Delnita Evans dreams of being a dean because she wants to help underrepresented students succeed.
“I saw that people that looked like me did not matriculate. We weren’t graduating,” said the master’s candidate in higher education student affairs at the Morgan State University School of Education & Urban Studies. “Sometimes, all a student needs is someone who looks like them to have a conversation so that they can understand that they can do this.”
But she had no plans of ever running a formal study.
“I had no idea how to do research,” she said. “It’s not my strong suit.”
Vanessa Cerano, a master’s candidate in educational leadership at the California State University, Fullerton College of Education
“I think it’s because I’m a first-generation student from a low-income area,” said the master’s candidate in educational leadership at the California State University, Fullerton College of Education. “I didn’t really have a lot of mentors growing up who were in higher ed or had any idea what research was. I never thought it was possible for someone like me.”
But this spring, Evans and Cerano, along with three other first-year graduate students in higher education and student affairs from underrepresented backgrounds, presented preliminary research findings at the annual conference organized by NASPA, the leading national organization of student affairs professionals, in Boston. Cerano and Evans are MCT Scholars, part of a new program from the Dr. Melvin C. Terrell Foundation that aims to help minoritized students develop into scholar-practitioners, administrators who can also do research.
