Abigail Weitzman is a William T. Grant Scholar studying how state laws and federal immigration enforcement activities shape Latino adolescents’ educational experiences and outcomes. Weitzman has mentored nineteen graduate students including eight who identify as students of color. Weitzman will use this award to strengthen her ability to effectively mentor junior researchers of color, expand her instructional toolkit to better support student writing goals, and create routines to support timely responses to student inquiries and requests. Weitzman’s mentee, Jamie Turcios-Villalta is a Latina doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Turcios-Villalta’s goals include developing habits that will support her research career (e.g., writing routines, time management), gaining facility with quantitative methods, and learning to publish in academic journals. Turcios-Villalta will also provide research assistance on Weitzman’s Foundation-funded project. Under Weitzman’s guidance, Turcios-Villalta will collect quantitative data on state laws affecting immigrants’ higher education access in the U.S., clean and code data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and perform descriptive analyses that investigate how state laws impede educational access and impact the mental health of Latinx youth. With Weitzman’s support, Turcios-Villalta will be a sole author on one paper and lead author on another paper stemming from these analyses.
With this award, Weitzman will strengthen her ability to effectively mentor junior researchers of color, expand her instructional toolkit to better support student writing goals, and create routines to support timely responses to student inquiries and requests.
