Like many of the students she helps as an adviser, Anayeli Gomez-Navarro was a first-generation college student. The experience of navigating higher education mostly by herself inspired her to be there for new college students the same way teachers and counselors had been there for her.
An adviser of more than seven years and current interim advising coordinator in the Student Advising and Success Center within California State University, Bakersfield’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, Gomez-Navarro’s empathy has shone through in her work with students.
That same desire to help others with struggles she knows well is what motivated her dissertation, Sentido de pertenencia: A study of Mexican American women professionals in higher education and their sense of belonging, which Gomez-Navarro successfully defended earlier this spring, leading the CSUB staff member and alumna to earn her doctorate in educational leadership from Fresno State.
“My dissertation was very personal because it describes me,” said Gomez-Navarro, who was born in Mexico City and moved to Arvin at 10 years old. “It was an emotional journey but very rewarding.”
Speaking to eight Mexican American women working in higher education institutions across the country, Gomez-Navarro wanted to understand their work experiences, particularly whether they felt they belonged in their respective university environments. Though the women each worked in different parts of the United States, their experiences were all similar.
“Most feel underappreciated, taken advantage of, not taken seriously,” Gomez-Navarro said. “They feel like they have to overcompensate or overwork. I know there have been many times that I’ve spoken in a meeting and was not acknowledged and then a man says the same thing.”
Gomez-Navarro’s work focused on intersectional identities and the importance of mental health. The women in her study are not just women or just Mexican American; they are both equally, so understanding how those identities intersect was essential. In addition to common struggles, the women in the study also found a source of support from coworkers with similar backgrounds.
“They rely on each other for support and feel the need to give back,” Gomez-Navarro said. “It didn’t matter how bad their experience was, they feel the need to help others so they don’t have to go through it too.”
Support from mothers also played a large role in the women’s overall mental health, Gomez-Navarro found.
Gomez-Navarro refers to the eight women in her study as her “hermanas,” or sisters, because of the background and experiences that she also has in common with them. She found the women through a Facebook group for Latinas pursuing doctoral degrees, where she posted her criteria for participants and had responses within minutes.
As Gomez-Navarro explained in her post, the criteria – Mexican American women working in higher education – also applied to her, which meant her participants already had a lot in common with her. Because of this built-in sisterhood, Gomez-Navarro had an easy kinship with the women, helping them to quickly feel comfortable telling her about their lives.
“I’m eternally grateful they shared their stories with me,” Gomez-Navarro said. “When you give people the opportunity to talk about themselves, they’ll talk for hours. They were not shy to say how it is. I appreciate their vulnerability.”
The result of the conversations is a series of “testimonios,” with the women telling of their experience working in higher education in their own words. Gomez-Navarro encouraged the women to speak in Spanish if it was more comfortable for them and wanted to include Spanish throughout her dissertation to make it more personal.
“If there’s one thing I’ve accomplished, my participants know they’re not alone,” Gomez-Navarro said. “I can say, ‘I see you, I know what you’re going through. You’re not traveling this alone. Mis hermanas, you are worth more than you think you are.’”
Gomez-Navarro’s committee was also made up entirely of Latino faculty as well. It was important that she have people who understood the unique struggle the participants face. Her committee was led by Dr. Ignacio Hernández, the director of her program at Fresno State. Dr. Hernández said working with Gomez-Navarro was a meaningful experience for him, adding that Latinas make up a small proportion of those earning doctoral degrees every year.
“Anayeli was focused on not just learning about Mexican American women working in higher education but on conceptualizing new ways colleges and universities can create more supportive environments for advancing a sense of belonging,” he said. “Anayeli inspired me with her tenacity and the energetic approach with which she enacts her leadership. I am so thankful that she chose me as her dissertation chair, and I am excited about the contributions she will make in higher education.”
Though universities often focus on supporting a diverse student population, more could be done to support staff, Gomez-Navarro said. Diverse hiring practices are great, she said, but it is just as important to ensure people of different backgrounds feel like they belong within the campus community once they are there.
“My goal was to give a voice and bring awareness to the challenges women like myself go through,” Gomez-Navarro said. “We should get to the root of the problem, which is that higher education is not being built with people of color in mind, not just students but staff. We hear about diversity but not what we are doing to retain them.”
Gomez-Navarro’s dissertation might focus on Mexican American women working as staff on university campuses, but she believes the overall lesson of common struggles for underrepresented populations and the important role a sense of belonging plays in one’s mental health is applicable to her work with students too. She’s already seen the way representation matters in her work as an adviser.
“I help students who look just like me,” Gomez-Navarro said, adding that many attended the same schools in Arvin that she did. “It makes me feel good to know that they have somebody who looks like them and understands what they're going through. So I'm glad to see that students find that in me.”
It helps, too, that Gomez-Navarro was a CSUB student herself: she earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology in 2012 and her master’s in educational counselling in 2014. Earning her doctorate was always something Gomez-Navarro hoped to do, and within the NSME advising center, she saw that it would be a way to better advocate for change that would help CSUB students.
“I feel like higher education is still made with a cookie-cutter approach, but the student population has changed drastically,” Gomez-Navarro said, pointing out that the rich, white, male student body that higher education was originally built around is no longer an accurate representation. “We need to make sure universities are equipped with tools to help the student population. Me furthering my education gives me the opportunity to move us in the right direction.”
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