Pathway to Conocimiento with Dr. Lauren Contreras

Welcome to Season 2 of Mile Higher Ed. In this season premiere episode, Sarah and Caitlyn talk with Dr. Lauren Contreras, who is assistant professor of education leadership at Northern Arizona University and an alumna of DU’s higher ed Ph.D. program. We discuss her recently published article “Latina Undergraduates on the Path to Becoming Exitosas on Their Own Terms” in the Journal of College Student Development, conocimiento as a framework for understanding Latina students’ experiences, and the process of turning a dissertation into scholarly journal publications. 

About our guest: Dr. Lauren Contreras is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership with a focus on Community College Higher Education at Northern Arizona University. She has published on the topic of students’ transition to college and inclusive pedagogy and programming. She also has experience as a higher education practitioner as an academic advisor and program coordinator. Dr. Contreras has a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Denver, where her dissertation focused on how Latina undergraduates define success in higher education. 

 

Some links to things we talk about: 

Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro by Gloria Anzaldúa 

Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios by the Latina Feminist Group 

 

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mile Higher Ed. Mile Higher Ed is produced within the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver by Dr. Sarah Hurtado and Caitlyn Potter Glaser.  Our theme music is “Summer” by Liborio Conti.  

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