A first-year MFA in poetry student, Jarrin was awarded a prestigious Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship , providing her with full tuition and fees plus a stipend for two years to support her graduate education.
I believe in democratizing grief and making healing arts β specifically poetry β accessible to communities who typically don't have the financial means to participate in workshops. This bridged impact a graduate student using their work to benefit communities or open doors of access is why the Cota-Robles Fellowship exists across the University of California.
Established in and named in honor of one of the earliest Mexican-American professors in the University of California System, the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship is designed to support degree completion for graduate students who are interested in academic teaching and scholarship, as well as increase the number of top candidates for faculty positions within the University of California. Eligibility for the fellowship covers a range of criteria.
These include whether graduate students demonstrate the potential to bring to their academic research the perspective that comes from their understanding of the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education, among others.
The fellowship is offered at all 10 University of California campuses. Each campus, however, individually manages the fellowship. And, as is the case now at UC Davis, each campus also determines if and how this fellowship is expanded. Though this work happens in many ways, one key charge has been to provide more comprehensive funding opportunities. It welcomed a total of 24 new Cota-Robles fellows across the four academic years. This amount, while not bad, put UC Davis in only the bottom quarter of all UC campuses when looking at the base budget of funds for the Cota-Robles Fellowship.
