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Erica's nominator says, “There are many criteria that make Erica an excellent candidate for Student Employee of the Year, but to highlight the most important, I would like to share about their achievements in their PEEPs position, her dedication to addressing complex diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues, and her passion for lifelong learning.

To fulfill position requirements as a PEEP, students must facilitate workshops on topics such as social identities, implicit bias, microaggressions, anti-racism, sexism and more. Since being hired for this role, Erica has facilitated sixteen workshops for CU Boulder students. Erica has developed strong facilitation and dialogue skills that far exceed those of other students I have supervised in the past. In the post-workshop feedback form, Erica always receives positive feedback, but the one I found to be most representative of the impact she has had on her peers is the feedback that stated, “The presenter made me feel very comfortable and willing to open and be vulnerable.” This is how Erica’s approach to social justice workshops is often described. She educates her peers on DEI topics in a way that makes others feel comfortable learning about social issues and sharing their perspectives on what can be very uncomfortable topics. In addition to her facilitation requirements, Erica has led our Assessment subcommittee, taking the initiative to collect, interpret and create visualizations of the workshop feedback. Her colleagues always appreciate the way she relays the feedback in a respectful and constructive manner. Erica is an exemplary member of the team: well-loved and respected by her peers, colleagues, and community members.

In the past year, Erica has gone above and beyond in addressing complex DEI issues at CU Boulder. As part of their professional development, members of the PEEPs team are asked to develop a social justice project based on their own interests and passions. This year Erica has far exceeded my expectations by designing and executing a project titled Belonging in Bloom. This project investigates the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) student experience at CU Boulder, exploring belonging, engagement, and identity. Through semi-structured interviews, the project aims to identify factors influencing AAPI students' sense of belongingness, strengths and weaknesses within identity-based organizations, and the ways in which students navigate and explore their various identities during their time at the university. The goal of this project is to provide insights that identify areas where the AAPI community can enhance its cohesion and can inform campus and student organization initiatives aimed at fostering a more inclusive and supportive environment for AAPI students at CU Boulder.

From the moment Erica applied for this position, it has been clear she is a lifelong learner. She actively seeks opportunities to engage with various DEI and social justice topics through her own personal development experiences. Erica never shies away from acknowledging any gaps she has in understanding the complexities of a particular DEI issue and is always eager to ask thought-provoking questions or do her own research. There are many examples of Erica taking this initiative, but one that stands out in particular is her goal to further understand her own Filipino heritage. In the Center for Inclusion & Social Change, we often talk about the importance of understanding yourself in order to understand others. Through self-reflection and exploration, Erica has learned more about her history and culture, and in turn, she has expanded her ability to have compassion and empathy for the history and culture of her peers. In addition to this self-exploration, Erica is also a nationally-certified Peer Educator through the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) and has completed SpeakOut’s Race, Power & Privilege E-Course to extend her understanding of facilitating and engaging in dialogue around these complex DEI topics.

She's a natural leader among her peers and is dedicated to advocating for and uplighting her peers to address social injustices. I am positive that her role as a Peers Educating & Empowering Peers (PEEPs) team member has been a launching point for her lifelong journey of improving the world.”

Maya's nominators say, “Maya Milan is a thoughtful, passionate, and kind advocate for equity and justice. She bilingually co-facilitates a two-hour weekly workshop for high school students from New Vista High School (NVHS) at the CU School of Education who through the workshop are also earning credit for EDUC 2800 Youth Research. In the workshop, high school students are learning about research, bilingual education, and Latino/Chicano history and are working to research possibilities for high school bilingual pathways to present to the BVSD school board. We facilitate the workshop bilingually in Spanish and English, and Maya has helped support students in thinking about the nuances of how we co-create a bilingual

As a Chicana Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences major and graduate of Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer (a BVSD bilingual elementary school) and Centaurus High School, Maya has been a vital role model for the NVHS students. Through presenting and leading discussions weekly on local Chicano and Latino history, Maya has helped root the work of our high school students in the legacy of advocacy for bilingual education and Latino civil rights. Thus far, she has presented on Los Seis de Boulder, the work of Dolores Huerta, and the activism and poetry of Corky Gonzales. Maya has also been working closely with Graduate Student Researcher Laura Meinzen to bring students through all stages of research design - co-designing research questions, observing at schools, conducting interviews, analyzing data, and thinking about how to effectively communicate with different audiences as students tell the story of their process and work towards crafting a proposal.

Maya also engages in weekly reflection and planning meetings with Laura to continually improve our workshop and to best meet the needs of students, reaching towards the goal of more and more effectively co-constructing our workshop with students. She is consistently flexible and brings a growth mindset to the examination of our practice - both in facilitating the content of the workshop and in how we approach our own bilingual language choices. This year, Maya is prepared to co-present with the NVHS students about the workshop process at the 2024 CO-CABE (Colorado Association for Bilingual Education) Conference in Brighton, CO.

Maya engages as a TA with her full self, bringing vulnerability, an interdisciplinary mindset, and a passion for activism. She adds so much value to our project as she accompanies our high school collaborators on their own journey of growth - as bilingual researchers, activists, and policy advocates. During our weekly reflections, Maya has highlighted how she is growing in her own leadership and bilingualism. In the same conversations, she has celebrated New Vista students' growth as role models for the younger students we’ve visited at BVSD dual language elementary and middle schools.”