Susy Zepeda Receives P.L.A.C.E. Post-Tenure Award

P.L.A.C.E with CAMPSSAH is delighted to announce the latest recipient of our Post-Tenure Start-Up Award – Susy Zepeda, Associate Professor in the department of Chicana/o Studies!

Through the results of the COACHE survey at UC Davis (2017), within the UC system, and at universities across the country, we know that the associate professor rank is one where job satisfaction plummets. There is a statistically significant relationship between the length of time at the associate rank and the intensity of dissatisfaction. Additionally, scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences are more likely to spend longer at the associate rank than STEM-based faculty (Stewart & Valian, 2018:314, O’Meara 2017). 

To help mitigate this issue, P.L.A.C.E. with CAMPSSAH offers newly tenured faculty a “start-up” package ($4,000 Academic Enrichment Fund per grant, two per year) to assist them in the development of a new project or allow them to refocus their energies in ways more attuned with their desired career path within the university. Zepeda elected to use the grant to enroll in the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity’s Post-Tenure Pathfinders Program, which provides a space for tenured faculty to “engage in a discovery process about what’s possible” in this phase of their career and “build the support network necessary to move powerfully in that new direction.”

Zepeda will use the guidance from the NCFDD’s program to pursue work on her second manuscript “reclaiming Indigenous practices and lifeways.” Her research centers on Xicana/s peoples, healing, medicine, and remembering “the right to self-determination” of Mesoamerican people. She anticipates collecting oral histories of the stories and practices of elders who are cultural practitioners of these very ancient lifeways. Her work promises to counter the harmful historical processes of “De-Indianization” that compelled the people of Mesoamerica to renounce their identity and become separated from their ancestors; and instead “move towards a re-Indigenization.”

CAMPSSAH Faculty Director Kimberly Nettles-Barcelón praises Zepeda’s research by noting her contribution is impactful within the academy and, perhaps more importantly, within Xicana/x communities that seek pathways to wellness rooted in Mesoamerican histories and traditions. Dr. Zepeda illustrates the very best of scholarly engagement, which seeks to nurture, empower, and create with community and for a better world.

Congratulations Professor Zepeda!

You can learn more about P.L.A.C.E. with CAMPSSAH here.