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Merzamie Sison Cagaitan
Faculty Mentor: Michelle
Liu
Mimi is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar
and an EIP Presidential Scholar. She was born and raised in
the Philippines before immigrating to and becoming a
naturalized citizen of the United States. Her immigrant
background largely informs her research as an Honors student
in the departments of English and Comparative History of
Ideas. Her profound interest in the study of forced and
unforced migrations of vulnerable bodies is reflected in her
past research exploring the metaphoric “wounding” of the
corporeal geography of racialized, sexualized, and
commodified female bodies as they cross borderlands, and
collide with the forces of migration and diaspora. Her
current research, which conceptualizes the “mail-order”
bride’s body as another body displaced on the massive global
shifts taking place today, expands upon her previous work
and focuses on the commercialization of sex, the political
economy of intimacy, and the global marriage market. In
addition to her double majors, Mimi is also pursuing a
double minor in Diversity, and Gender, Women, and Sexuality
Studies. These highly interdisciplinary concentrations,
coupled with her innovative approach as a critical thinker,
allow her to see what most of her peer scholars do not, and
enable her to delicately weave a wide range of seemingly
disparate sources and discrete material into very cohesive,
deeply complex, yet still accessible scholarly work. She
wishes to understand the position certain bodies occupy
within particular sociocultural and geopolitical networks
not only through her scholarship but also in her community
engagements.
Since last year, Mimi has worked as
a Resident Advisor on campus, helping enhance student life
by facilitating academic, social, and cultural activities
for 50 residents. She has served as a mentor/tutor for UW’s
Student Academic Programs, assisting international students
as they transition to the UW, and has also mentored through
the UW’s Dream Project, helping first-generation and
low-income high school students gain access to higher
education. Mimi has also tutored English and Math at Casa de
Los Amigos, a part of YouthCare which houses and educates
youths detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and
recently worked as a language-based community outreach
intern with Seattle Against Slavery, a grassroots coalition
working to end human trafficking. In these capacities, she
was able to communicate with culturally diverse groups
through her language skills in Spanish, Cebuano, and
Tagalog. This year will mark Mimi’s third year working for
First Year Programs as an Undergraduate Peer Instructor,
facilitating a 10-week course during Autumn Quarter with 25
incoming UW freshmen, and helping them take active steps
toward maximizing their educational experiences.
Always, Mimi
strives to ignite her scholarship and community engagements
with an approach that is alive, innovative, and impactful.
Following graduation, Mimi will pursue a Ph.D. in English,
and a position as an English professor at a university.
There she hopes to research and teach, honing her ability to
recognize power inequalities on a local and global scale,
and sharing her work on the
intersections between
race, gender, sexuality, and national identity in the lives
of immigrants.
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Bryan Dosono
Faculty Mentor:
Ricardo Gomez
Born and raised on the Yakama Indian
Reservation, Bryan Dosono moved to Seattle in 2008 to pursue
his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington.
Striving towards an Honors Bachelor of Science Degree in
Informatics: Human-Computer Interaction, Dosono enjoys
exploring, addressing, and solving the difficult challenges
relevant to information and communication technologies for
development. As a McNair and Presidential Scholar, his
current research project examines modern digital inclusion
efforts of migrant youth on the Yakama Indian Reservation.
Dosono plans to pursue a PhD in Information Science where he
can make meaningful research contributions by further
exploring issues of technology policy and information access
within underserved communities around the world.
Aside from his studies, Dosono is committed to
serving his local community and university. He has
refurbished secondhand computers at InterConnection, a
nonprofit organization that makes technology accessible to
underserved communities around the world. He also served as
Chair of the Associated Students of the University of
Washington Senate, where he defended the official standing
opinion of over 40,000 students to faculty, staff, and
administrators. As Chapter President of Lambda Phi Epsilon,
Dosono developed qualities of leadership and excellence
within the members of his fraternity. At present, he works
to strengthen the university's adoption of Google Apps for
Education as a Google Ambassador. The first person in his
family to graduate from college, Dosono mentors his younger
siblings and cousins to pursue opportunities in higher
education. His close friends know him as a haiku aficionado
and sushi connoisseur.
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Jose Mario Bello Pineda
Faculty Mentor:
Wenying Shou
Jose was born in the Philippines
and immigrated to the United States 4 years ago, at age 16.
He is currently a junior working towards the completion of
his degrees in Neurobiology and Mathematics, as well as
completing the requirements for the UW Honors Program.
His current research explores how cooperative interactions
in nature may have evolved. Specifically, he uses a
synthetic yeast cooperative system to study mechanisms that
stabilize cooperation. Jose’s degrees as well
as his work have exposed him to a highly interdisciplinary
training. After graduation, he plans to enroll into a PhD
program, in neuroscience or molecular and cellular biology,
where he can apply his training in quantitative biology and
evolutionary science.
Jose is also active in programs
that increase diversity of underrepresented groups in STEM
research. He has participated in outreach activities aimed
towards minority high school students and incoming freshman
to increase interest in STEM research, hosted by the Summer
STEM Institute, The Northwest Association for Biomedical
Research (NWABR), and the CURE Program. He has served as a
research mentor for summer interns of the 2011 and 2012 UW
Genomics Outreach for Minorities (UW GenOM) program, a
10-week program that provides research training and
experience to incoming minority freshmen and academic
preparation before they enter the university. All the
interns Jose has trained have had abstracts accepted to
national research conferences. For the GenOM Project, Jose
also has been part of the admissions committee, the
Chemistry Teaching Assistant, and Mathematics (Calculus and
Pre-Calculus) and Chemistry Tutor for the participants.
Recently, he has been accepted to the Undergraduate Research
Leaders Program sponsored by the Undergraduate Research
Program at UW.
Jose is very thankful for the
support received at UW. He has received the Mary Gates
Research Endowment twice (2010-2011 and 2011-2012); an
Undergraduate Research Conference Travel Award, which
allowed him to present his work at the Emerging Researchers
National Conference in STEM in Washington D.C.; the
Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution Award, which allowed
him to present at Evolution, an international research
conference on evolutionary science; a UW-HHMI Integrative
Research Internship; two Biology Departmental Scholarships
(Casey Award and the Frye-Hotson-Rigg Award); the Bank of
America Endowed Scholarship during EOP’s Celebration; and
the EIP Presidential Scholarship.
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Janelle White
Faculty Mentor:
Sonnet
Retman
Janelle White is a Senior in the History and American Ethnic Studies departments. Her research interests include contemporary Black literature, the implications of hip hop on race within the 21st Century, and the connection between blackness and authenticity. Currently, she is writing a thesis entitled “Black Folks Passing for Black Folks”: The Black Middle Class, Hip Hop, and “Black Authenticity” in the 21st Century, that she will conclude Spring 2013. Janelle is a McNair Scholar, Presidential Scholar, and Mary Gates Research Fellow. Additionally, she is a student in the University of Washington Honors Program--a place which she has considered to be her on-campus home over the last four years. She hopes to one day complete a Ph.D. in African American studies, but in the meantime will be working for Google in Human Resources starting in the fall of 2013. When she isn't sticking her nose in books, or drinking far too much tea, she enjoys pie baking, timeless fashion, cats, and bad reality television. She would like to thank the McNair Program, EIP, and the Mary Gates endowment for affording her so many wonderful opportunities, her faculty mentor Sonnet Retman for the constant academic (and emotional) support that is so desperately needed to get through a thesis, and her friends and family for constantly inspiring and rejuvenating her.
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