In 2016, Korey Tillman, a doctoral candidate in Sociology, sat in a courtroom and watched the trail of a Black man he knew and loved. Raised in a community which had been devastated by mass incarceration and hyper-policing, Korey knew the trial was not going to end well. “Intuitively the community could tell that he was losing even though he had one of the best lawyers in the area,” Korey relates. “While the prosecution argued, I saw his defense attorney use her tablet to check Facebook and play video games. The scene was dramaturgical. As she swiped and tapped, his humanity disappeared. He became a supporting character in a play to decide his freedom. He lost. But in that moment, I gained the passion to study how Black individuals are policed within, and beyond, the criminal legal system.”

Korey has channeled the passion ignited in that courtroom towards his graduate study. His research, which sits at the nexus of race, policing, and empire, informs his dissertation as it traces a human-Black racial hierarchy that informs modernity and examines how in moments when Blackness is policed, this racial hierarchy is reified and challenged. As an abolitionist, the goal of his work is to build upon the legacies of the Black feminist and radical traditions to assert Black humanity and move towards a world where African diasporic communities receive care, not criminalization. “Individuals live and die through the ways in which Blackness is policed,” he notes. “Thus, my research is important because it is a project in sustaining life. In studying how a human-Black racial hierarchy is maintained by policing, and challenged through resistance, I hope to provide empirically grounded theoretical work that assists in Black liberation struggles.”

Korey transferred to the UNM Sociology department from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. There, he was engaged in graduate study with advisor Ranita Ray. When she relocated to UNM, Korey was able to make the transition with her. “Her rigor and care have edified my person,” Korey says, “and I was more than happy to move to a great department and complete my studies under her tutelage.” Korey has enjoyed his time at UNM, thanking the Department of Sociology for receiving him with open arms and supporting his work. He particularly appreciates professors Nancy López and Maricarmen Hernández, whom he credits for expanding his worldview through their teaching. He also notes his “deepest gratitude to Ranita Ray, Georgiann Davis, Susila Gurusami, and Vilna Bashi for serving on my dissertation committee. Their guidance not only makes me a better scholar, but a better human-being. Any of my successes are shared among those who continue to love, support, and pour into me.” He has also found community and warmth through African American Student Services as well as the McNair program, where he works as a project assistant.

Korey recently received a Fulbright Research Award, which will fund dissertation research in South Africa for the 2022-2023 school year. After graduation in Spring 2023 he hopes to secure a tenure-track position or a postdoctoral appointment at an R1 university, where he will continue his work of writing, educating, and organizing to benefit marginalized communities and abolish prisons and the police, creating community-led forms of accountability, safety, and healing.

When not researching and writing, Korey enjoys movies, playing the guitar and piano, bowling, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. But there may be one more activity to add to his impressive resume yet. “I secretly want to do stand-up comedy,” he relates.

Graduate Studies congratulates Korey on his Fulbright Award and other achievements, and wishes him success for his appointment in South Africa and beyond.

Meet Antonia Androski, a doctoral student in biology with a valuable interest in some furry little friends. Her work within natural history collections to study the evolutionary history of small mammals in the western United States—particularly the montane shrew—could help the scientific community better understand climate change in both the past and future.

But why shrews?

“Montane shrews in particular are very interesting to me because they vary little in size and appearance across their range, which spans from Mexico to Alaska, but fall into three distinct genetic groups,” she explains. “The genetic differences among these groups can be used to understand how past climate shifts affected the evolutionary path of this species, and their capacity to respond to climate change happening today.” Shrews are particularly useful for this field of study due to their high metabolic rate—“they can’t go longer than a few hours without devouring an earthworm or beetle,” Antonia notes—which means they may mutate at a much higher rate than other species. And if they evolve more quickly than other species in new environments, their genome works as an excellent proxy for analyzing the effects of environmental change on animal species. By studying these genome patterns, biologists can better identify species vulnerable to extinction from climate change and/or other habitat disturbances, such as forest fires. They can also use this data to identify developing species as well. “I hope this information helps guide public lands management,” she says, “as both declining and divergent populations will be important to monitor in the future.”

As part of her field research, Antonia drove last summer from New Mexico to Southeast Alaska to collect shrews from an area along the coast near Juneau. “We were working in Alaska’s incredible coastal rainforest, foraging for blueberries and watching out for bears among huge ferns and tall, moss-covered hemlock and spruce trees,” she reminisces. She cites this as one of her favorite parts of graduate study at UNM so far, although a close second is serving as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate mammalogy course, which involves field work with mammals. “For many of these undergraduates, it’s their first camping experience,” she says, “and for most it’s their first time seeing native mammals like kangaroo rats up close.”

Graduate study, of course, has not been without its challenges. “I came into this with almost no experience in genetics, so learning my way around the lab and learning how to process large genomic data sets has been challenging,” she notes. However, she continues, “I am very lucky to have peers who are willing to help out and some computationally inclined evolutionary biologists in the department.”

Outside of her research, Antonia enjoys skiing, mountain biking, hiking, and running, usually with her partner and their dog, when possible. She has also taken a great interest in public lands and wildlife conservation policy. If given the power, she would love to help create more nature preserves in urban and suburban areas. “I grew up in Kansas, were less than two percent of land is publicly owned and there are few examples of healthy native habitats,” she says. “I feel very lucky to have grown up near a small state park with a family who enjoys nature, and I think that everyone deserves access to public lands that are expansive and healthy.”

Internet of things (IoT) technology is becoming an increasingly important part of our society, with several devices serving purposes such as traffic monitoring, social networking, and environmental surveillance. They frequently transmit critical information, but often rely on battery for power. But what happens if these devices can’t frequently recharge with typical power sources? That’s where Fisayo Sangoleye comes in. A doctoral student in Computer Engineering, with a concentration in computer systems and networks, he’s applying his long-time interest in this field to his dissertation. “Growing up, I watched the world go from very light use of technology to the immersion of technology in our everyday lives,” he says. “Seeing that almost everything from smart wearable devices to hospital devices are all connected to the internet, I decided to be a part of this field and conduct research on how we can use these devices from an energy efficient standpoint.” Because insufficient energy for smart devices can be “the difference between life and death,” Fisayo is working on developing different forms of smart energy harvesting—such as transferring power to devices from radio frequency signals—to prolong device battery life.

Fisayo chose UNM for his graduate work based on the research opportunities available here. He particularly wanted to work with Dr. Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou, an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Initially entering study as a master’s student, he quickly switched to the doctoral program as he found it better suited for research. Even though the start of his graduate study coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—meaning his first year and a half at UNM wasn’t conducted on campus—he credits faculty and the Global Education Office for their support during that challenging and isolating time.

Fisayo is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the treasurer of the UNM chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and a mentor and supervisor to STEM-inclined youth with NSBE. While not busy with his research and volunteer activities, he relaxes by playing tennis, traveling, and taking long night drives while listening to soothing music. After graduating, he hopes to work in the network engineering sector “and help build durable and long-term solutions in that field.”

When asked how he would change the world if he could, Fisayo reflected, “I would make the world more compassionate and empathetic. I would love to see people truly love those around them, listen to other people with genuine interest and be immersed in the ‘now’. We live in a very fast paced world and there would be so much value if we were all able to slow down and just serve those around us.”

Meet Avinandan “Avi” Chakraborty. Hailing from India, this doctoral candidate in economics, with a focus on labor and development economics, is studying the impact of return migration from the United States on education and labor outcomes in Mexico. “Coming from India, a country with significant migration flows at all education levels, the effect of return migration on the outcomes of the home country was a topic of salient interest,” he explains. “Although there is growing attention towards border protection in the U.S. in recent years, there is sparse research on understanding the impact of return migration on the origin country.”

Avi’s dissertation uses household survey data to investigate how a migrant’s return to their home country impacts children’s educational opportunities and occupational workloads, and then interprets that data using causal inference methods. The result? A project which considers both the economic and political sociologies of return migration, and also, as Avi explains, “contributes to the empirical evidence on the positive effects of return migration on children’s schooling and labor outcomes in the home country.” His work will not only add to the existing body of research from demographers but may also help influence government policies that facilitate return migrants’ reintegration into local markets.

Avi’s time at UNM has been, in his words, “enriching. The exposure to numerous fields, scholars from diverse backgrounds, and extensive training have enabled me to emerge as an informed and confident researcher.” His work has been officially recognized too, as he is the recipient of multiple competitive financial awards. His dissertation research and writing has been supported through UNM Graduate Studies’ 2021-22 Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship as well as the 2021 Summer Writing Award. UNM’s Department of Economics has also awarded him the 2021 Julian S. Duncan Scholarship in Latin American Studies. But Avi also gives back; he was the Vice President of the Economics Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) and previously worked as a mentor for the Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color (PNMGC).

After graduating, Avi hopes to work as tenure-track faculty at a research university, a position that would combine two of his passions: research and teaching. “As a researcher, I am interested in exploring the economics of how demographic changes can alleviate inequalities in education and improve the well-being of children in poor households,” he explains, and “as a professor, I would like to teach courses to achieve the bigger objective of imparting knowledge.” Avi also hopes to work as a policy advisor on projects related to return migration. The future looks bright, indeed!

Camille Le Pioufle, a May 2021 graduate of UNM’s Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies master’s program, is investigating how popular culture can be used as a lens for investigating deep social and economic issues. Her master’s thesis, How Bojack Horseman Got Too Real: Audience Engagement and a Critique of Capitalism, examines how the show’s narrative devices and strategies are used to deliver strong critiques of capitalism. “I am very interested in the way we, as a society, more or less willingly participate in maintaining a system that is so blatantly harmful for both our well-being and the environment’s preservation,” she says. “The fact that a TV show, and especially a cartoon that looks so goofy at first, is able to give such an accurate portrayal of the wrongdoings of capitalism was fascinating. I wanted to know what this show did different and how it did it.”

Camille’s work is important, particularly in a media-saturated world, in that it can help us better understand how television shows connect with, influence, and inspire their audiences. BoJack Horseman, for example, “manages to make the viewers possibly rethink their approach to the world around them,” Camille explains, and “might allow for more room for creativity and ways to tackle serious topics, even in animation, that are different from what previous animated adult TV shows have been doing.” Camille hopes her thesis will help some rethink the stereotypes and stigmas which categorize animation as merely a children’s medium, and demonstrate the broad potential animation offers as a catalyst for critical thinking and social change.

Camille hails from France, where she completed a master’s in Anglophone Studies at Rennes 2, Her research focused on the Puerto Rican independence movement and its relationship to feminism. “However,” she says, “I was also curious to explore the mechanisms of interconnectedness between the cultural and political in the U.S., particularly through popular culture and the moving image.” This fascination led her to apply for UNM’s Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies program.

Camille’s time at UNM was fruitful. She was the recipient of the Carol Raymond Fellowship during her fourth semester, which allowed her to dedicate more time to her thesis. As she has pursued coursework, conducted research, and worked as a French instructor during her time at UNM, she enjoyed our beautiful campus and found great support and camaraderie with her program’s professors and fellow graduate students. She also presented at the 2021 Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference, where she won the award for Best Graduate Student Paper in the Television, Music, and Visual Media category.

Camille notes the difficulties of struggling with imposter syndrome—“this little voice that makes us think that we are not good enough and that we don’t belong where we are,” she says—as well as adapting to differences in U.S. culture, particularly the heavier workload that is customary here. However, she cites the Foreign Language and Literature department for being “always willing to help and to encourage us in what we chose to do.”

When asked how she would change the world if she could, Camille laments, “We are so caught up in this endless materialistic cycle, always rushing towards the next goal that we do not take the time to appreciate the simple fact that we are alive, that we can help people around us, and that we have a beautiful planet that needs our attention.” If she could, Camille says, “I would try to make people pause what they’re doing, raise their heads, and look around to realize that there can be more to life than work and a career and that what is important are the deep relationships we build with the people around us, and with nature.”

When not hard at work, Camille enjoys traveling, riding horses (she is a certified equestrian guide and instructor), and hiking. In her home region of Bretagne, France, she loves creating new hikes, organizing activities, and guiding tourists on horseback rides to help them enjoy the beauty of the area. She plans to take a year to travel and do environmental work, after which she hopes to apply to doctoral programs in Cultural Studies or Film Studies.

Amelia Bierle, an alumna from UNM’s biochemistry undergraduate program and a former Lobo soccer player, thought she would be on her way to the Dominican Republic as part of the Peace Corps after she finished up her year in the National Institute of Health’s Post-Baccalaureate Research and Education Program. Instead, she found her plans halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. So, with graduate school already on her mind, she decided to apply for UNM’s Public Policy program. “I couldn’t be happier with my choice to pursue grad school and continue my education at UNM,” she says. “In eight short months, my worldview has expanded and my motivation to improve the lives of others has only grown.”

Driven by her conviction that vaccines are a cornerstone of modern medicine with the power to continue saving millions of lives, Amelia’s research in graduate school has focused on improving vaccine access across the globe. As part of UNM professor Dr. Pavan Muttil’s laboratory, Amelia assists in the development of different technologies for vaccine distribution. One of the most intriguing of these are microneedle patches; similar in application to a bandage strip, they are painless to use and, crucially, don’t require refrigeration as most vaccines do. The need for refrigeration has severely limited the reach of vaccines to people who live in countries lacking robust healthcare services. “I was fortunate enough to be born into a country where a majority of people have access to healthcare,” Amelia says. “But the reality is that a preponderance of people do not have that same privilege. We are seeing that play out right now through this pandemic.” As the refrigeration requirements for some of the Covid-19 vaccines are incredibly costly, she laments that “millions of people will never have access because their healthcare systems do not have the infrastructure to support it.”

But this state of poor access doesn’t need to continue. “I fully believe we have the expertise and solutions to ensure that people across the world have equitable access to vaccines, clean energy, and sanitation systems,” she says. She has full confidence that the work of the Muttil Lab can help make this vision a reality.

Outside of—but still connected to—the lab, Amelia was the first-place winner of the 2020 LoboBITES competition, an event featured as part of the Shared Knowledge Conference and sponsored by Graduate Studies. Her presentation, “Vaccine Delivery to Remote Regions of the World Using a Novel Delivery Platform,” impressed the competition’s judges, one of whom was then-U.S. Congresswoman (and current U.S. Interior Secretary) Deb Haaland. As winner of LoboBITES, Amelia went on to represent UNM at the Western Association of Graduate School’s 3MT Competition.

Amelia’s time at UNM, both within her undergraduate and graduate programs, has been one filled with “a million joyful moments,” she says. She wishes to thank all those who have been part of her educational journey here, adding, “I cherish all of my classmates, teammates, colleagues, professors, coaches, baristas, cafeteria workers, bus drivers. The staff and people at UNM have truly made my experience a remarkable one.” Graduate school, however, hasn’t been without its challenges. The greatest of these relates to navigating her academic experience during the pandemic. Now nearly finished with her first year of graduate study, she has never met the members of her cohort or her advisor in person. “I miss all those chats around the duck pond and late-night coffee at Zimmerman,” she says. Despite this challenge, however, she finds that “as Lobos we have come together to protect the pack. I think it really shows the comradery and goodness in people’s hearts to choose the path that is hard but continue down it anyway because we all know it is what is best for one another, our families, and all of New Mexico.”

Amelia isn’t quite sure what her next steps will be after graduation, but she has some big ideas—including serving in the Peace Corps, obtaining a doctorate, traveling domestically and internationally, and exploring every national park. “The order in which everything will happen,” she says, “is still up in the air.”

Mengqi “Mandy” Liu is a doctoral candidate in Economics, with an emphasis on international development and sustainability. “As an economist,” she says, “I believe in the importance of each individual. I always want to use my own ability to help others” and “love the people around me and pass this love to my community.” One part of her dissertation examines how exposure to natural disasters during adolescence impacts an individual’s health, cognitive, and socio-emotional state, and then considers how these outcomes influence transitions into marriage, parenthood, and the labor market. For the other part of the dissertation, Mandy conducted a field survey in Nepal to examine attitudes and intentions for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) prevention and offers evidence for the cost-effective benefits of HPV vaccinations in developing countries. In such places, she explains, “the risks faced by adolescents as they transition to adulthood may be exacerbated by poor infrastructure, scare resources, and reduced access to health care. Therefore, development policies aimed at improving human capital and demographic outcomes must better understand the risks adolescents face as well as the benefits of interventions aimed at mitigating those risks.”

Mandy was drawn to this topic, in part, because of a dire need for research in this area. “Research on early childhood has received a lot of attention across multiple disciplines,” she notes, but “research on this period [adolescence] is still relatively small. My research contributes to the field of adolescent studies and provides evidence for policies targeting the transitional period of adolescence.” She hopes her work will inspire academics and public policy experts to “find the instruments to help adolescents better transition to adulthood.”

In addition to her robust research, Mandy has been busy in many other areas. She has taught for the departments of Economics as well as Population Health, has been a research assistant for multiple projects, and worked as a tutor in Economics, Statistics, and Algebra for the Center for Academic Program Support (CAPS)—all while being a dedicated mother to her two young children. She was also a recipient of Graduate Studies’ Graduate Student Success Scholarship during this academic year, which she credits for helping her complete her dissertation and successfully compete on the academic job market.

To balance these strenuous activities, Mandy enjoys hiking, kayaking, and snowboarding in her spare time. She also goes for daily jogs to help her think and relax.

All her hard work has definitely paid off—she will join Gordon College this fall as an assistant professor in Economics. Her goal, she says, “is to be an educator that not only teaches knowledge but also helps every student achieve their own success.” Graduate Studies sends its congratulations to Mandy and wishes her all the best as she continues forward with her excellent work.

Jens Van Gysel recognizes that language is not a static system. Shaped (often violently) by historical and socioeconomic forces, languages are ever evolving, ever changing, and sometimes in danger of fading away.

Hailing from Belgium, Jens is a doctoral candidate in UNM’s linguistics program. For his dissertation, he hopes to compile a full grammatical description (or, as he notes, “as full as possible considering the time constraints of a graduate program”) of the ancestral language of the Indigenous Sanapaná people from the Chaco region of Paraguay. For this project, Jens is, together with a recently established local language maintenance committee, recording audio and video of Sanapaná folks speaking in everyday ways—ranging from people telling their life stories to simply having a friendly chat. These recordings are freely available online at https://www.elararchive.org/dk0570/. "Throughout this description, I will pay special attention to areas where speakers vary in the linguistic structures they use,” Jens says. “There are, for example, differences between the speech of younger and older speakers (potentially because of increased contact with Spanish and Paraguayan Guaraní), between the speech of men and women, and between the dialects of the different communities. An account of this variation is necessary to fully understand how the Sanapaná language fulfills its function in its social context.”

Of the 2500 Sanapaná, only about a third still speak their language; the rest use Spanish or Paraguayan Guaraní due to socioeconomic pressures and colonization. Because the beginnings of colonization of the Paraguayan Chaco reside within relatively recent history, Jens was able to speak with many people who witnessed first-hand the injustices and brutality of the process, or heard about them from their own parents and grandparents. Accounts ranged from people “being forcefully displaced from their original homelands, to being effectively forced to take on a language and religion that were not theirs,” Jens says. He adds, “Many people in Paraguay, as in other places, think of the country’s indigenous languages as ‘dialects,’ not as full, complete languages in their own right, and official language policies are heavily biased towards favoring the two national languages, Spanish and Paraguayan Guaraní. I hope that a full description of the structure of Sanapaná will show that its grammatical structure and usage patterns are as rich as those of any other language, and that the maintenance of indigenous languages should be an important part of protecting the cultural diversity on which Paraguay prides itself.”

As patterns of language use continue to shift towards Spanish and Guaraní, Jens hopes his collaboration with the Sanapaná can function as a powerful permanent record. “It has been shown in Indigenous contexts around the world that concrete lasting records of an Indigenous group’s language and culture may help strengthen their identities in the face of pressures towards homogenization on the part of the nation-state,” he notes. He also hopes these records can assist teachers in Sanapaná communities with their desire to introduce the language into their classrooms.

Although Jens misses his family and friends in Belgium, he has enjoyed his time at UNM. He chose to apply to UNM’s linguistics program based on its focus on the social responsibility of linguistics—particularly its commitment to collaborative work with Indigenous communities and other often-overlooked linguistic minorities, such as the Deaf community. He is grateful for the support the linguistics faculty has shown for his work, and particularly appreciates the support of his advisor for not just his work, but for the Sanapaná people themselves. While doing field work last year, he explains, “someone in the community wanted to speak with my advisor and hear about her work in Peru with a different indigenous group. My advisor immediately made time for an hour-long Skype conversation with this person.”

In his spare time, Jens enjoys playing the guitar, badminton, board games, and non-academic reading. He plans to graduate by the end of 2023, at which time he hopes to find employment in academia and continue working with the Sanapaná people.

Dèsa Karye Daniel, a doctoral candidate in Counselor Education and Supervision program and a student in the Race and Social Justice graduate certificate program, is working hard to improve mental health care in communities of color. In addition to working with diverse clients at a community mental health center and a college counseling center as a licensed mental health counselor, she’s also completing her dissertation with an expected graduate date of May 2021. Her dissertation, titled “Grounded Theory Black Womxn+ Leadership Experiences in Professional Organizations,” focuses on ethnic and racial minority populations with a focus on Black communities and ties to her larger goal of improving mental health care for people of color. “For my dissertation, I hope to better address the experiences of Black Womxn+ in academic and leadership spaces,” she says. She hopes her dissertation will contribute to “social justice advocacy through leadership within the [counseling education and supervision] profession.”

During her time at UNM, Dèsa has found support and validation through UNM’s African American Student Services as well as the Center for Social Policy. “These two departments have been a major contributor to my success at UNM and within academia,” she says. “Without the support of African American Student Services and Director Brandi Stone, I would not have been able to continue my work in mental health with Black students and the Black community. Her guidance and support helped me become connected to the campus and build life-long relationships I will cherish forever.”

Dèsa has also been recognized by multiple entities for her excellence as a scholar and researcher. The National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation recently awarded her a substantial counseling fellowship, and she was also included within the first cohort of UNM Graduate Studies’ Critical Race Scholars.

Unfortunately, the greatest challenge to Dèsa’s work has been anti-Black racism, but she’s not afraid to speak up and confront the crucial issues at hand. “As a doctoral candidate and Black woman, often the decision to be a success within academia requires Black womxn+ to remain silent about their experiences with racism,” she notes, adding that “silencing Black voices has been a long practice within academia and has been a contributor to the lack of Black scholars within academic spaces but also within mental health.” Dèsa plans to continue working in academia after graduation, with the hopes of improving experiences for future students of color because, as she notes, “representation is incredibly important for communities of color to see and hear from faculty and staff that look like them.” She also believes that reintegrating Black and Brown history into education is a crucial step towards greater justice and equity within academia. Graduate Studies is confident Dèsa will continue to be a transformational force for justice and equity and wishes her all the best as she moves forward with her endeavors.

Irma Rocio Vazquez is working hard to save the planet. A doctoral student in mechanical engineering, and the first recipient of UNM’s Charles Griffith Graduate Fellowship in Science and Technology, she hopes her research in the field of materials science at the nanoscale can contribute to the renewable energy sector. Specifically, her work focuses on graphene and other two-dimension (2D) materials which can help generate solar fuels; they are a type of renewable energy that use chemical bonds to store solar energy. “This is important,” she explains, “because to better utilize the energy from the sun, we need optimized photo-absorbing materials to make these systems more efficient, so my work constitutes making or discovering these 2D semiconductor materials at the nanoscale.”

The field of material science—one with constantly evolving technology and yet many undiscovered areas ripe for exploration—appealed to Irma because she has “always been interested in the mechanisms driving the world that we see around us; the basic understanding of interfaces and properties of materials is imperative to be able to understand science at a fundamental level.” She also loves participating in and contributing to technologies that will shape our collective future.

Irma hopes that her research can be used to help develop energy-producing solar devices, such as those which use artificial photosynthesis (AP) for solar fuels. Such fuels are highly sought after; as Irma explains, they offer incomparable energy storage. “This is a relatively new area of research,” she says, “and something I am thrilled to be part of.” Although no ideal photoabsorber AP device for solar fuel generation currently exists, Irma insists that “we cannot rely solely on trial-and-error strategies to solve the challenges ahead.” Rather, we must “build knowledge upon the successful methods that have been previously accomplished to reach more comprehensive designs.”

Irma, a first-generation college student, overcame great hardships to pursue graduate study and credits her family as a constant source of support. “My life has been full of sacrifices, struggles, and uncertainty,” she explains. “The fact that I come from a low-income, minority, discriminated background makes my determination even stronger.” Despite difficulties, however, “choosing engineering as my career was never a difficult decision,” she says. “Improving society through technology has always been something that I have been passionate about.” She says that her time at UNM has been a positive experience, one which has involved meeting an intelligent and interesting group of people “who have inspired me to keep pursuing my goals and that make me want to be part of [UNM’s] culture that cultivates scientific learning and fosters a knowledge-based community.” She also credits her advisor, Dr. Sakineh Chabi, as an excellent motivator.

When she’s not hard at work on her research, you’ll find Irma actively engaged in a wide variety of hobbies and activities. In addition to learning Italian, she enjoys reading nineteenth-century literature, practicing yoga, going hiking, and spending time with family and friends. Irma is also a firm believer in the importance of community involvement. She currently works as a mentor to high school students with Big Brother Big Sister, is the vice-president of Pi Tau Sigma (the UNM chapter of the international mechanical engineering honor society), and volunteers with other UNM engineering organizations.

After graduating from UNM, Irma hopes to find a position within the mechanical engineering fields of academia, focusing on real-world issues such as creating more sustainable technologies. UNM Graduate Studies wishes her all the best as she continues her amazing academic and community-based work.

Mark LaSota understands the importance of mentorship. As a first-generation college student who graduated in Spring 2020 with a PhD in Sport Administration, he lacked the guidance of mentors growing up and “learned the hard way how important it is to have mentors.” During the past twelve years he has served as an educator and a mentor and has carried that passion for mentorship to his research.

His dissertation, entitled “The Role of Mentorship in Achieving NBA Success: Narratives Told by Nine Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Inductees,” examines mentorship’s impact on the foundation and maintenance of a handful of NBA basketball careers. “Each person’s journey has a unique set of circumstances,” Mark explains, “and this study attempted to better understand how these former professional athletes overcame various life challenges, with the help of mentorship, to accomplish career success.” As part of his project, he had the opportunity to interview a number of basketball legends, an experience he describes as his “dream study.” Mark hopes his dissertation will help society understand the importance of mentorship for people from all walks of life, not just professional athletes.

During his time at UNM, Mark cites teaching lecture and activity courses as his best experience. “I am passionate about teaching and love working with my students,” he explains. “Therefore, teaching does not feel like a job to me.” Although graduate school hasn’t always been easy—Mark describes his four-year journey as “arduous”—he enjoyed the challenge and worked to make the most of the opportunity. And it looks like his hard work has paid off; he has accepted a faculty position in Fall 2020. Congratulations Mark!

Tucker Colvin, a master’s student in Geography and Environmental Studies, understands the importance of clean water. “I believe that having access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right,” he says. “Due to many institutional and structural barriers, many communities do not have adequate access to clean drinking water. If people do not have access to basic needs like clean water, then they are less able to meet any other individual or societal goals.”

Tucker’s research doesn’t stray from this belief. In his work, he analyzes how drinking water systems are governed by institutions throughout rural New Mexico. By interviewing managers of drinking water systems, he discovered “that water systems face numerous issues including deteriorating infrastructure, limited funding, overly burdensome regulation, and perhaps most importantly, not having enough engaged people to manage their water systems.” Additionally, Tucker explains, “The state is also promoting regionalization as a blanket policy to promote sustainability of water systems. This research finds that this can be a useful tool in some cases, but for many communities it is perceived as taking away local control of a vital community resource and giving responsibility to a distant entity. This process can resurface historical political tensions and interactions between communities and government agencies. Many communities are in fact already organically and informally cooperating and sharing resources with their neighboring communities. Some policies and institutional structures created by the state seem to be innocuous and were likely created with good intent, but they are sometimes reinforcing power structures and keeping underserved communities marginalized.” He hopes he can share his research findings with state officials, legislators, and non-governmental organizations, as these are the groups who have power over water systems. “I hope this research influences changes to how drinking water is managed across New Mexico in general,” he says, “and hopefully it will contribute to making new water institutions that are more just and able to help communities meet their goals.”

Tucker’s interest in this topic stemmed from his work as a drinking water treatment plant operator in Montana, an opportunity which sparked his fascination with the ways social and governmental influences impact water access. “Knowledge of hydrology and water chemistry largely isn’t what is keeping communities from meeting their goals,” he argues. “Rather, it is how water is managed and the institutions governing water management.”

Although his graduate school experience has presented challenges—specifically balancing work and life as well as tackling imposter syndrome—Tucker’s time in New Mexico and at UNM has been fruitful and impactful. He has felt welcomed by the many rural communities he has visited across the state and has valued the opportunity to learn about their histories and values. He has enjoyed teaching GEOG 1160L (Home Planet Lab) for his program. Due to its nature as a core science class, teaching it has given him the chance to interact with students from all walks of the university, learn about their backgrounds, and appreciate the ways each student contributes to the classroom learning environment. He has also taken advantage of New Mexico’s many outdoor delights, finding time to go skiing, mountain biking, hiking, and rock climbing when not involved in his studies and research.

With graduation approaching this May, Tucker is still deciding what his next step will be. However, he hopes he can find a job “where I can apply my research findings in a meaningful way.”

Nikki Maphis is on a mission to eradicate dementia. A doctoral candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program specializing in Neurosciences and Professional Science and Technology Management, her work involves developing a vaccine to target a pathology—called pathological tau, or pTau—typically found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease as well as other dementias. By using a vaccine approach to combat pTau, Nikki explains, “I am stimulating the body’s immune system, specifically B cells, to mount a robust and targeted antibody response in order to target and degrade this pTau in the brain.”

Nikki’s fight against dementia is personal. “My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and suffered from this devastating disorder for more than fifteen years,” Nikki says. “It was heartbreaking watching her and family struggle with this disease. With Alzheimer’s, it’s not just the person with the diagnosis who is affected, but those who have to take on the primary care-giving role.” The financial cost is enormous too, Nikki explains, citing that “in 2019 alone, families spent nearly 290 billion dollars on care related to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and a lot of this can be unpaid caregiving.” To make matters worse, the number of people with Alzheimer’s is expected to triple by 2050 as people live longer, making healthcare costs skyrocket to nearly one trillion dollars. Preventing this outcome is just one of the reasons why Nikki believes dementia research is so vital. She hopes that, with the right company partnership, her vaccine can enter clinical trials and yield positive results.

Nikki was no stranger to UNM when she applied for graduate study. She worked here for four years as a lab manager, and her mentor, Dr. Kiran Bhaskar, encouraged her to apply to her program. “It had always been a goal of mine,” she says, “and after working here for several years and observing the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program from the outside, I really seized the opportunity to get my doctorate in a field in which I have immense passion.”

After graduating this December, Nikki hopes to find employment with a local biotech business or one of New Mexico’s national laboratories. She loves living in New Mexico and would dearly like to stay here after finishing doctoral study.

When she’s not in the lab, you can find Nikki hiking, rock climbing, bouldering, mountain biking, and camping with her dog and friends. She believes maintaining a healthy work/life balance is critical to academic success, and since the beginning of her time at UNM has made sure to set time aside for exercise, healthy eating, sleep, and time with friends. She also volunteers with the local chapter of the Society for Neurosciences by participating in their Brain Bee, a high school outreach event aimed at interesting students in neurosciences and STEM careers.

When asked how she would change the world if she could, Nikki answered that she would work to reduce income inequality in the United States. “Growing up in near poverty can literally change your DNA,” she explains, and “childhood trauma as a result of poverty can be passed down in your DNA through these epigenetic changes (small micro-alterations in your DNA). This means if you grow up poor those changes in your DNA can be passed down to your children. We need to stop the cycle of poverty and put a larger value on education.”

Monica Goncalves-Garcia is a doctoral student in psychology specializing in neuroscience who represented UNM Graduate Studies at 2020's UNM Day at the New Mexico State Legislature. Monica is a first-year Ph.D. student, but she’s not new to UNM. An international student, she first attended UNM in 2014 as an undergraduate studying music. Now she’s made an amazing leap to a whole new discipline for graduate study because she is “interested in understanding what is going on in the brain that causes an organism—a human or animal—to behave the way they do,” she explains. “I am fascinated by brain plasticity, learning and memory processes, and intrigued by how prenatal alcohol exposure impacts those.” Although the switch from music to neuroscience has been challenging, Monica has found it incredibly rewarding. She hopes her research regarding prenatal alcohol exposure, and related fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, can help shed light on these topics to the public and help encourage those who are pregnant to abstain from alcohol during pregnancy.

Monica’s experience at UNM since her time as an undergraduate has been a positive one, even though it was her first time living abroad and she was nervous about the change. However, “all the support I had from day one at UNM made everything way easier than I could anticipate,” she says. “The international department at UNM is fantastic in helping us deal with all the bureaucracies and also promoting many events to help us with the transition from our cultures to the American culture.”

Monica’s parents went above and beyond to make it possible for Monica and her sister to pursue university degrees. Monica is a believer in education, and she’s blazing trails as the first person in her family to pursue a doctoral degree. “I really believe a better education can change the world in many powerful ways,” Monica says. “If I am where I am today, it is because of the power of education.” After completing her doctoral degree, she hopes to continue in academia professionally as a postdoc and beyond, continuing her own educational journey and helping others along theirs.

Maya Alapin is a doctoral student, a single mom of two daughters, and a small business owner. A student in Philosophy, Maya will be defending her dissertation, The Philosophical Implications of Reading Plato Through Musical Analysis, this May.

Maya's dissertation offers a fresh and new reading of Plato’s magnum opus, the Republic. For centuries there has been debate about the compositional structure of the text. Combining digital and textual analysis, Maya offers a new way to study the structure of the work. She is interested in how this insight contributes to our understanding of the integrity of the text, its central arguments about the soul and its inner health, and most importantly, what insight it gives into the motivations and artistic vision of the author. She explains her interests in contemporary terms: “the main issue I am curious about, is how Plato set out to save individuals from the misery of life. I find it fascinating how obsessed he was with images, and particularly images containing certain forms and number relationships embedded in them. He had an idea that we have to be constantly in touch with images and experiences of what he called ‘musical’ relationships so that we, in turn, become internally organized and ‘musical’ as well.”

Her best experience at UNM has been being heard. She came from schools with contentious and competitive classrooms. Particularly at Oxford, she longed for flexible, fun, curious conversations. At UNM she feels that ideas are still meant to be touched and accessed, and that students and teachers still have mutual respect and shared interests. The flow of conversations during her degree always felt free and open to her. She loves the fact that the very end of her higher education was an authentic shoutout to the author she studies—Plato—since he supported friendship and genuine curiosity in learning.

One of the challenges Maya has encountered is being a single mom and full-time student and an entrepreneur all at the same time. It has also proved to be an opportunity for her to learn real balance and the meaning of efficiency and planning. Although she wasn’t exactly planning to run a real estate business while in the final years of her PhD studies, becoming an independent mother of two meant that she had to make money while earning her degree. She thought, “I could give up on this topic I really love and believe in, or… I can just make it work.” So she made it work. It has been a challenge to learn to balance running a business and learning skills in the financial world she never thought she would want or need, while caring about an esoteric and inherently low-dollar topic—the ancient Greek world.

Maya is grateful to her supervisor, John Bussanich. “John has allowed me to explore mysticism, a truly taboo topic in academia”, she says. “He has allowed me to study the parts of the ancient world that speak to my interests in the soul and in soteriology,” she explains, “and he has encouraged me to follow my intuition and to trust my own experience with the texts.” She is also happy to have Kelly Becker and Pierre-Julien Harter as committee members at UNM, as well as Peter Kalkavage at St. John’s College, Annapolis.

When asked how she would change the world if she could, Maya said, “studying a long-dead era, and thousands-years old topics, I have had a chance to go outside of myself, to consider life from a very differently-motivated perspective. The ancients—and I am thinking of Plato and a variety of neo-Platonists of different persuasions who followed Plato in some way—as they discovered how powerful humans can and would be, were curious about their innate powers, the state of their souls, the health of their inner life. If I could change the world, I would refresh everyone’ hearts towards an interest in these ancient topics—in how to love, how to be a good person, how to be happy, and how to be an integrated human being. I think that if everyone believed in meaning, and purpose, and the power of personal effort, there would be a lot less anger and suffering in humans of all kinds.”

Keiko Beers is a motivated linguist who collaborates with a language community in their language revitalization efforts. A doctoral candidate in linguistics at UNM, Keiko’s dissertation investigates how the grammar of Tohono O’odham, an endangered language spoken by indigenous people in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, has possibly changed during the last century. These and other indigenous communities have been the target of violent colonial practices within the United States which, among other things, applied coercive measures to replace their native languages with English. “Within this context,” Keiko explains, “I explore how threatened languages change in ways that may differ from what is observed in vibrant languages. In order to carry out my study, I compare archival records of O’odham oral narratives from the early 1900s with modern use of language as captured in YouTube videos.”

As Keiko has pursued her project, she has encountered a number of historical texts from the early 1900s whose forms (i.e. wax cylinders and hand-written field notebooks) are difficult for most people to access. To rectify this problem, she has been collaborating with members of the O’odham community and other linguists to translate these materials into both Spanish and English. “Some O’odham educators,” she notes, “have also stated their desire to use the improved historical texts to develop culturally salient curriculum.”

Keiko’s interest in this topic originates from her long-term participation in the O’odham Ñe’ok (Language) Revitalization Project, a program which partners UNM linguists with O’odham community members. The project’s goal “is to promote the [O’odham] language and increase its use especially among the younger generations who will be the ones to pass on the language to future generations.”

Keiko chose UNM for her doctoral work due to the linguistic department’s work with different language projects in the Southwest. “I knew I wanted to be in a program that contributed not only to linguistic scholarship but also community concerns surrounding language rights, revitalization, and so on.” In addition to her research, Keiko is also an accomplished course instructor as well as a mentor for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. Although it’s been a challenge to juggle her research, teaching, and mentorship, Keiko has excelled at the tasks and has received substantial recognition for her work; she was the recipient of the prestigious UNM-Mellon Doctoral Fellowship (2017-2018) and the Latin American and Iberian Institute Fellowship (2018-2019), and is currently a fellow with the Center for Regional Studies. She plans to use her rich experiences to continue work both within and outside of academia after graduation.

When asked how she would like to change the world, Keiko replied that she would find a way to eliminate language-based discrimination. “Because language is something we all use and take for granted, it is easily overlooked as a tool that is frequently used for propping one group up and marginalizing another,” she noted. “When languages are looked at through a scientific lens … the idea that some varieties of a language or some languages are inferior to others is completely unfounded.”