Isabel García Valdivia views teaching and mentorship as a collaborative process where teachers and students create open co-learning environments.
TEACHING
Isabel García-Valdivia views teaching as a collaborative process; she creates and sustains an open learning environment that fosters intellectual engagement and learning with others, trains students to identify and generate solutions to social problems, and teaches students to recognize different forms of knowledge. She equips students to use the sociological theory learned in the classroom to develop tools, strategies, and reflection to address real-world problems and create social change beyond the classroom.
Isabel teaches courses on sociology of economic inequality, immigration, Latinx sociology, race and ethnicity, and research methods. She currently teaches at the University of Oregon and has also taught at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. She has also conducted biweekly seminars for the Berkeley Connect program (including the summer Bridge Connect) that provide undergraduates with an educational experience combining the intimacy of a small college with the resources of a large research university.
She also prepares teaching tools. Isabel created a Migration Slide Deck for the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, which serves as a resource for students, lecturers, and researchers who teach and present on migration-related topics. It provides easy-to-read visuals, figures, and tables organized into seven modules covering various aspects of migration, including global migration, demographics, migrant illegality, immigration enforcement, the impact of immigration on the U.S., immigrant integration, and migration motives. She was also the project manager for constructing a data module that examined a United Nations migration data set, allowing undergraduate students in the International & Area Studies 150: Migration course to explore migration patterns and populations of sending and receiving countries worldwide. She now prepares workshops on qualitative research methods at request.
Please contact Isabel for her teaching philosophy, course evaluations, and sample syllabi.
MENTORSHIP
Isabel has benefited from sustained mentorship in education from her participation in the Associated Colleges of Illinois College Readiness Program in high school to numerous formal and informal mentorship programs in college (e.g., Chicano Latino Student Affairs Sponsor Program) and graduate school. She actively sought and found teachers, faculty, staff, and peer mentors throughout her educational, professional, and life trajectory to acquire the necessary skills and (often unspoken) knowledge that shaped her into the person she is today. Her commitment to teaching stems from these experiences as a lifelong learner and her commitment to giving accessible and quality education to all.
Isabel mentors undergraduate and graduate students in research, demystifying higher education processes, and pursuing graduate or professional degrees, especially for underrepresented students.
In research, she collaborates with undergraduate and graduate students on developing independent research questions, methodologies, and analyses, as well as writing their senior or master’s theses, and/or dissertations, all with a focus on education, immigration, race, and ethnicity, and/or methodologies.
Isabel also helped demystify higher education processes – including the hidden curriculum – by working with underrepresented students in multiple campus programs. Formally, she has mentored through the Graduate Students de la Raza Colectiva Mentoring Program, the Chicanx Latinx Student Development Office “From Day One” Program, where she shared advice (or consejos) on how to navigate UC Berkeley and life after Berkeley ranging from course selection, employment and internship opportunities, reviewing CVs and job applications, and sharing what she wished she learned or knew as an undergraduate student. This is all one-to-one mentoring through drop-in office hours and individually scheduled meetings.
Given her own trajectory to graduate school, Isabel is passionate about helping others learn about the application process and day-to-day experiences with graduate and professional degrees. For five years, she worked one-to-one with nine undergraduate students on applying to graduate and advanced degrees through the Getting into Graduate School (GiGS) program. She has also served as a panelist on GiGS’ professional development panel series.
Outside of academics, Isabel has coached student leaders on their off-campus community engagement projects through the Peter E. Haas Public Service Leaders program. She co-facilitated year-long training and provided a support system for each student leader via monthly training, reflections, and regular advising sessions. She personally advised approximately 15 undergraduate students a year across three years (a total of 45 students). Students were awarded $2000-$6000 yearly to support their projects.