Graduate student Araceli Pantoja has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the SLCL Xiaohui Zhang Diversity & Community Engagement Award in recognition of her research and community efforts in advancing first-generation students and her commitment to racial and social equity. According to the award letter, “The Xiaohui Zhang Diversity & Community Engagement Award honors SLCL student Xiaohui Zhang (1985 – 2020) for his exemplary combination of academic and human qualities, as well as for his strong sense of community engagement, which guided his actions during his years at Illinois. This award recognizes an SLCL member who has contributed to the School’s mission of promoting a diverse, inclusive, and engaged academic community, and who has facilitated meaningful connections between the School and the wider, community, in a spirit of partnership, respect, and reciprocity.”
Her nomination letter underscores that as a TA in SPAN 232: Spanish in the Community, she “prepared an engaging, interactive 'gallery walk-through' lesson, using historical images with negative representations of immigrants in the US. This is important and relevant to this award because it helped students understand the historical context of the anti-immigrant sentiment our community members experience. This is the kind of rhetoric that their positive engagement with our local immigrant community can help counteract. Araceli was very adept at using her classroom as a bridge to help students understand their experiences in the local community.”
Congratulations, Araceli!