Dr. Mercado-Lopez's current research explores the relationship between the rhetorics of fitness and higher education, and the impact of such rhetorics on the experiences of student mothers at public universities. Dr. Mercado-Lopez works at the intersections of fitness studies, women of color feminisms, motherhood studies, and higher education studies, to examine how student mothers negotiate and attempt to reconcile their student and parent identities. This work draws from the scholarship on higher education, immigrant mothers, citizenship, and fatness, to reveal how the language of "paths to college" and the "student body" implicitly and explicitly engage rhetorics of fitness that assume "deviant" bodies and define whose body gets to occupy space in the institution.The scholarship on mothers of color in academia became increasingly prolific over the past two decades; however, it has not been until recently that scholars have looked more closely at not just student parents, but undergraduate student parents of color. This research builds upon scholarship on student parent experiences and identities, but begins the analysis with an interrogation of the language used to promote college-going cultures while engaging the scholarship on students of color and sense of belonging. Drawing from Chicana/Latina feminist studies, Dr. Mercado-Lopez's work brings together scholarship on mothers of color, parenting in academia, sense of belonging, and fitness, to understand the institutional marginalization and empowerment of student mothers of color.Expanding the analysis beyond language, this work also considers how policy and resources — or their lack thereof — contribute to the alienation of student mothers on campus. Policy and resources, along with administrative messaging, determines the extent to which a campus can create and grow a positive parenting culture. However, this research also attempts to amplify the skills and talents honed by student mothers of color as they navigate multiple and overlapping oppressions as mothers and students. Making these skills visible is one step toward decolonizing hegemonic constructions of the "ideal" college student and create space for imagining student parents within "the" student body.Through this research, Dr. Mercado-Lopez hopes to continue a strong dialogue in pursuit of several goals for institutions of higher education, namely to 1) Increase visibility of parents on campus, particularly through their representation in data and policy making; 2) Develop a positive parenting climate that promotes sense of belonging, and regularly evaluate this climate; 3) Create wider availability of resources for parenting faculty and students and targeted outreach efforts to support new parents on campus; 4) Develop clear, explicit language about parenting/pregnancy rights for students and faculty; 5) Increase recruitment, retention, and promotion of parenting faculty and students; 6) Adequately address the unique challenges and needs of student mothers of color; 7) Amplify the skills that student parents have honed through their parenting to render them more visible within institutional discussions of "student success."