Senior Honors Thesis Grant Recipient: Teresa Alvarado-Patlan '19

The Rockefeller Center Senior Honors Thesis Grants program provides funding of up to $1,000 for undergraduate students writing a senior honors thesis in the social sciences.

Teresa Alvarado-Patlan, a member of the Class of 2019, is a native of Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico who currently resides in the Suburbs of Chicago. She is a Latin American, Latino, & Caribbean Studies (LALACS) major and a French minor. Alvarado-Patlan is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Associate Fellow and serves as a student member of the Committee on Standards in the Office of Judicial Affairs.

Her thesis focuses on the evolution of the Department of Homeland Security - from an agency enforcing strict immigration laws and border security to combating terrorism, to its current agenda targeting Latinx immigrants from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Her advisor is Matt Garcia, Professor of History and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies.

After graduation, Alvarado-Patlan plans to take a gap year to travel to her motherland and work for the Purepecha indigenous community of Michoacan before enrolling in graduate school and striving to become a professor.