Mellon Fellows
2022
EPCC-UTEP Humanities Collaborative
The EPCC-UTEP Humanities Collaborative is a partnership between El Paso Community College (EPCC) and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) to work together to strengthen existing ties between the two institutions, to engage in collaborative mentoring of students and faculty across the institutions in humanities research and teaching, and to raise the profile of the humanities in our border region through innovative, student and faculty driven humanities programming. The EPCC-UTEP Humanities Collaborative is supported through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Jacqueline Sierra
Mellon Fellow
History
Humanities Collaborative
The University of Texas at El Paso
Jacqueline received a BA in History from UTEP. In the MA program, she is focusing her research on the connections between Black and Mexican communities in the Antebellum South, and into the Civil Rights Era. She has worked for various museums in El Paso including the Archaeology Museum and the Magoffin Home. She is currently working for UTEP’s Institute of Oral History looking at the development of the Bracero Museum in Socorro.
2019
Siera Tanabe
Mellon Fellow
Creative Writing
The University of Texas at El Paso
Siera Tanabe is a senior at the University of Texas in El Paso, where she is avidly studying Creative Writing. She recently transferred from the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she will be receiving her Bachelors Undergraduate degree in Classics. She is an avid learner, and has dedicated much of her life to the creative arts, and Humanities as a whole. She is working as a dedicated undergraduate intern fellow of the Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP. She is currently working with Dr. Leyva as the podcast script writer for her work on documenting the Children Refugee Camps along the U.S.-Mexico border. Siera hopes to learn to become an affluent writer in all things ranging from poetry, to script writing. With Dr. Leyva’s help, she also hopes to receive better grasp on the conditions of the Refugee Camps on the border, as well as grasp a better understanding of the power of Oral Histories throughout not only our own culture, but others as well.
Jonathan Hinojos
Mellon Fellow
Communications, Journalism
El Paso Community College
Jonathan Hinojos is currently an Undergraduate Student Research Assistant in The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP. He is currently majoring in Communications and Journalism at El Paso Community College, where he is completing his Associate’s degree transferring to The University of Texas at El Paso. Through assisting in projects from Dr. Meredith Abarca and his current Humanities Collaborative project with Dr. Yolanda Leyva, he hopes to learn researching skills and techniques to become an effective interviewer and researcher. His goals include learning more about the dynamics of the El Paso-Juarez borderplex and how they define the residents, cultures, and economics of the Borderland, helping him to become an effective journalist in the near future.
Solomon Contreras
Mellon Fellow
Communications, Film and Television
El Paso Community College
Solomon Contreras currently attends EPCC and is majoring in Communications with a focus in Film and Television. He has always had a fascination with film and television, and once he registered for an Introduction to Mass Communications class at EPCC in spring 2017, his fascination began shifting from a dream to a reality. Solomon also discovered that he had a flair for editing in that first course. To enhance his skills, he took to the web to watch how-to videos and tutorials on basic editing and gradually moved on to more advanced techniques. This early skill set served him well when he took Audio Production and learned the art of audio mixing and how critical it is in enhancing the visuals elements of video. He earned high marks including a “class award” for audio mixing; the professor is now using his work to aid in teaching future classes. In spring 2019, Solomon applied and was accepted as a Student Research Fellow with of History, based on Dr. Romo's book, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: The Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, 1893-1923. The community space, funded through a Texas Historical Commission Grant to Dr. Paul Edison, brought together historians, artists, musicians, poets, and students to tell the story of the border. In the succeeding years, Museo Urbano has continued to function, working in collaboration with museums such as UTEP’s Centennial Museum, the El Paso Museum of History, and the El Paso Archaeology Museum as well as neighborhoods such as Duranguito.
