CHS Announces Fall 23 Commencement Honor Roles: Fernanda Alferez, Graduate Banner Bearer

Published November 27, 2023
By Darlene Muguiro
UTEP College of Health Sciences

This December, four CHS students will serve in honorific roles at the Fall 2023 commencement ceremony at the Don Haskins Center. These students were selected for their positions based on academic achievement, extracurricular participation, and community and University service. Our third story features Fernanda Alferez, Graduate Banner Bearer.

###

Fernanda Alferez, a candidate for the Master of Occupational Therapy degree, says that her experiences during a clinical rotation as a junior at Silva Health Magnet High School led her to choose occupational therapy as her future profession.

“I always knew that I wanted to help people, and when I was at Silva, we explored different career fields. I got to shadow a few occupational therapists, and I just fell in love with the field from there,” she said.

After graduating from Silva, Alferez joined the newly-formed Bachelor of Science in Rehabilitation Sciences Program, where she declared a concentration in occupational therapy. Alferez graduated with her bachelor's degree in 2021 and was named one of 10 CHS Outstanding Seniors that same year. Shortly thereafter, she was accepted into UTEP’s last cohort for the Master of Occupational Therapy degree (now Doctor of Occupational Therapy), and entered graduate school during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.   

“I remember my first semester was challenging because everything was online. It was definitely an adjustment, having to navigate everything through Zoom, but I was still really excited because I was surrounded by people who wanted to do the same thing as me,” she said.

Alferez says that one of the things she is most proud of during her time in the OT Program is maintaining a 4.0 average, something she says could not have been done without the support of her family and the sacrifices they made along the way.

“I am definitely a perfectionist, but I also wanted to be realistic going into graduate school. So, I told myself that I shouldn’t always expect to get A’s in my classes,” she said. “There were a lot of late nights, but it was all worth it. And my family was so supportive – I’m 25 years old, and my parents were still packing lunch for me because they wanted me to focus on school.”

Along with managing her full-time studies, Alferez volunteered her time with My Joyful Dance, an adaptive ballet program at UTEP for children with disabilities, and was also part of a research group investigating what minority students look for when selecting an OT program – a topic she quickly became passionate about. The group shared what they learned to ensure that UTEP’s OTD program continues to attract a diverse range of students.

During her fieldwork experience this past summer, Alferez spent three months at University Health Hospital in San Antonio, where she worked with pediatric patients in the ICU and acute care units. The experience led her to decide to focus her practice on children after she graduates.  

“I appreciated the role that we were able to play with these children, helping to make their experience in the hospital less traumatizing,” she said. “We played with them and moved them out of their settings, and it was so therapeutic for them.”

###

Go Miners!