NCID-3230
Mayra Puente
Assistant Professor
University of California, Santa Barbara
Education/Degree:
1 Education (University of California, San Diego)
About
Dr. Mayra Puente, PhD is an assistant professor of higher education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her PhD in education from UC San Diego and her bachelor’s degree in political science with a concentration in race, ethnicity, and politics from UCLA. Using critical race, spatial, and Chicana feminist theories and methods, Dr. Puente investigates rural Latinx students' college access and choice processes from migrant farm working backgrounds in rural California. Her research has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families, as well as awards from the American Educational Research Association and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Dr. Puente’s research is motivated by her background as a proud daughter of Mexican migrant farm workers from California’s San Joaquin Valley region.
Current Work
Dr. Puente’s research focuses on college access, choice, transition, retention, and success for institutionally marginalized students. She is currently leading two research projects, including a longitudinal study on rural Latinx students’ transition from their high school senior year to undergraduate completion and a second study using mixed methods to examine rural Latinx students’ college access and choice processes from small towns in California’s Central Coast. Dr. Puente’s line of research extends a critical race spatial analysis conceptual and methodological approach into rural places to examine the college (in)opportunities available to rural Latinx students based on their multiple marginalized identities and upbringing in geographically isolated areas. She co-developed a platicando y mapeando (talking and mapping) mixed methodology to account for rural Latinx students’ lived experiences and spatialities in geographic information systems (GIS) software, data, and mapping.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Rural Latinx students, College access & choice, Critical race spatial analysis, Geographic information systems (GIS), Chicana/Latina feminism