SEMILLAS Research Fellowship Program

Meet our Summer 2021 Fellows!

The SRFP is a FREE 6-week virtual program designed to introduce community college students to social science research. Fellows participate in weekly research training sessions, engage in critical dialogue with leading Latina/o/x community college scholars, and connect one-on-one with a graduate student mentor/femtor.

Harvesting Semillas:

The Role of Undergraduate Research in Bridging the Graduate Education Pipeline

Informed by Harper’s (2007) trajectory analysis, we use participant-generated visual methods (PGVM) (Kortegast el al., 2019) to visually capture the pre- and post-transfer experiences of participants. This study centers students’ identities as they navigated the community college- to-university- to-post-baccalaureate degree pipeline, by inquiring about their experiences throughout their academic journey.  Further, this project seeks to understand how undergraduate transfer students experienced participation in a social science research fellowship program. In particular, it seeks to understand how students developed and/or fostered a scholar-identity by engaging in high impact practices such as research & mentorship.

FOSTERING SCHOLAR IDENTITIES AMONG LATINA/O/X COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS THROUGH UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

High impact practices such as undergraduate research (UR) have been found to positively facilitate student learning and retention. Further, students of color who participate in UR are significantly more likely to pursue and attend graduate school and engage in additional research opportunities than those who do not. Yet, while extant literature on the impact of community college UR opportunities exists, most has focused on STEM-related programming and/or fail to center students’ racial/ethnic identities in curriculum and practice. This study contributes to the literature on (1) community college students, (2) Latina/o/x students in higher education, and (3) the impact of undergraduate research on students' identities as scholars.