PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Three undergraduates have joined the PSTC community this summer for nine weeks as part of the Leadership Alliance’s Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP). Clara Alvarez Caraveo, Francelis Báez-Caraballo, and Denise Soriano will be mentored by PSTC faculty and trained in research methods at the Center.

Alvarez Caraveo, who will graduate from Cornell University in January, is majoring in Sociology and minoring in inequality studies, demography, and policy analysis and management. She will be mentored at the PSTC by Professor of Sociology Michael White and Postdoctoral Fellow Mark Gross during the program that runs June 3 - August 4.

Alvarez Caraveo is focusing her research on socioeconomic disadvantage, its transmission across generations, and how it varies along racial and ethnic lines. She also wants to research the mechanisms that give rise to racial inequalities and how they contribute to the massive disparities seen in income and wealth today. During her time at the PSTC, Alvarez Caraveo will work with Gross on a sociological study of collective violence in South Africa and with White on immigrant progress out of poverty in the U.S.

Báez-Caraballo and Soriano will be mentored by PSTC Visiting Scholar Terry-Ann Craigie, associate professor of economics at Connecticut College, who aims to give them “a promising introduction to research and the ways it can influence public policy.” She is introducing them to policy reforms that work to address racial-ethnic inequality through an investigation of recent sentencing reforms and how they impact racial-ethnic disproportionalities in the carceral population.

Báez-Caraballo, a rising senior at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, is majoring in Economics with a minor in International Relations. Her research interests include economic policy and economic development, as well as labor and urban economics, human capital development, and inequality, especially within developing or in-crisis economies.

Soriano is slated to graduate from DePaul University in Chicago in December. She is majoring in Public Policy with a minor in Spanish. Her research interests include policies for low-income and working-class families, seeking to identify economic disparities and work toward ameliorating them.

The Leadership Alliance is a national consortium of leading research and teaching colleges, universities, and private industry with a vision “to train, to mentor, and to inspire a diverse group of students from a wide range of cultural and academic backgrounds into competitive graduate training programs and professional research-based careers.” The Alliance’s Summer Research Early Identification Program introduces undergraduates to the world of research-based careers.

“It is a vigorous source of mentorship for under-represented minority students,” Craigie said. “Having the summer-long opportunity to work with Brown faculty on their research will unquestionably influence students' desire to pursue post-baccalaureate degrees. I relish this opportunity to mentor two young women of color to aspire for careers in research excellence, with the hope that they will do the same for other women of color in the future.”