Henry Covarrubias, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, has received a Carlos J. Vallejo Research Fellowship for Latinos/as in Education. This program is sponsored by the Multicultural/Multiethnic Education (MME) special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The Vallejo fellowship is Co-Directed by Caroline S. Turner (CSU, Sacramento) and Eugene Garcia (Arizona State University). The Vallejo Research Fellowship is designed for graduate students and newly minted doctoral degree holders (without a tenure track position) who are pursuing careers in the professoriate. The participants will have the opportunity to engage in a day-long seminar with leading Latino/a scholars in the field of education on Saturday, April 27 at the 2013 annual meeting of AERA in San Francisco. Covarrubias is one of 30 fellows selected from a pool of 137 candidates.
The applications for the fellowship were reviewed and ranked on the following criteria: 1) diversity of participants (gender, area of study); 2) exhibiting a sense of passion for the field; 3) indicating a need for mentorship; and 4) an essay which was focused specifically on the potential benefits of this fellowship. Dr. Carlos Vallejo, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Arizona State University, was an ardent advocate for social justice in education with a focus on applied research and praxis designed to enhance outcomes for historically underrepresented and underserved communities, particularly Latino/a populations. Dr. Vallejo was the impetus for the Multicultural/Multiethnic Education special interest group – the group’s awards and fellowship program both bear his name.
Covarrubias earned his Masters of Education degree in Postsecondary Education and Student Affairs from the University of Southern California and Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and Chicana/o Studies from UCLA. His faculty advisors at the Gevirtz School are Drs. Judith Green and Richard Durán. His research interests focus on higher education and issues of equity and access for first-generation and underrepresented students. Moreover, he is also interested in the relationship of cross-cultural learning within global technology-enabled educational environments. Covarrubias is also currently a Graduate Fellow at the UCSB Center for Educational Research on Literacy & Inquiry in Networking Communities (LINC).