While pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Perez-Quetives co-founded Students with Families (SWF) with another mothering Ph.D. student. SWF was born of their shared experiences and needs in navigating educational spaces as mothering graduate students raising children while seeking their degrees. As an advocate for mothering and fathering students, Dr. Perez-Quetives recognizes that the term “family” is both broad and deep. Therefore, SWF membership was open to any student juggling family commitments and pursuing higher education. Now having completed her doctorate, Dr. Perez-Quetives continues to be committed to cross-discipline and cross-classification collaborations to assess and meet the needs of parenting students across disciplines and degree programs from different college campuses across the U.S.

Additionally, Dr. Perez-Quetives served as the Summer Predoctoral Institute (SPI) Coordinator for The Graduate College at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for three consecutive years. She worked closely with the Director of Graduate Student Recruitment and Retention to implement a program’s revision to focus on “sustainability” as a measure of wellness and research productivity with SPI staff and participants. Dr. Perez-Quetives trained and supervised eight Ph.D. students serving as staff members and leaders for program events, which included seminars, workshops, social activities, the annual Illinois Summer Research Symposium, orientations, banquets, and the culminating awards luncheon. As the coordinator, she developed the program’s curriculum, professional development workshops, and social events for a total of ninety new incoming graduate students from U.S. populations underrepresented (Latina/o/x, Black, African American, and multiracial) in graduate programs at the University of Illinois.

In reflecting on her educational and professional experiences and journey so far, her contributions as a Chicana Doctora are to apply what she learned from working with racially diverse undergraduate and graduate students of various ages from different social and economic backgrounds. There is no one way of learning and attaining an education. Many factors contribute to one’s ability to attend college and complete degrees. Unfortunately, higher education is structured in a way that causes some students to fall through the cracks and not receive equity support to help them attain postsecondary degrees. First-generation college students, for example, are a population that includes a range of individuals with multiple identities, ages, and backgrounds that do not fall into the traditional student category. When considering the traditional student ideology, higher education institutions continue to serve students as single and childless individuals without family-oriented lifestyles. This ideology occurs in graduate school as well.

For this reason and more, Dr. Perez-Quetives’ research agenda is dedicated to historically underrepresented populations in education. Managing her academic trajectory while raising two children has not been easy, but rather challenging. Dr. Perez-Quetives has been successful because of her mentality of seeking and receiving support from individuals who intentionally provide guidance and mentorship from a level of non-judgment and a compassionate mindset. Research and advocacy work around equity stresses the importance of becoming more critically conscious of the complexity of identity, culture, and the social demographic identities of students. She strives to continue mentoring and educating the next generation of racially diverse students and be an ally to students attending two-year and four-year degree-granting institutions because equity issues and oppression come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.