Ph.D. candidate, Professor win awards at LEAD

LEAD honors leaders, grad students, staff and faculty who support student success and research excellence in the Hispanic/Latinx community.

Ph.D. candidate Melina Pinales and Professor Gustavo Carlo received awards at the fifth annual Latino Excellence and Achievement Awards Dinner (LEAD) event.

​Pinales was recognized as the School of Education Graduate Student Excellence Award recipient. The child of Mexican immigrants, Pinales's early cross-cultural experiences sparked her interest in understanding the developmental and educational pathways of multicultural and multilingual students from diverse settings. Her research focuses on early childhood education policies, and her dissertation investigates the impact of bilingual and dual-language instruction on the academic performance of Latinx youth.

Pinales has an ongoing collaboration with the Santa Ana Unified School District where she assists in evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of different educational programs aimed at improving the academic performance of Latino and Spanish-speaking students. 

Melina Pinales's award acceptance speech

She is a Gates Millennium Scholar, has been awarded the prestigious Eugene-Cota Robles Fellowship in support of her doctoral studies, and is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

"I am deeply humbled and grateful to have received the Latino Excellence and Achievement Award as it is a reminder of all the hard work that has led me here," Pinales said. "It serves as a recognition of my accomplishments and affirms the value I bring to the UCI community and the Latino community overall.

"I have my grandmother and sister to thank for all my achievements," Pinales said. "They have made many sacrifices and raised me to be the woman I am today. I also have my advisors, George Farkas and Jade Jenkins, to thank because they have supported my development and growth as a researcher and scholar since arriving at UCI.

"This award impacts my career by further fueling my passion for doing work that uplifts the Latino community. I feel that receiving this award makes me a role model to other Latinas and paves the way for future generations of scholars."

Carlo was the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award, which honors a faculty member who mentors and encourages the success of Hispanic and Latino/Latina/Latinx graduate students and junior faculty. His primary research interest focuses on understanding positive social development and health in culturally diverse children and adolescents across the world. However, many of his projects focus on U.S. ethnic/racial minority groups, including Latino/a youth and families.

Carlo received the Outstanding Senior Mentor Award from the Society for Research in Adolescence in 2018. He has published seven books and over 200 chapters and research papers in distinguished journals. His work has been funded by various agencies including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. For his research contributions, he received recognition as an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association, elected Fellow of the American Psychological Society, and an Outstanding Research Award in Positive Psychology from the American Psychological Association and the Templeton Foundation. 

Professor Gustavo Carlo

"​I am always greatly moved by awards that recognize my efforts to guide students through the many challenges of higher education," Carlo said. "The award is especially powerful for me as it remind me of the many great persons who served as mentors for me while I navigated through my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and even beyond through academia. I am extremely grateful for this recognition.

"Of course, this award would not be possible without acknowledging the wonderful students that I work with. Working with such talented students is intrinsically motivating and energizing. I fully understand the fact that the success of a great mentor-mentee relationship is based upon the reciprocated passion and investment from both sides. I cannot say enough about my team! 

"The award is affirming because it aligns well with the work that we conduct that focuses on helping behaviors in culturally diverse children and adolescents. Mentors are, by definition, persons who help others and oftentimes serve as critical resources of support that can improve the quality of life for persons in our various communities."

Dean Frances Contreras delivered the keynote address

School of Education Dean Frances Contreras was the keynote speaker at the event. "After reading all of the profiles of our awardees, I can confidently say that the UCI scholars and awardees here this evening make our community so incredibly proud," she said.

"Stay true to who you are," Contreras said. "Throughout your career, you will be challenged. But continue to shape, reshape, enlighten discourse, create knowledge on this campus and those that you will be a part of in the future. In honoring our roots, we honor our ancestors, their struggles, their triumphs, their hopes, and their dreams."

​LEAD honors key leaders, graduate students, staff and faculty who support and champion student success and research excellence in the Hispanic/Latinx community at UCI and in Orange County. The Latino Excellence and Achievement Awards was the inspiration of PhD in Education graduate Verónica Ahumada Newhart, who believed the time had arrived to celebrate the accomplishments of UCI’s Latinx community.