Scholar / Project
Project: Teach teen girls about the importance of digital responsibility to help them make better decisions online.
Inspiration: As someone who grew up in the digital age, I noticed the alarming rate at which young ladies are often lured away from their home by someone they met online.
Future Plans for Project: Prevent young women from becoming victims of sex trafficking and other forms of violence.
Project: Currently working to create a curriculum that focuses on undocumented high school students and their experience. In this curriculum, the goal is to guide these students towards higher education specific to their needs and experiences.
Inspiration: As I have seen firsthand how immigration policies and laws tear undocumented families apart, I was inspired to help those who don’t have resources or outside support.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to educate my peers and those who are unwilling to accept immigrants into the US about why America thrives on immigration and what the lives of every undocumented person truly means.
Project: For my project I will learn more about the inner workings of the Restorative Justice disciplinary system and use my knowledge to start by educating first my high school about this process and work to help the implement it. Then after I will begin to reach out to other schools and do the same so that way I may have a bigger impact. This in turn will be my way to combat racism and the school to prison pipeline by decreasing suspensions and law enforcement action taken against students. This, in the end, help create a better future for minority students through equality.
Inspiration: As a high school student I noticed that when going to a minority school and talking to members of my community my school was often seen as the ghetto or the bad school. I was always confused by this because my peers were such compassionate and loving people. I then began to notice where this ideology was coming from. It came from how the students reacted to being mistreated by the faculty of the school. This is what the community saw. This ideology became real for me when I was sitting in class one day. As I sat at my desk, I noticed a teacher put in a new policy in their class that I did not agree with. I began to question why the teacher put in this new policy. I also found loopholes and pointed them out to the teacher. Later that day, I was taken out of class by security which brought me to the assistant principal’s office and told that I was going to be suspended for being disrespectful and talking back to a teacher. This did not sit well with me because I was a 4.0 gpa student and was seen as one of the leaders of the school. Luckily, I managed to get out of the suspension. This situation had always seemed injust to me. The pure fact that I was almost suspended for asking a question that a teacher did not like came from how some of the teachers and administrators at the school views and mistreat the minority students. Now that I am in college I now see how that would have affected my ability to get into college and I realized that many students fall victim to this. I would like to now go back and discuss with the faculty how their treatment of the students is not only affecting them, but it is affecting the school’s reputation in the community. This is where I got my idea for my community engagement project. I want to stand up for the social justice of the students and show the faculty why what they are doing is wrong and how it can be improved.
Future Plans for Project: With my civic engagement project I plan to accomplish my goal of implementing a more equal and fair system for dealing with behavioral issues. If I could spread this ideology to schools all through out the Colorado area I know I will have an impact on the improvement of the lives of minority students.
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Project: I want to help minority and low-income students attain the resources and skills required to be prepared for a higher education in art related fields.
Inspiration: I was once part of an afterschool art program when I was in middle school. Before I joined I had no idea about what possible career path I would take or how I would get there once I decided. This afterschool program taught me how to use digital computer programs, illustrate, and network so that when I applied and entered college I’d be ready. I want other future students to have access to a collaborative environment similar, my goal is to do exactly that.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to help students find their purpose and let them know that there are people who are there help them succeed. Speaking from experience, minority and low incomes students feel as though the odds are stacked against them. I want them to know that success is possible for them and that they can accomplish it in the arts as well.
Project: I have partnered with CU Denver’s Women and Gender Center and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to examine how sexual misconduct training practices in academic settings address identity. Specifically, my Puksta project will culminate with training materials and recommendations for inclusive gender and sexual representation within these trainings. These identities are already marginalized and silenced within society at large. If the same is happening within practices that attempt to prevent violence, and non-binary identities are not part of the conversation, then their experiences with sexual harassment are delegitimized and invalid.
Inspiration: My project began with a question of whether or not sexual harassment training is successful in creating any cultural change as more and more survivors began to publicly speak about their experiences. I also knew that I wanted my project to address issues surrounding gender identity and sexism. After attending events, speaking with faculty who are invested in this issue, and looking at training materials from various campuses, it became clear that what I needed to do was combine these issues into one project in order to change the heteronormative conversation around and within these training practices.
Project: He spent the spring semester of 2018 leading poetry workshops at the Community College of Aurora, where he uses creative writing as a means for helping students explore voice and agency. Rob says “What I appreciate about the Puksta Scholars program is that it has allowed me to make an actual difference in the lives of those who really need that extra hand up as they pursue both their academic and personal growth within a junior college environment. None of this would have been possible without the Puksta Fellowship and I am grateful that it has enabled me to have made (and to continue making) an actual impact in the lives of our future leaders.”
Inspiration: My form of activism married to my former community college.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to create active citizens who will harness their own voices to create change in the world.
Project: I am partnering with the Sierra Club and Project VOYCE to produce a series of web videos focusing on Globeville/Elyria-Swansea and the I-70 expansion. The videos will engage with the ways in which these northeast Denver neighborhoods have been isolated, neglected, and abused for over a century, and the ways in which residents still make the neighborhood a vibrant, close-knit community.
Inspiration: I was born and raised in the Highland neighborhood of Denver, though I moved away for college and early adulthood. When I moved back in my early 20s, Denver was on the cusp of the current economic and housing boom, and the boom utterly transformed the neighborhood I grew up in. While I’m happy to see my city and my neighborhood thriving, I feel that the intense growth and development left out the low-income, minority folks who lived in Denver before everyone wanted to live in Denver. The I-70 expansion and the impact it will have on Globeville/Elyria-Swansea is a prominent example of this, and I predict it will transform Globeville/Elyria-Swansea in the same way Highland was transformed: the neighborhoods may look cleaner and safer, but they will also be richer and whiter. Meanwhile, the people who lived in these neighborhoods when they were dirty and dangerous will be pushed farther into the literal margins of the city. I am not anti-growth, but I can’t support growth that leaves out poor people and people of color.
Future Plans for Project:I hope that by showing young people, especially youth who are already looked past because of their skin color or social class standing, that their minds are a powerful tool and if they tell themselves “I can” and out in a little hard work, they can accomplish huge things in life! Maybe I will help to inspire the next president of the US 🙂
Project: Education equity as it relates to pedagogy: concentrate on the social, economic and academic challenges black and brown students face. She will research the intersections of race, culture and microaggressions as it relates to education and work towards fostering inclusivity. In the following year, she intends to gain experience working with K-12 students in the Denver Metro area. Furthermore, she plans to work closely with students, parents and educators, promoting culturally responsive teaching, encouraging a culture of restorative justice and equity in education. She hopes to ultimately pursue a career in education policy, as it pertains to the disproportionate rates of academic success for black and brown students.
Inspiration: Growing up I often found myself in a classroom where no one looked like me. The history books only reflected faces similar to my own when we learned about slavery in America. It was challenging to navigate and make sense of who I was in relation to these environments.
When I was old enough to work inside the walls of public education, I noticed that there were students who sat in the same lonesome position as I once had. Seeing these students made me want to rectify the unspoken and spoken injustice of being a minority student. I ultimately chose my project because education equity is incredibly meaningful to me. I believe that one of the best ways a teacher can be intentionally inclusive is to value culturally responsive teaching for all students.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to engage in meaningful work that has the ability to make someone else’s life experience better.
