Scholarship Recipients
Alisha Herman
Alisha Herman is pursuing a BA in Transborder Chicana/o & Latina/o Studies with an emphasis on US & Mexican Immigration Policy and Economy, a minor in Political Science, and a certificate in Arabic. Alisha was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona though she lived in Sevilla, Spain for one semester and is currently living in Amman, Jordan for one year. She volunteers with a humanitarian group called No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes that is dedicated to ending migrant deaths in the Arizona desert, and she has worked with locally resettled refugees in Phoenix for the past 3 years. Alisha is very interested in and fascinated by languages and cultures and after she graduates in May 2011 she plans on spending her career doing a combination of policy creation, education, and humanitarian work.
Amanda Skeen is a senior double majoring in Transborder Chicana/o & Latina/o Studies and Political Science. Her interests include music, reading, and researching the experiences of Arizona-bound immigrants. She was awarded the Wells Fargo Research Scholarship and her research project will be on the revitalization of the Transborder Chicana/o Latina/o Student Association.
LeighAnna Hidalgo was born in Pasadena, California in 1983 and at the age of two moved to Guatemala where she lived until she was eleven years old. She grew up in a bicultural and bilingual environment as the daughter of an El Salvadoran immigrant and North American mother. As a senior she is majoring in Cultural Anthropology and Transborder Chicana/o Latina/o Studies and plans to graduate in May of 2010. Currently she is working for the South Mountain Village Community Study. This interdisciplinary community participatory looks at families in South Phoenix to learn their coping strategies for staying healthy amidst the economic downturn and changing immigration and employment laws. LeighAnna hopes to attend graduate school where she will pursue interdisciplinary research on Latino education issues. Her passions are to bring about social change and equality to the lives of Latinos by researching ways to provide an educational system that supports cultural, emotional, and intellectual support for children who are experiencing the challenges of adjusting to new environments.
Samuel Westbrook is a native Arizonian, graduating in May 2009 and who is interested in studying Naturalization: Political Implications for Latinos.