Since her first visit to the Fresno State campus as a child with her uncle, Citlalli Rendón Guzmán envisioned her future as a Bulldog.
Today, Rendón Guzmán is a graduate student in the Kremen School of Education and Human Development, studying to get her master’s degree in counseling. Rendón Guzmán is also a graduate researcher on a Gates-funded project, Undocumented Students and Test Optional Policies, under the mentorship of Chicano and Latin American Studies professor Luis Fernando Macías.
Before her current life as a graduate researcher, Rendón Guzmán was a sociology major in the College of Social Sciences at Fresno State. As an undergraduate, she didn’t originally know exactly what she wanted to do after graduation but she knew she wanted to do research, and to one day work with parents.
Rendón Guzmán says one of the stepping stones that led her to the path she is currently on was the opportunity to conduct her research as an undergraduate student.
For many Fresno State students in the College of Social Sciences, the opportunity to conduct their research, or to work with a faculty member on research, transforms their college experience. It also helps prepare them for graduate school and their future careers.
Undergraduate research also allows students to apply for funding through scholarships and other programs at Fresno State.
Rendón Guzmán found her opportunity to do extensive research through the College of Social Sciences Honors Program, which requires students to write a thesis.
Rendón Guzmán’s undergrad thesis was on the financial barriers undocumented students in the Central Valley face when it comes to obtaining higher education. She chose the topic because she is an undocumented student and had to rely on limited financial resources to pay for college. Rendón Guzmán is a recipient of the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Program and has a pathway to citizenship.
But Rendón Guzmán says had she not sought the resources offered at Fresno State, like the Jean Miles Grant Scholarship and information offered at the Dream Success Center, her life would be very different.
Rendón Guzmán interviewed 16 students who were part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA students receive a temporary stay of deportation two years at a time and receive work authorization and other benefits. But even with work permits, Rendón Guzmán found that students had a difficult time paying for school and taking care of their financial responsibilities.
“They still had the short end of the stick, like for the stipends, they weren’t eligible for them,” Rendón Guzmán said.
To oversee her undergraduate research, Rendón Guzmán had two advisers, including Macías, who supported her growth as a researcher.
After Rendón Guzmán graduated, she and Macías remained in contact. In 2022, when Macías became a co-principal investigator on a large-scale research project with the Gates Foundation, he knew exactly who he wanted to be part of the team as a graduate researcher.
“I joined the team in December of 2022,” Rendón Guzmán said. “It started with basic tasks, transcribing from English to Spanish, and formal documents for IRB [human research ethics]. I started with a lot of tasks…. and research, research, research.”
Rendón Guzmán’s undergraduate thesis and personal experience gave her insight as a researcher. She found a lot of similarities between her senior thesis and the research she was later doing with Macías.
The Gates Foundation-funded research is co-led by Macías and a team of researchers nationally, including Dr. Liliana Castrellon of San Jose State and Darsella Vigil of the American Council on Education. They are exploring whether university systems’ decisions to no longer require standardized testing like the SAT/ ACT impacted undocumented students’ decisions to enroll in college.
What the research team has found thus far is that standardized testing hasn’t had much of an effect when it comes to where undocumented students decide to attend. A much greater deciding factor is access to financial resources.
“For a lot of them, again, it’s the financial barrier. How am I going to pay for college?” Rendón Guzmán said. “So, it’s not necessarily the test score itself. … The test score is the last thing a student is worried about.”
Rendón Guzmán and Macías are still conducting their research and interviewing undocumented students.
As Rendón Guzmán continues toward her career path, she said she hopes to help parents and students understand what resources are available to undocumented students.
“If I had a suggestion for undocumented students, it would be putting yourself out there. I know it’s difficult, you don’t have to necessarily disclose your status, but just sharing the skills you have with others,” Rendón Guzmán said. “I never had Dr. Macías as a teacher or a professor, but he still reached out months after I graduated to see if I wanted to be on the project because of my skills. Not necessarily because he knew my status.”
