Congratulations to Frank Rodriguez '26 on being accepted to the English Literature PhD program at Penn State University! Read a statement from Frank below:

My name is Frank Rodriguez, and I am a senior at UMBC majoring in English and Education. It's my honor to announce that after graduating next month, I plan on continuing my academic journey at The Pennsylvania State University, as a member of their English literature PhD program. Along with other benefits, I have been offered a six-year contract, with an option for a seventh, of consistent funding and support. 

Regarding my field of research and interests for my graduate school studies and research, my work will be conducted primarily through a postcolonial lens, while also completed by ecocriticism, as well as labor, diaspora, and empire studies. My aspiration is to study Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa; specifically, the diasporic communities that originate in those spaces, as well as the groups that have coalesced in these geographical regions. I would pay particular attention to the roles of food, space, and labor play in the lives of these groups as they work to adapt to and assimilate into their new environments while retaining their cultural heritage. Along with a variety of other factors, I attribute my upbringing in immigrant communities to significantly influencing the fields of research I most gravitate towards. 

Growing up in these communities, the word "college" wasn't thrown around a lot. I'm the first in my family to graduate high school, so all of this is foreign territory. As such, I'm a bit terrified at the prospect of starting all over again in an area where no one knows who I am, as well as the weight of making people proud and providing an admirable representation of myself, my family, and my heritage. However, the prospect of continuing my education and edging closer each moment toward fulfilling my childhood dream of being a professor excites me immensely.

Additionally, I enthusiastically anticipate the opportunity to demonstrate to those around me that my place in academia is merited, and that I am in whichever space I am legitimately. 
I want to conclude by extending my gratitude to all of my past and current classmates, my professors, and the English department more broadly. I was so profoundly anxious when first beginning college, being the first in my family to attend, and from the beginning, everyone around me was so gracious and kind to me. I felt acknowledged and cherished, allowing me to flourish. It aches me to leave such a caring community, but I wish everyone the best in their endeavors, and humbly ask you to do the same for me. 

Clair Volkening (B.A. 2023; Communication and Technology track; she/her) is a former English major now working as a Technical Writer contractor for the federal government. Access past alumni spotlights here.

At UMBC, I studied English and was a member of the Humanities Scholars Program and the Honors College. In my junior year, I got involved with the Center for Democracy and Civic Life and the Academic Success Center (ASC). Through this work, I realized I was fascinated by the how and why we learn—from the way a tutoring session affected a tutees confidence to how our society perpetuates beliefs via implicit or explicit education. In my senior year, I honed in on this interest through an English Honors Research project with my advisor, Professor MacDougall.

Before graduation, I didn’t know what I wanted my career to look like, I just knew that I really enjoyed engaging others in the writing and learning process. Now, I work as a Technical Writer on a contract with a military training academy. My everyday tasks include working with instructors on their course materials, and I am being exposed to an entirely new area of technical education and methodology. Ultimately, the same question arises regardless of the learning sphere: how and why do we learn? I am grateful to UMBC and my many professors for teaching me to ask that how and why—whether the topic be as small as my own, or my team’s, writing or teaching, or as large as the rhetoric surrounding big-picture societal issues.