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The Ethnic and Gender Studies (EGS) program announces the debut of the Promise Award and its inaugural recipients.

Pedro Jesús Martínez, of New York, NY, and Emily Stoll, of Angola, NY, are the two outstanding students who will be recognized. 

The $500 award supports students in the EGS major or any of its five affiliated minors, who are demonstrating promise toward fulfilling the goals of the program: to empower students to be knowledgeable agents of change; to foster inclusive, equitable and respectful dialogues; and to take action within their chosen professions and communities.

Together with the Scholar/Activist Scholarship awarded in the fall, the Promise Awards seek to make the work students are doing in the program visible, and to highlight the importance of research and scholarship to furthering the goals of social justice in the classroom and the community.

Mr. Martínez, a senior double major in Psychology and Ethnic and Gender Studies and a participant in the Honors Program, entered the EGS major first through the Latinx Studies minor. 

He wrote in his award application statement, “Without a doubt, my education in EGS has helped me achieve personal growth in skills that would ensure I provide my future clients with the individualized treatment they deserve. It has surely led me to become unapologetically myself, allowing me to speak on my experience as a Latino in the United States.” 

One of the ways that Martínez has found to express his heritage is through poetry; he is also a Rosa Parks Scholarship winner this year for a poem dedicated to his Mexican ancestry. 

As a May graduate, Martínez career plans are to channel his experience in EGS into becoming a clinical psychologist, where he is especially keen to serve “diverse multi-lingual citizens,” as his faculty recommender, Dr. Brian Boisvert, wrote. 

“Sr. Martínez demonstrates his intelligence, wit and creativity through his excellent work, poetry and civic engagement … he is a community leader and motivator,” Dr. Boisvert added. Martínez notes the importance of learning about intersectionality, and social justice strategies such as “counter-storytelling,” as important skills he will take into his professional career.

Ms. Stoll, a junior Honors Program student, also entered the EGS major first as a minor, in Women’s and Gender Studies, to complement her major in the B.A./M.A. English Adolescence Education program. When she contemplated adding on another minor, in Native American Studies, Stoll realized that a second major in EGS would make more sense, as she could pursue both fields together.

Stoll noted in her award application statement: “This program has taught me so much about my place in the world and my relationality to others. Many of these classes have asked me to complete projects where I was able to apply the content to my primary major…I have also been able to use what I have learned so far in this program to help me look at content in my other classes through a different lens. 

“So much of what I’ve learned in this program will have a tremendously favorable impact on the teacher I will one day become,” she wrote.

Her faculty recommender, Stephine Hunt, noted that in ETHN 205: Native American Studies, “Emily’s reflections and analyses have been exemplary because she frequently draws on her other fields of study to deepen her own and others’ understanding of the conversations at hand.” 

Stoll and Martínez will receive their awards as part of the upcoming Ethnic and Gender Studies Symposium on Thursday, April 10, from 9 to 11 a.m., in Williams Center Room S204. The symposium will feature research presentations by several students in the Social Change Capstone course, taught by EGS coordinator Dr. Jeanette McVicker this semester; Stoll and Martínez will be among those students presenting. Attendance at the program is free.

The event is supported by the Jeanette McVicker Ethnic and Gender Studies Scholarship established with the Fredonia College Foundation.

The symposium itself is one of the embedded events in this spring’s Writers@Work Alumni Series highlighting “Writing and Social Justice,” and featuring Kathleen Mahoney, attorney at law in Portland, OR (English major, Women’s Studies minor, 1998), and Colin Perry, senior program officer, Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo (English and Journalism, 2017). 

Both alumni speakers will give keynotes at the EGS symposium, focusing on the relationship between research, scholarship and activism.