"Decolonial refusals" theory, forged through fieldwork in Puerto Rico, is used to question "conceptual disjunctures" in binary views of center-periphery relations. Grad students here are not merely "voices from the margins," as seen from the "imperial north." Their autoethnographies may be dispatches from…

This article calls attention to the complex ways in which study abroad participants make meaning and narrate their experiences abroad. I ask, how do participants understand their study abroad experiences in relation to informing and giving meaning to their conceptions of self? To answer this question, this article uses a qualitative case study…

Regional Public Universities (RPUs) advance public good missions to foster postsecondary access, student-centeredness, and regional wellbeing. Despite the important contributions that RPUs make to their regions and students, scholars and the media often view the sector as amorphous and undistinguished, or they define RPUs by what they are not…

This mixed-methods study reports the results of a survey completed by a sample of Puerto Rican social and natural scientists (STEM-S) regarding their perceptions of the intersectionalities of racism, colorism, colonialism, and the culture of science. Most participants ranked themselves as light-skinned and were familiar with the racist stereotypes…

Researchers conducted a correlational study utilizing data from a public 4-year institution in Puerto Rico to understand differences in the levels and types of student engagement reported by graduating students, based on gender and major. Findings indicated that graduates from physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computing majors…

This article discusses interdisciplinary approaches to help students overcome communication barriers by integrating performing arts in Business Communication courses. Companies emphasize a workforce with solid soft skills to succeed. International Business employs English; thus, practical communication skills in English provide access to jobs in…

The dissertation examined the significance of disaggregated data in relation to college students' sense of belonging among Latinx ethnic subgroups. Sense of belonging has been positively associated with student persistence, retention, and completion of degree (Korpershoek et al., 2020). Latinx consist of numerous ethnic subgroups, and…

Drawing largely on the work of Maya Angelou, we use decolonial collaborative autoethnography to explore why the caged bird sings in the academy. We offer a "caged bird sings" framework based on Angelou's book and use it to analyze our autoethnographic performances. What we found through this work is that the legacy of colonialism in the…

Informed by the embodied perspective on humanizing pedagogy, this study examines how one Afro-Puerto Rican and one African American teacher candidate explored humanizing pedagogical possibilities during their urban fieldwork through multimodal counternarratives. By telling counter-stories through drawing bodies and mapping pedagogical spaces,…

This research paper focuses on the political participation of students from the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey (UPR-Cayey) after Hurricane María. The culture, perspective, politics, and resistance of these students are researched in light of other sub-contexts, such as the protests pressuring the former governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rosselló…

Although Hispanic population is growing rapidly, Latino students earn fewer STEM degrees than their peers. Therefore, it is mandatory to implement strategies that improve STEM retention and graduation rates for Hispanic students. There is little research about the ways in which multicampus collaborative CUREs combined with additional academic…

The Hispanic-serving community colleges STEM Pipelines (HSCC-STEM) study is a research project that explores the transitions to and through Hispanic-serving two-year institutions for underrepresented minoritized STEM students. This brief uncovers the most viable HSCC STEM pathways for Latinxs and other underrepresented minoritized students as well…

In this article, we discuss a partnership with a district-wide Ethnic Studies (ES) program, the Ethnic Studies Professional Development (ESPD) project, through which we designed and led a year-long teacher professional development series for middle and high school ES teachers in one school district. We describe the context of the ESPD project, our…

Drawing from two data sets -- one focused on students in high school actively engaged in the process of college choice, the other centering the perspectives of college graduates and their parents reflecting back on the process -- this article critically examines the journeys of DiaspoRican students trying to gather information and make informed…

Faculty members and their corresponding academic fields at the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón are classified with regard to grading practices over time. Based on the effects on the intercept of the equations that predict the GPA and the proportion of student withdrawals observed in each of the 39,337 courses offered during 41 consecutive…