Political Science Student Named APSA Minority Fellow
Sandra Carrillo Rodriguez sat across the desk from political science professor Kellee Kirkpatrick, reevaluating her future.
The human resource management major knew she wanted to help her community. She thought, with an HR degree in hand, she might combat employment discrimination one day. She liked politics. Her friends had often told her to major in political science, but until that meeting with Kirkpatrick, she had never given the idea serious consideration. She had a family to support. Political science sounded like a pipe dream.
“‘You are a political scientist,’” Carrillo-Rodriguez recalls Kirkpatrick telling her. “‘You haven’t taken political science classes, but this is your place. You belong here. You’re going to do great things.’”
A year and a half later, one of the field’s most respected institutions has validated Carrillo-Rodriguez’s pivot to political science. As the senior submitted applications to PhD programs across the country, the American Political Science Association (APSA) named her a Minority Fellowship Program Fellow.
For over 50 years, the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) has recognized outstanding future doctoral students from underrepresented backgrounds. Carrillo-Rodriguez is one of just 13 fellows in the 2020-2021 cohort.
“It was reaffirming,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “It assured me that I did belong in political science, and that my purpose and my mission within the political science discipline is real and that it is seen as something needed.”
MFP aims to support political science scholars whose backgrounds are underrepresented in academia. Those students make up around 10 percent of doctoral recipients, despite comprising over 30 percent of the U.S. population. Mentoring and scholarship programs seek to diversify the discipline by helping students overcome institutional and structural barriers.
Members of the MFP receive $4,000 in funding over the first two years of their doctoral study. The program also serves as an endorsement, with APSA providing recommendation letters for fellows’ PhD applications.
“It’s for people like me,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “I’m first-gen. I grew up in a limited-income household. No one’s pursuing a PhD. My parents have disabilities. Coming from that background, your opportunities are pretty limited.”
Carrillo-Rodriguez’s academic success provides a source of pride for her parents, who immigrated to southeast Idaho from a small Mexican village more than 20 years ago. They work in a potato warehouse, and their daughter visits them often.
Her parents concluded their educations by the fifth grade, but Carrillo-Rodriguez regularly discusses politics with her father. “If you could have been anything, what would you be?” she asked him during one of their conversations. He told her he wanted to be a professor.
“He always pushed us. He says education’s a way to end generational trauma, to get out of poverty, to get out of those abusive cycles,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “For us, it has been our way to get out of those cycles of abuse and trauma that our family has faced, and now we have our armor.”
When Carrillo-Rodriguez walks the stage this May, she will become the fourth and final Carrillo-Rodriguez child to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. Her oldest sister, Diana, and brother, Luis, graduated from Idaho State. Two of her siblings have earned graduate degrees.
“It’s just funny to know it started here at ISU,” she says. “ISU really did a lot. Three out of the four have been here and influenced and supported by this institution.”
In 2018, Idaho State introduced its first cohort of the TRIO McNair Scholars program. Carrillo-Rodriguez was an inaugural member. The program serves undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds who want to perform research and earn a doctoral degree.
Those students make up around 10 percent of doctoral recipients, despite comprising over 30 percent of the U.S. population.
The program pairs McNair Scholars with faculty mentors, who guide students through the research and graduate application processes. Carrillo-Rodriguez, at the time a human resource management major, struggled to find a research topic relevant to her interests. Program facilitators connected her with Kirkpatrick, who immediately recognized Carrillo-Rodriguez as a talented budding political scientist.
“I was so impressed with how well-read she was, how much she knew about the issues, and most of all, how much she cared,” Kirkpatrick says. “I knew that she was a student that I wanted to work with because her potential for greatness was so evident in every word she spoke.”
It was evident to Kirkpatrick that Carrillo-Rodriguez had a passion for studying and serving underrepresented populations. She wanted to give back to her community. When she spoke about advocating for Latino rights, Kirkpatrick says, her face lit up. As Carrillo-Rodriguez talked about systemic injustices she observed, Kirkpatrick offered terminologies for the patterns the student described.
“She always made me feel human and that it was okay not to understand everything and not know everything,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “That’s the process to learning.”
Together, they identified Carrillo-Rodriguez’s research focus: race and ethnicity in American politics. Carrillo-Rodriguez declared a second major in political science and began putting definitions to concepts she already found familiar.
"You haven’t taken political science classes, but this is your place. You belong here."
When Carrillo-Rodriguez doubted her ability to forge a career in political science, Kirkpatrick reassured her that she was capable. When she identified a research focus outside of Kirkpatrick’s expertise, the professor studied up on the subject to better guide her through the project. When Carrillo-Rodriguez submitted applications to eight graduate programs and other opportunities, Kirkpatrick wrote a recommendation letter for every one.
“I’ve always told her, ‘If you need a kidney, just holler,’” Carrillo-Rodriguez jokes. “‘We’ll see if we match.’”
Under Kirkpatrick’s mentorship, the student developed a research project exploring how social contact, media and risk perceptions influence support for immigration policy. In April 2019, she presented her research at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) in Chicago. In June, she traveled to Atlanta for the SAEOPP McNair/SSS Scholars Research Conference. The next month, she discussed her research at the Idaho Conference on Undergraduate Research in Boise.
In graduate school and beyond, Carrillo-Rodriguez hopes to continue studying the intersection of race and politics. Her next project will explore factors influencing co-ethnic candidate support.
“My identity has always been political, so being able to take back that power and to understand and to research how people’s identities get used against them is really helpful,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “To know that my community is going to be better off because of my research, that’s way more fulfilling to me.”
Carrillo-Rodriguez believes her research can benefit her community. And as a student who understands the sometimes alienating experience of belonging to an underrepresented population, she knows her very presence in academia will help students like her.
“She truly has a generous heart, which will make her an incredible professor and mentor one day,” Kirkpatrick says.
Though she had many supportive mentors and friends pushing her to earn a PhD, Carrillo-Rodriguez says, teaching in a university classroom never seemed truly achievable until she attended the MPSA conference last year. Seeing Latino and Latina professors from across the country, presenting their research and representing their institutions, finally made her dream feel within reach.
“Yeah, our background can be limiting, but it is our advantage to show these kids they can do it, and that they belong in these institutions, and that their goals and their aspirations are very much needed in this world,” she says she realized. “That’s what drives me — to know I can be that person that I, myself, needed when I was going through my undergrad and applying to PhD programs.”
Carrillo-Rodriguez works to serve her community outside the classroom, as well. She and her siblings just launched the Carrillo-Rodriguez Family Outreach Initiative, which provides pro-bono resources to Latino Southeast Idahoans. One weekend a month, the Carrillo-Rodriguez family offers assistance with resume review, FAFSA and scholarship applications, nutrition plans and other areas of their expertise.
"Education’s a way to end generational trauma, to get out of poverty, to get out of those abusive cycles."
The family recently announced the Carrillo-Rodriguez Family Outreach Scholarship, a $1,000 award for Latino students in Southeast Idaho. Interested students can apply online.
“We don’t only do it for ourselves, but we do it for our community as well,” Carrillo-Rodriguez says. “We know how it is to be at the bottom, to go without. We had the opportunity to go into college and be educated and have those opportunities, so now we always want to give back.”
