive $50,000 Hellman Fellowships, which are bestowed annually to support research by junior faculty. They join an elite group of 63 UCI Hellman Fellows since 2013, when the Hellman Fellows Fund established the program here. The program began in 1995 at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego and has since expanded organically to all UC institutions. In 2020, after 25 years of funding the Program, the Hellman family generously established an endowment to allow the program to continue in perpetuity across UC’s 10 campuses.

The Eugene Cota-Robles (ECR) Fellowship is the most prestigious diversity fellowship offered at UC Irvine. This award is used to release recipients from employment or loan obligations that might delay progress in graduate study. The fellowship is designed to place students interested in careers in academic teaching and research on a fast-track towards completing their doctoral degree, and to increase the number of qualified candidates for faculty positions within the University of California. The Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship is named in honor of one of the earliest Mexican-American professors in the University of California System.

ACLS Fellowship Program 2021 | Project Title: Weed Abatement: Immigrant Workers and Fire Prevention in Orange County

UCI School of Education Assistant Professor Adriana Villavicencio presents findings from book, Am I My Brother’s Keeper? The book, released in May 2021 by Harvard Education Press, chronicles a four-year study focused on improving the educational outcomes of 15,000 Black and Latinx males in New York City public high schools.

Jiménez-Sandoval graduated cum laude with bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and History from the University of California, Irvine, where he also earned his Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese literatures. In addition, he has professional certificates in critical theory from Cornell University, in Spanish art history from Escuela de Arte y Antigüedades de Madrid (Spain), and in Portuguese language and culture from Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal).

Ana Muñiz, assistant professor of criminology, law and society, has been named a 2021 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader (MEFL) by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

Daniel Joseph Martinez. Photo Credit: Katherine McMahon

Daniel Joseph Martinez, Donald Bren Professor of Art in the Department of Art at UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts, received the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in Visual Art for his submission entitled Forum Romanum of Dissent or To See The World Without Time.

Renowned biologist is among 184 diverse recipients of prestigious award this year

LEAD is a gala that honors key leaders, graduate students, staff and faculty who support and champion student success and research excellence in the Latinx/Hispanic community at UCI and in Orange County.

Alumna Lauren Gómez (B.A. Spanish ’94) was named a California Teacher of the Year.