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The American Political Science Association congratulates the following student scholars who have been named 2013-2014 APSA Minority Fellows

The 2013-2014 APSA MFP Fellows are listed with their undergraduate institutions.

Angie Bautista-Chavez, Rice University
Andrew Brooks, University of Tulsa
Liwu Gan, Willamette University
Steven Garza, St. Norbert College
Chan Kim, University of Southern California
Avram Munoz, University of California
Phillip Parnell, Williams College
Patricia Posey, University of Florida
Nura Sediqe, Harvard University
Juan Tellez, University of Florida
Laurie Tumaneng, University of Guam

Angie Bautista-Chavez

Angie M. Bautista-Chavez is a senior at Rice University majoring in Political Science and Policy Studies. Angie's research interests are in American politics and social policy, as viewed through the analytical lenses of racial and ethnic politics, Latino politics, and urban politics. Angie attended the 2012 APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute and was selected to present her research project exploring the bureaucratic representation of Latino parents by Latino school administrators at the American Political Science Association's 2012 Annual Meeting. As a part of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program and through the mentorship of Dr. Melissa Marschall and Dr. Brent Houchens, Angie has co-authored three conference publications on the effectiveness of DREAM- Achievement through Mentorship, a Houston-based outreach program seeking to address the underrepresentation of minority students earning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees. Angie has also served as a Comparative Municipal Planning Research Fellow for Rice University's Gateway Global Urban Lab in London and Istanbul, where she investigated the relationship between government and community organizations. Angie seeks to pursue a doctoral degree in political science and a career in academia to understand how ascriptive characteristics of representatives affect the types of policies they advocate, the extent of descriptive and substantive representation by minority group representatives, and the ways structures and processes of political institutions affect the efforts of minority groups to secure political influence. Angie is grateful for all of the mentorship she has received at Rice by faculty members. She is especially appreciative of her Mellon Mays mentor, political science professor Dr. Melissa Marschall, who has been instrumental in developing her passion for political science research.

Andrew Brooks
Andrew Brooks will graduate with honors in 2013 from the University of Tulsa with a BA in Political Science and Economics and a certificate in International Affairs. He served as a summer intern in 2011 (under the mentorship of Dr. Branden O'Leary) at the University of Pennsylvania through the Leadership Alliance where he performed an independent research project looking at structural adjustment packages on ethnic conflicts, which focused greatly on Africa. He was a PPIA fellow at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan during the summer of 2012. He has served as an intern for at the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations for three years. Andrew has extensive research experience, having helped University of Tulsa professor's Dr. Robert Donaldson and Dr. Ryan Saylor on their research on Russian Foreign policy, and political commodities in Ghana and Colombia.  Andrew has volunteered for the Kendell-Whitter food bank where he delivers food to low-income individuals in the Tulsa area. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. His research interests include ethnic conflict and regime type in the Global South.

Liwu Gan
Liwu Gan graduated from Willamette University with a BA in Politics in 2012. Her current research interests include international relations theory, international security, and transatlantic relations. In her senior thesis, "Looking Beyond Anarchy: NATO's Continued Dominance in a Transatlantic Security Community," Liwu investigated theories of alliance behavior to explain why the EU remained a subordinate European security institution to the U.S.-led NATO.  Her research examined the ideational aspects of states' and non-state actors' interests, suggesting that the formation of their security interests reflects an inherently social process encompassing more than a struggle over material resources. As a graduate student, she looks forward to further developing her research skills in the study of international relations and related fields. Ultimately, Liwu aspires to become a professor of international relations.

Steven Garza
Steven Garza is a senior at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, where he double majors in political science and international relations.  His research interests include international relations and security studies.  As a Ronal E. McNair Scholar, Steven investigated the Russian use of arms sales as a diplomatic tool in international relations.  His research utilized the oral history collection produced by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training at the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center.  Steven also has an interest in stopping the proliferation of human trafficking.  In 2011, Steven examined identifying quantified variables to explain international compliance to end human trafficking.  This research was presented at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Ogden, Utah in the spring of 2012.  Steven is also active in the local Latino community in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  He is a co-founder of La Alianza, St. Norbert College's first Latino student organization.  Additionally, Steven has worked in the Green Bay Area Public Schools for three years as a Connections Program Tutor. This program seeks to bridge the educational achievement gap of students of color in the public school system. Steven is committed to the mission of social change and equality for the Latino community.

Chan "Peter" Kim
Chan "Peter" Kim is a senior at the University of Southern California (USC) majoring in Political Science with a minor in International Relations. Peter has conducted research in the international relations of Asia and American politics through grants and fellowships awarded by USC, including the Provost's Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Student Opportunities for Academic Research, and Summer Undergraduate Research Fund. He has been working as a Research Assistant to Dr. Christian Grose and has collaborated with him on academic papers researching American political behavior and public opinion. He was selected by USC to represent the university at the 2012-2013 Presidential Fellows Program hosted by the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress. Additionally, he wrote his honors thesis on how China's economic growth since 1995 has increased the political costs for North Korea to pursue its nuclear ambitions, which he presented at the Emerging Scholars Conference at the University of Michigan in September 2012. In graduate school, Peter plans to specialize in the intersection of international relations and American politics, specifically in how the Asian international affairs influence the formation of public opinion of Americans.

Avram E. Munoz
Avram E. Munoz is a senior studying Political Science (Dr. John "Jeb" Barnes is his advisor) as well as Philosophy at the University of Southern California. Avram's current research interests are focused on the effect of Supreme Court decisions on the activities of pro and anti-immigration groups, especially whether or not the decision of the Supreme Court convinces the group on the "losing" side to stop their advocacy efforts. He hopes to expand on this in graduate school and explore how different aspects of the law affect immigrant populations, particularly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, and their representation (or lack thereof) within the American political system. Avram also has an interest in integrating his interests in critical theory and political philosophy with this research, exploring different theoretical explanations for why the American political system seems skewed towards certain racial and ethnic groups and why some find adequate representation hard to come by.

Phillip Parnell
Phillip Parnell is a senior at Williams College, majoring in Political Science.  In 2011 he received the Allison Davis Fellowship to conduct independent research. Through the fellowship he has had the opportunity to research numerous topics including: the cause of veil controversies in France and Egypt, who are the principle actors in ethnic conflict, and the history and political effects of NGOs and volunteer work in India. He has presented his research multiple times to the Williams College community, and has also received fellowships for research and travel. Currently, he is writing an honors thesis that aims to determine the causal links between sovereignty and aggression in international relations.  His research interests include the politicization of religious symbols, ethnic conflict, and the connection between state power and legitimacy in international politics.

Patricia Posey
Patricia Posey is a senior at the University of Florida majoring in Political Science and Sociology with a minor in Latin American Studies. She attended the 2012 APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute and was invited to present her research paper titled, "Location Means Participation: The Effects of Geographic Context on Latino Nonvoting Forms of Participation", at the American Political Science Associations' 2012 Annual Meeting. Also she was selected for her university's undergraduate research scholars program to conduct an independent research project on how race conditions political participation. Her academic interest range from race and race relations, political behavior, judicial politics and policy to Latin American politics. Her honor's thesis explores the relationship between social mobility in different racial groups and political efficacy. She plans to pursue a PhD in Political Science and eventually become a university professor. 

Nura Sediqe
Nura Sediqe graduated from the Honors College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, completing degrees in Honors Political Science, Communications and Arab/Islamic Studies. She is also a recent graduate of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she attained her Masters in Public Policy as a Belfer International Affairs Fellow and worked closely with the Women and Public Policy Program. Her key interests revolve around developing a comparative analysis of the incorporation of minorities in developed nations, particularly focusing on second-generation immigrants and their political incorporation in Western Europe and the US. She is interested in examining their levels of success and the role that institutional actors and public policy have played in ameliorating or exacerbating their effective incorporation. Moreover, she seeks to better understand processes of racialization that occur for immigrants and how evolving notions of racial and ethnic identity influence successful incorporation within society. She has presented various iterations of her Masters thesis "Gendered barriers for second-generation immigrants in the European Union", which she developed in collaboration with the European Parliament's LIBE Committee. Professionally, Nura has served worked in the civil rights field, most recently as Research Director at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the Washington, D.C. office. She has provided commentary about American Muslims to different media outlets, most recently on CNN and Al Jazeera English. As a Fulbright scholar in Germany, she examined Germany's media coverage of their minority citizens, particularly examining the German-Turkish population in Berlin. She has monitored election polls for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and previously served as Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of Political Science and Managing Editor of the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. 

Juan Fernando Tellez
Juan Fernando Tellez is a senior at the University of Florida, majoring in Political Science with a minor in Latin American Studies. He has worked as a research assistant for the University of Maryland's Summer Research Initiative, where he participated in a project examining the impact of oil demand on militarized interstate behavior. He presented the project's findings to faculty and students from the University of Maryland's School of Behavioral and Social Sciences. Juan plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Political Science with a focus in comparative politics. Juan wants to study the behavior of violent organizations in their interactions with other violent actors and with the state.  

Laurie Tumaneng
Laurie Tumaneng is a senior at the University of Guam with a double major in Political Science and Sociology. She is concentrating in development studies and gender and family studies. She is a 2012 APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute Scholar, and she invited to present her final paper, "The ParticipAsian Problem: Exploring Low Political Participation among Asian Americans," at the 2012 American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. She plans to pursue a doctoral degree in political science with an emphasis on comparative politics. Her research interests include the politics and economics of development and colonialism, and her region of focus is Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

2013-2014 APSA Minority Fellowship Program Selection Committee

Dr. B. D'Andra Orey, Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession
Dr. Wendy K. Tam Cho, Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession
Dr. Sonia Garcia, Committee on the Status of Latinos and Latinas in the Profession