Gifts Making a Positive Impact

Vanessa Duran Alvarado is a first-generation college student of Mexican parents. She is currently studying for her bachelor’s degree in history for secondary education with a minor in English. She can play the acoustic guitar and enjoys reading and spending time with her family.  

Andersen Barry is a third-year history/pre-law major at WSU. He hopes to attend law school after he graduates and find a career as an immigration lawyer. He spent fall 2023 and spring 2024 as the WSU history club secretary and participated in the Phi Alpha Theta history honor society.

Olivia Harris is a history major on the pre-law track. She graduates in December of 2024 and plans to take a gap year before continuing her education in law school.

Minerva Hayes is a first-generation student who focuses primarily on queer history and aims to make education more fun, interesting, and accessible for those who would not otherwise find it to be so. They are part of the student advisory board for WSU’s Queer Archives and the historian for the Queer Intersections Association. 

Drew Gamboa is a first-year PhD student. This scholarship will support Drew’s current research interests which focus on relational experiences amongst agricultural workers during the twentieth century and the residual effects of US social programs marked partly through civil rights, war on poverty, and community action initiatives.

Ryan Hollister is a first-year PhD student of the history of sexuality and gender. He is currently researching the intersection of the state and the development of hyper-sexualized queer identities. He serves as a History Graduate Student Association officer and works as a teaching assistant.

Jennifer Moran is a third-year Chicana Feminist PhD candidate and current vice chair for the Western History Association’s Graduate Student Caucus, as well as the communications chair for WSU’s Graduate Women of Color Alliance. Last summer, she served as the Education Fellow for Latinos in Heritage Conservation. She will be presenting her research on two panels at the Western History Association’s 2024 conference this coming October. This scholarship will support her work on Chicana reproductive justice activism in the twentieth century.

Dr. Andra Chastain

In 2023–2024 Professor Andra Chastain was awarded the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association. The Beveridge Award is a highly sought after and nationally competitive travel grant that Professor Chastain will combine with funding from the George and Bernadine Converse Historical Endowment to begin research for a new book. The Beveridge and Converse grants will support Professor Chastain’s archival research in Mexico City in July 2024 as part of this new project on the social and cultural history of smog in the Americas. In 2023, the World Health Organization identified air pollution as the single biggest environmental threat to public health. Although scientific knowledge of air pollution has advanced significantly, we know less about how the public perceived air pollution in the past. Broadly, this project asks how public perceptions of environmental risk coalesced into an awareness of air pollution as a public health and environmental crisis. It focuses on three urban areas: Southern California, Mexico City, and Santiago, Chile. These sites shared similar geographies, located in basins ringed by mountains; suffered serious air pollution in conjunction with rapid urban growth and rising car use; and witnessed social activism and government intervention to improve air quality at different times from the 1940s to the present