Division
35 of the
American Psychological Association
Section III: Hispanic Women/Latina Concerns
Student Affiliate Information
Section III student representatives are Nayeli Chavez (Southern Illinois University), Araceli Mejia (University of Wisconsin—Madison), and Lideth Ortega-Villalobos (University of Notre Dame).
Nayeli Chavez (chaveznayeli@hotmail.com)
I was born and raised in Morelia Michoacan Mexico. I moved to the United States with part of my family when I was seventeen years old. Like many immigrants, my mother left Mexico in search for a better life for her children. I was determined to take advantage of all of the opportunities that we had come here looking for and I became the first out of nine children to obtain a high school diploma, to graduate from college, and to attend graduate school.
I graduated from Southern Illinois University with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and I am currently a third year graduate student in child clinical psychology at the same university. My research interests include: the assessment of ethnic minority children and adolescents, academic achievement and motivation among students of Mexican descent, resilience in Latino children, evidence based treatment for ethnic minority children, adolescents and la familia Latina. I enjoy reading and writing. I contributed to El Sol De Morelia (a newspaper form the city where I was born) for a almost a year with a weekly column where I talked about my experiences as a Mexican student living in a small United States town and attending an institution where I was the only student of Latin American descent. I miss the smells, the tastes, the warmth, and the people of my country every day, but I am also grateful to be here, to have had the opportunity to reach the dreams that once seemed impossible, and I look forward to what the future might bring.
Araceli Mejia (mejia@wisc.edu)
¡Hola! My name is Araceli Mejía and I am member of a student representative body of Section III, Division 35. I am graduate student in the Master's Program in Counseling at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an emphasis in School Counseling. My family immigrated to the United States from Jiquilpan, Michoacán, Mexico about 30 years ago and they continue to live in Los Angeles, California. In addition to graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I am also the first person in my family to complete an undergraduate education and pursue a graduate career. As a result of my experience in attempting to pursue higher education, I have developed a personal interest in Latina/o students who have shared similar experiences. My research team recently completed a poster presentation at the 2005 Annual APA Conference on Coping and Spirituality: Facilitating College Adjustment for Latina Undergraduates. As part of the student representative committee, I look forward to promoting our division as well addressing issues that affect Latina women.
Lideth Ortega-Villalobos (lortega@nd.edu)
My name is a great place to start introducing myself. I chose to hyphenate my last names to honor and include the legacies of my immigrant families in my day to day life; to acknowledge their strength and commitment to survive the challenges of a new culture, their vision for a better future for their children, and endless support. My journey started a border city in Mexicali, Baja California Mexico. Living in this portal to the US, helped me understand the stark differences between two countries, and the politics revolving around this militarized fence. Our family immigrated to El Centro, an agricultural town in California, in 1987. Because of the limited educational opportunities in our community, I left home to attend college at Cal Poly Pomona University. I am the first in my family to pursue a higher education, and the first woman to leave the home for reasons other than marriage. This was a tough transition to manage, but we survived, and since then I have embarked on new adventures. Currently, I am a fifth year doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Notre Dame and a pre-doctoral intern at USC’s-Student Counseling Services. My research has been devoted to examining the impact of multicultural competencies in counseling and supervision, and Latino/a identity and mental health concerns. I am interested in examining help-seeking behaviors and the impact of community based psychological interventions in the Latino/a population. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve as student representative of Division 35, Section III.
For more information about this site,
contact Kelly Kadlec, Division 35 webmaven.
