First-Gen Graduate Student Profiles

  • Photo of Valeria

    Valeria Alonso Blanco

    Valeria Alonso Blanco wants to do anything she can to help Latinx transfer students have a successful experience at UC Santa Cruz.
  • Photo of Trung

    Trung Pq Nguyen, History of Consciousness

    I grew up in East Side San Jose, a predominantly working class, immigrant, and people of color neighborhood in the Bay Area. I grew up in a crowded refugee household; my parents fled Vietnam in 1979 as part of the hundreds of thousands who believed that the boat was safer than land. They lived in the Galang Refugee camp in Indonesia for 3 years before they were sponsored by a church in Michigan.
  • photo of Victor Tse, Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology

    Victor Tse, Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology

    My name is Victor Tse, and I am a first-generation Chinese-American college student. I am 22 years old, and I was born and raised all my life within the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. As an undergraduate that is a part of the 2020 graduating class, I majored in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) at UCSC, and am now pursuing the MCDB graduate program at UCSC.
  • photo of Ibette Valle, Social Psychology

    Ibette Valle, Social Psychology

    Out of four children, I was the first to be born in America and to graduate from high school. My parents grew up in neighboring villages of rural Mexico with no electricity or public health facilities. Despite yearning for more knowledge, my father, the wisest man I know, left primary school to support his mother and sisters.
  • Delio Vasquez, History of Consciousness

    Delio Vasquez, History of Consciousness

    I was born and raised poor in the Bronx, the first son of Dominican immigrants. My mother, raised in a rural community, was not allowed to study past 8th grade because of her gender. We are a Spanglish-speaking family and I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in the most ethnically diverse community in the country.
  • photo of Andrea Vazquez, Department of Education, Chicano/Latino Resource Center (El Centro)

    Andrea Vazquez, Department of Education, Chicano/Latino Resource Center (El Centro)

    I’m a native to South Central Los Angeles, and the eldest of two daughters born to a Mexican father and Afro Latina mother from Ecuador. My father’s education ended in the fifth grade and my mother migrated to the United States before being able to pursue a college degree in her own country.