University of Wisconsin alumna Giselle Martinez-Negrette has received the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education 2024 Early Career Award, according to a press release from UW.

The award is given to faculty and staff who demonstrate commitment and promise via their actions, research and service to the Latinx higher education community. It will be presented to Martinez-Negrette at the AAHHE’s annual conference held in St. Louis, Missouri March 13 to 15.

Martinez-Negrette earned her doctorate in 2019 from the UW School of Education and is currently an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, according to the release.

“This award means a lot as a Hispanic in the United States — it feels that I am supporting the community that I’m part of and my work is meaningful,” Martinez-Negrette said. 

Martinez-Negrette said her research focuses on three areas — multilingual education, sociolinguistics and the intersection between language, schooling and migration. 

Through observing both children and teachers, Martinez-Negrette studies how different factors impact the educational trajectories of language-diverse students.

“Within these particular three strands, I look at how culturally and linguistically diverse students are interacting in contemporary learning environments,” Martinez-Negrette said.

Martinez-Negrette said her reception of the award was most closely tied to her work analyzing the impact of demographic changes and social ideologies regarding migration on the opportunities of linguistically diverse populations in U.S. schools.

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Demographic changes in places like the Midwest have impacted schools that were unprepared to host a linguistically diverse student population, Martinez-Negrette said. 

“I’m supporting teachers, I’m supporting school communities in helping them to address the academic needs of the students that are coming to their schools,” she said.

Martinez-Negrette said she began working in community engagement at UW, where she received the 2018 Excellence in Engaged Scholarship Graduate Award from the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She sees her work as heavily connected to the “Wisconsin Idea,” using research to support the public good and the wider community.

“My time at Wisconsin solidified my understanding of the connection between my research and the good that it could do,” Martinez-Negrette said. “When I left, I knew it was part of my calling to make a difference in school communities that needed to know about the support that I could provide with my work.”