Communication Professor and Commonwealth Honors College Dean Mari Castañeda always dreamt of going to college, even before she was old enough to apply.
“I loved learning and I loved school,” she said.
She remembers brimming with excitement as she described to her mother the future she imagined on a college campus.
Nobody in her immediate family had ever attended college. And her parents didn’t have the means to send her.
Her mother didn’t discourage her, but thought to herself, ‘Pobrecita, my poor little girl. I don’t know how to tell you -- this probably is not going to happen.’
And yet, Mari Castañeda made it happen -- and much more.
Today Castañeda is not only a professor in the Department of Communication she is also Dean of Commonwealth Honors College.
She credits the financial aid, grants and merit scholarships she received as an undergraduate for easing her academic path. After high school, Castañeda attended UCLA earning a BA with honors, and later a PhD at UC San Diego -- both in Communication.
“The life that I’ve lived because of my ability to go to college, and to be supported by folks I didn’t even know…was just enormous. And I always have felt so much gratitude for that,” she said.
Now she, her husband and son are paying it forward.
Castañeda’s husband, Joseph Krupczynski ’01 MS, was also a first-generation college student. Today he is the Director of the UMass Office of Civic Engagement and Service Learning (CESL) and is a professor in the Department of Architecture.
Their son, Miguel Angel Paredes ’17, graduated from the Theater Department. He credits his UMass education for paving the way to graduate school and wants other students to have similar opportunities.
The CPK Family Scholarship Endowment will support first-generation students who major in either theater, architecture or communication and who are members of Commonwealth Honors College. (Application details will be announced in the future.)
“I want students to have that same impactful generative experience that sets them up for their life’s work,” Castañeda said.
The family sees creating these new opportunities as a form of social justice.
That perspective resonates with Castañeda’s research in communication.
“For me it’s important to study the ways in which people are included and excluded from spaces of culture and ways of engaging in the world.” she said. “And what are the ways in which a social justice approach can allow more people to fulfill their best selves and be their best people."
She is particularly interested in examining the Latinx experience.
She and Krupczynski co-authored a book that examined the impact of social justice collaborations in Latinx neighborhoods entitled, Civic Engagement in Diverse Latinx Communities: Learning from Social Justice Partnerships in Action.
“What does it mean to be a Latina, a Latino in this world and in the US, particularly in this moment, where there are such anti-Latino sentiments, practices and real violence against Latinos,” she said.
Castañeda hopes the endowment her family has launched will help First-Gen students, and those of the next generation like her son, engage in scholarship that supports under-represented communities.
She credits her son, Miguel Angel Paredes, for planting the seed that led to the endowment.
At the time, the family was gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, as Paredes began graduate school there.
“I was crying and overwhelmed with joy, excitement, but also gratitude,” Castañeda remembers feeling as she and her husband celebrated Miguel’s first days in grad school.
“’Wow! You get to have this experience because we also had the experience of being able to go to college and then being able to give you the opportunity.’”
It was at that moment that Paredes thought of his UMass classmates, wishing they could have the same opportunity to study in a graduate program, as he has.
The family hopes the CPK endowment will not only transform the lives of First Gen UMass Amherst students, but also those of future generations going forward.