M.A. Graduates

View Center Staff or M.A. Students

2005-2007
	Liam Fitzgerald grew up in Mansfield, Connecticut and received a BA in International Relations and Spanish from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. After college he joined the Peace Corps in El Salvador.  He is a first year MA student in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Department at UCONN.  His academic interests include political science, immigration, and human rights.  He lives in Willimantic with his salvadoran wife and an 11 month old daughter.
	Yazmin Garcia-Trejo was born in Mexico City. She graduated from the IPN ( Instituto Politecnico Nacional ) with a B.A. in Economics. At University of Connecticut, she recently graduated from the M.A. in Survey Research and she is currently in the Latin American Studies Master's program at the University of Connecticut. She has worked as a research and teaching assistant at CIDE ( Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas ) and as a research specialist at the CSRA (Center for Survey Research and Analysis). Now, she is working as a Graduate Assistant at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her areas of interest include: public opinion in Mexico and Latin America, political behavior, in particular, political participation of women in Mexico, quantitative methods in survey research and political marketing.
	Elena Gibbons Serapiglia is a native of Connecticut and received a BA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a first year MA student in Latin American and Caribbean Studies with a concentration in Latin American History. Before beginning the MA, she taught Spanish at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, CT.
2004-2006
	Emma Balbina Amador. Second year MA student in Latin American Studies. She obtained her BA in Liberal Arts (concentrating on Latino/a Studies) from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Her overall focus is on issues of gender, ethnicity, migration and class. In particular she is interested in: Latino/a studies, Puerto Rican studies, Caribbean women's history, Caribbean migration, historical anthropology, oral history, ethnography and human rights. She is currently working on her final project, which uses oral history to explore the migration experience of Puerto Rican women domestic workers to the U.S. in the 1950's. It locates these women as agents in the transnational and transformative process of defining work and family relationships.
	Maria Fernanda Enríquez L. Second year student in the MA in Latin American Studies. She is interested in development issues in Ecuador. As part of this big area, her focus includes democratization issues in Ecuador and indigenous movement involvement in politics. She obtained her undergraduate degree in business in Escuela de Negocios del Pacifico in Quito, Ecuador. Her studies abroad include a course in the National Institute of Rural Development in Hyderabad, India (2002) and a course in Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia (2003). She worked for ten years in the Small Grants Programme of the UNDP, a program devoted to providing grants to grass roots organizations and NGOs in order to implement projects in biodiversity, climate change and international waters protection.
	Kerry Stefancyk. Second year student in the MA in Latin American Studies. Her area of focus is economic and social rights in Latin American countries. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of New Hampshire, majoring in Spanish and minoring in Latin American Studies. Her most recent employment has been as a third grade Spanish immersion teacher at Woodland Elementary School in Milford, MA.
	Emily Stumph (Gallagher). Second year student in the MA in Latin American Studies. Her area of focus is education, specifically bilingual education in Latin American countries. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Math and Secondary Education from Boston College. Her most recent employment has been with Reach Out and Read, a non-profit literacy organization based in Boston.