Just two years ago Angie M. Bautista-Chavez was a senior at Rice University graduating with Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Policy Studies. Now, she is in her third year as a Ford Foundation Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D in American Politics with a focus on race, ethnicity, immigration, and minority representation. As an undergraduate, Angie was not only a HSC Scholar, but also received the American Political Science Association Minority Fellowship, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, and the 2012 Motty Rich Scholarship for Outstanding Service.
As impressive as all her accomplishments are, she was once just a regular high school senior with fears and anxiety about college. Angie is a first generation college student in her Mexican immigrant family. Even now as a Ph.D. student she remembers too well the struggles of applying and graduating from college during her undergraduate years. Angie still recalls the friction between her dreams of college and pressures from her family, “I think a lot of first generation children of immigrants feel pressure from their family. My parents at first didn’t want me to go because they were scared of me moving away.” Angie remembers the anxiety of making the decision to go to college, but she says with the encouragement of her high school teachers and the assistance from HSC she was able to overcome it. She says, “A big moment for me was when I got into HSC and one of the first things you do is go to your first leadership conference. This was really big for me because it was the first time I had seen a room full of Latino(a) leaders. It was the first time I felt proud of being Latina.”
Angie also believes that her passion for community outreach was strongly influenced by her time in the HSC Scholars Program. “I’m just really glad that I was a part of HSC at the beginning of my undergrad. It really shaped those four years. HSC’s mission to not only provide financial support but create leaders in the community really stuck with me.” As an undergraduate, Angie was a part of several community impact and outreach programs including DREAM-Achievement through Mentorship, a Rice University mentoring program that pairs University students studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors with small groups of high school students. There she managed and led the program’s logistics and mentoring teams at Chavez High School in Houston, TX, and administered physics lessons herself as head-mentor. She was also president of a program that focused on teaching adults English.
Angie’s passions have now translated into her career choice. After receiving her Ph.D, Angie plans to continue as a researcher and become a professor at a top university. Angie is constantly checking back in with HSC to see how she can help support HSC scholars even though she lives halfway across the country. She has provided resume tips and checklists for applying to graduate school. Angie is a model of the HSC Scholars Program mission and we are so proud to have her as part of the family.
