Graduate Student Ellie Estrada Selected for Prestigious AAHHE Graduate Student Fellowship

The Department of Communication is proud to announce that Ellie Estrada, a doctoral candidate in our graduate program, has been selected for the 2025–2026 Graduate Student Fellows Program (GSFP) of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE). Ellie is the first graduate student from our department to earn this fellowship since the program’s inception in 1997 and joins 12 other graduate students in the 25-26 GSFP cohort.

Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, the AAHHE GSFP has mentored over 420 doctoral students from a wide range of disciplines, preparing them to navigate the complex landscape of higher education and achieve success in academia, administration, or policy. The highly selective program provides fellows with mentorship, professional development, research feedback, and community-building opportunities, all grounded in a commitment to elevating Hispanic and Latine/x representation in higher education.

Ellie joins a growing legacy of scholars from our department making an impact through AAHHE. In 2023-2024, Dr. Leandra Hernandez, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, participated in the Faculty Fellows Program—the faculty counterpart to the GSFP.

Dr. Hernandez adds,

"We are so proud of Ellie for being selected for this prestigious fellowship, which will support Ellie in networking and collaborating with other Latina/o/x/e faculty members and students across the country, developing more research communities, and envisioning new futures for Latina/o/x/e communities in higher education."

Ellie’s dissertation examines rhetorical formations of chisme [gossip] that emerge from the Salt Lake City “Westside,” a series of historically redlined municipalities that include Glendale, Rose Park, Hyde Park, and Poplar Grove. Her research focuses on the Guadalupe and Jackson neighborhoods, where the residents are most at risk of becoming displaced as a result of plans to expand the I-15 freeway. Ellie’s hope is to bring attention to gentrification as a destabilizing urban phenomenon, while affirming the range of rhetorics—feminisms, urbanism, and gossip—that create community belonging against the shifting politics of Latine/x belonging.

For Ellie, the AAHHE fellowship offers not only a chance to grow as a scholar but also a vital space to connect with others working toward more just futures for Latine/x communities in higher education. Ellie is confident that this fellowship will provide feedback and strategies for designing a project that is rigorous, exigent, and most importantly, empowering.

Ellie adds,

“Being a first-generation trans Chicana has often forced me to make difficult choices in how I represent myself. Joining the 2025-2026 AAHHE graduate fellowship is an honor and a testament that, particularly for scholars who feel limited by the politics of representation within and outside the research space, we do not need to choose between parts of ourselves. Our being is made whole in community.”

As we celebrate Ellie’s achievement, we also recognize the ongoing importance of programs like AAHHE GSFP in nurturing talent and creating the conditions for lasting change in higher education.

Congratulations, Ellie!