Two UCLA Ed Professors Honored with the Undergraduate Research Week Faculty Mentor Award
Karen Hunter Quartz and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar recognized by their students and UCLA community for supporting their mentees’ academic and professional goals.
UCLA Education Professors Karen Hunter Quartz and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar have been selected to receive a UCLA Undergraduate Research Week Faculty Mentor Award, nominated by their students. This award was created by the Undergraduate Research Centers to showcase excellence and commitment among UCLA faculty who mentor UCLA’s undergraduates in research and creative activities across all disciplines. Faculty selected for the award mentored students that presented at the Undergraduate Research and Creativity Showcase.
A student nominator wrote to the selection committee, described the support that they received from Professor Hunter Quartz, the 2022 awardee from the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.
Karen Hunter Quartz, director of the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, was recognized for her mentoring of undergraduate researchers with the 2022 Undergraduate Research Week Faculty Mentor Award.
“Professor Quartz would give me detailed, weekly feedback and develop my research skills to the point that we feel confident to submit our co-authored paper to a prominent academic journal: giving me the skills I need for graduate school,” they wrote. “She even helped me navigate the graduate school application process and would continually provide career advice, role-modeling, and a sense of empowerment. In one academic year with her, I have developed more academic rigor than any other year in my college experience. I believe my recent acceptance into graduate school was an affirmation of how much my research skills have been refined as a result of Professor Quartz.”
A student who nominated Professor Rios-Aguilar, this year’s awardee from SEIS, wrote of the networking and media support that their mentor provided.
“With immense gratitude, sincerity, and appreciation I say from the bottom of my heart that Dr. Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Chair of the Department of Education, is a blessing of a mentor and faculty advisor,” they wrote to the selection committee. “To support the network of our project on California’s ‘School to Warehouse Pipeline,’ she has gotten us a submission to the LA Times for an Op-Ed (which received great feedback), a meeting with KPCC Public Radio, and has introduced me to her colleagues producing leading research, whom I have met with to discuss my project.
“This is only a fraction of the transformative support she has shared. Dr. Rios-Aguilar has set the bar too high for faculty advising, as I have learned through her example what it looks like to be a leading scholar, caring mentor, and thoughtful advisor all in one. There are not enough ways to express my gratitude or to convey how tremendous of a person and mentor Dr. Cecilia Rios-Aguilar is.”
Since 2018, approximately 80 UCLA faculty have been nominated annually for the award; approximately 17 each year are selected by a committee of faculty and staff on the UCLA Undergraduate Research Week Committee. For a full list of winners, visit this link.