As a third-year student at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Wilmarie Yarian Hernández Franco had already begun exploring what it meant to be a researcher. But with experience primarily in quantitative research, she wanted an opportunity to try something different.
Finding it started with a Google search.
“I just Googled ‘research internships in USA political science,’” Hernández Franco said.
The search led her more than 1,800 miles from Puerto Rico to The Ohio State University, where she would spend nine weeks immersed in research, surrounded by scholars and beginning to imagine a future she hadn't fully mapped out before.
Her path to Columbus began with the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP), a faculty-mentored research experience designed to prepare undergraduate students for graduate education. Through the program, Hernández Franco's interests in gender and politics caught the attention of Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Hancock saw a connection between Hernández Franco's interests and research underway at Kirwan. She was so excited about the match that she reached out before Hernández Franco received her formal notification from the program.
“Dr. H sent me a very beautiful letter explaining why she had picked me,” Hernández Franco said. “It was so amazing, I felt like she had genuinely seen me.”
Soon, Hernández Franco would leave Puerto Rico for nine weeks in Columbus — far from her family, navigating an unfamiliar place primarily in her second language and unsure of exactly what the summer would bring.
She came looking for research experience.
At Kirwan, she found a place for herself in research.
More than a research project
Hernández Franco joined Hancock and Dr. Ruth Enid Zambrana, distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland, on a larger research project examining women of color in leadership.
For her project, “Through an Intersectional Lens: Women of Color in Leadership Positions in Higher Education and Social Justice Organizations in the United States,” Hernández Franco conducted a literature review examining existing scholarship on the experiences of women of color in leadership. She selected and analyzed approximately 15 articles, organized the research around the project's central questions and brought her findings together in a research poster that she presented at the SROP symposium.
Hancock watched her learn the fundamentals of conducting a literature review — from identifying relevant sources to analyzing and organizing what she found.
“I saw her grow intellectually,” Hancock said.
But some of the experiences that most shaped Hernández Franco's summer happened outside her individual project.
During her first week in Columbus, Hancock invited her to participate in the Intersectional Qualitative Research Methods Institute (IQRMI), a Kirwan program designed for postdoctoral scholars and early-career faculty studying intersectionality and qualitative research methods.
Hernández Franco was still an undergraduate.
Hancock wanted her in the room.
“I specifically wanted her to be a part of IQRMI, both so she could meet people, but also more so for her to really get a strong introduction to intersectionality and qualitative research methods,” Hancock said.
For five days, Hernández Franco attended workshops, shared meals and joined conversations with scholars from across the country. Around her were people asking research questions, exchanging ideas and building careers around work she was only beginning to imagine for herself.
For Hernández Franco, seeing that world up close helped clarify what she wanted for herself.
“It solidified the fact that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said. “I want to do research and I want to get to meet people and just connect with people in general.”
The feeling continued after IQRMI ended.
At Kirwan, Hernández Franco remembers open office doors and people willing to stop and talk. The scholars around her became people she could learn from, and Hancock became more than the faculty mentor overseeing her summer research.
“I would see her, and I'm like, ‘I want to be her,’” Hernández Franco said. “I would be so inspired every time that I talked to her.”
Their weekly meetings covered research, but they also made room for everything that came with spending a summer far from home. Hancock checked in on how Hernández Franco was adjusting and made herself available when she needed help.
“I never felt alone,” Hernández Franco said.
By the end of the summer, Hernández Franco had a different way of describing the place that had once been unfamiliar.
“Being at Kirwan, it kind of felt like being adopted for nine weeks in a little family,” she said.
The power of being seen
For Hancock, the importance of that kind of mentorship is personal.
Her father, Charles Hancock, was once a participant in a summer program himself. There, Ohio State faculty member Dr. Edward Allen recognized his potential and encouraged him to pursue a doctorate at the university.
Hancock took that chance. He earned his doctorate from Ohio State in 1970 and went on to spend 26 years as a faculty member at the university.
Growing emotional as she recalled his experience, Hancock said she has understood the power of mentorship for much of her life. She saw what could happen when someone recognized potential in another person and helped them see it, too.
“You're smart. You can really do this. Come with me and I'll show you how,” Hancock said, describing the kind of encouragement that can put someone on a different path.
That experience continues to shape the mentor Hancock strives to be.
“I'm willing to walk with you and walk beside you to help you sort through the challenges, to help you think through the hard questions, to come up with the right questions,” she said.
With Hernández Franco, walking beside her also meant helping her build relationships that extended beyond one mentor.
Hancock introduced her to other scholars, including faculty participating in IQRMI, and connected her with people in Ohio State's Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Latinx Studies programs.
“I wanted to make sure she wasn't just limited to me,” Hancock said. “She could have a network of people.”
Those connections helped Hernández Franco begin answering a question she had brought with her to Ohio. She knew she wanted teaching to be part of her future; she was less certain about the path to get there.
“I talked to Dr. H about it. I'm like, ‘These are my interests. Please help,’” Hernández Franco said.
Now, she can envision graduate study in women's, gender and sexuality studies and political science. She can also envision returning to Ohio State.
When the summer ended, she took what she learned back to Puerto Rico.
Hernández Franco began sharing research tools and resources she encountered during the summer with friends and mentors at her university.
“I think that's the best part of it all,” she said, “that the resources that I got over there, I was able to bring them here.”
It reflects the kind of scholar she hopes to become: a researcher and professor whose work can make a difference for others.
For now, Hernández Franco is back at the university where her search began. But the student who returned to Puerto Rico brought home more than the research experience she went looking for.
She brought home new skills, new relationships and a clearer sense that there is a place for her in research.
“It meant everything,” Hernández Franco said. “I got to make so many amazing relationships, and I got to form a community and a family that I just didn't want to leave.”
And if she could make the decision to leave home and take that chance again?
“If I could go back in time and do it again,” she said, “I would definitely do it every single time.”
