Patricia (Paty) Jaimes is a doctoral student in the Geocognition Research Laboratory (GRL) in the College of Natural Sciences at Michigan State. When asked who she is in any sense, Paty described herself as a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, and a student. “To me, family comes before everything which is why I always name my identities as a family member, before my identity as a student,” she says. Paty also describes passions as connected to equity, justice, and accessibility in both education and society more broadly.
Paty says it is because of the GRL and the kind of work her advisor, Dr. Julie Libarkin, does there that prompted Paty to come to MSU. Paty studied Earth Sciences during her undergraduate degree and found a love for learning and researching about Earth’s processes, but simultaneously loved social justice movements. After interacting with Dr. Libarkin and learning more about GRL’s goals of investigating “how people perceive, understand, and make decisions about the planet in order to address access, inclusion, equity, and justice in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] and in academia”, Paty knew MSU was the place for her. Now Paty loves that she gets to mentor students, both pre-college youth and undergraduates, which compliments both of her passions.
In her graduate experience, Paty has pursued work that focuses on improving initiatives that are designed to increase diversity in STEM disciplines. Paty says, “In the U.S., a lot of resources are allocated each year for increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM. These initiatives are something that have been going on for decades, but unfortunately, we continue having a diversity problem in STEM to this day. This suggests that current initiatives are ineffective at combatting this problem. A major problem that many of these initiatives have is that many of them are designed using a deficit model in which they are trying to provide underrepresented students with the knowledge and skills that the STEM community deems they lack. That is, most programs function on the assumption that the student is the problem. Instead, I believe that programs and the STEM community need to look at changing THEIR structure and culture in order to be more inclusive and accessible to the people they are trying to recruit.”
Paty has a long term goal of running her own scientific outreach and research program and has been cultivating personal and professional experiences through her time at MSU that she believes will help her get there. Paty has served as a research assistant for one of her advisor’s NSF grants that looks at the role of social capital and mentoring on diversity in the Earth Sciences. She is also involved in several organizations. For example, Paty is the current president for the Society for the Advancement of Chicano/Hispanic and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) who organizes professional development workshops that help underrepresented graduate students at MSU prepare for their careers after graduation. She has also worked as a Teaching Assistant for MSU Upward Bound and been an Administrative Fellow in the Bailey Scholars Program. Finally, Paty is a member of the MSU Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) community where she is able to share her scholarship, receive feedback, and stay connected to what other students are working on in a dedicated student space. “AGEP is a great community for graduate students to get support and feel like a community is behind them and their work,” Paty says.
Originally written and photographed by Makena Neal, 2019
