PATH Program

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Funded by a generous 4-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Preparing Accomplished Transfers to the Humanities (PATH) is a collaborative transfer support program between the San Diego Community College District and the University of California, San Diego Division of Arts and Humanities. PATH guides transfer students from City, Mesa, and Miramar Colleges into arts and humanities majors at UC San Diego and includes:

A systematic approach to the recruitment, retention, and professional success of Humanities transfer students
Faculty collaboration between both institutions through shared programs, teaching and support activities - Faculty Steering Committee
Emphasis on the foundational, transferable, enduring role of the Humanities

PATH Peer Mentee Program

The application for the 2026-2027 academic year is now closed.

Interested in joining in the near future? Submit your information to our Peer Mentee Interest form.

PATH Program at City, Mesa, and Miramar Colleges

Transfer guidance to UC San Diego in an Arts and/or Humanities discipline major
Monthly meetings with mentors and program staff
Participation in career exploration and outreach activities
Project-based and service learning opportunities
Career field trips
Networking with community-based organizations
Recurring workshops
Arts and Humanities programming
Student Stipend

Program Eligibility

Students from San Diego City, Mesa or Miramar Colleges
Interested in and qualify for transfer to UC San Diego, with a major in the Arts and Humanities
Be a first year student on track to complete approximately 30 units
Be a second year student with a minimum of 24 units, with the intent to complete a total minimum of 60 units by the end of spring 2026 in order to be eligible for transfer admission.
Have a cumulative minimum of a 3.0 GPA

PATH Mentee Internship

Gain real-world experience, enhance your resume, and develop professional skills in a supportive environment. The PATH Internship Program offers a unique opportunity to connect with mentors, contribute to meaningful projects, and prepare for your future while exploring career pathways in the Arts & Humanities.

As a PATH intern, you will:

Gain hands-on experience in a professional environment
Develop key skills in marketing, event coordination, and outreach
Work alongside dedicated faculty and staff who are passionate about student success
Expand your professional network and make valuable connections
Receive paid experience while making a meaningful impact

Over a six-week period (5 hours per week), you will contribute to dynamic and engaging projects, such as:

Designing flyers and promotional materials
Managing social media and outreach initiatives
Organizing materials and resources
Supporting campus events and student programs

This internship is a fantastic way to develop leadership experience, gain professional skills, and make a lasting impact in the Arts & Humanities community.

Interested in hosting a PATH Intern?

The PATH Internship Program offers an exciting opportunity to engage with talented, motivated students while providing them with meaningful hands-on experience in a professional setting.

By hosting a student intern for six weeks (five hours per week—whether one full day or one hour per day), you’ll gain a dedicated team member who can assist with essential tasks and support the next generation of arts and humanities scholars.

To host please submit an Interest & Inquiry Form

PATH Summer Academy at UC San Diego

The PATH Summer Academy is a week-long program designed to help students acclimate to university life at UC San Diego before the Fall Quarter begins. Participants will:

Engage in workshops that introduce key campus resources and programs
Access academic and professional development opportunities
Connect with current and former PATH transfer students to learn about their experiences at UC San Diego
Participate in optional social activities
Explore diverse career opportunities within the humanities
Familiarize themselves with the UC San Diego campus

This immersive experience prepares students for success as they embark on their academic journey at UC San Diego.

Learn more about the Summer Academy

Eligibility Requirements:

Must have attended San Diego City College, Mesa College, or Miramar College
Must have been accepted to UC San Diego for the upcoming academic year
Must be pursuing a major within the Arts & Humanities at UC San Diego (Minors are not eligible)

Read about the 2020 PATH Summer Academy here: “Planting the Seeds for Transfer Student Success”

Integrated Fellowship Initiative for Ph.D. Students

In collaboration between UCSD and the San Diego Community College District, The PATH Integrated Fellowship Initiative offers mentorship and leadership experience in the community college system for UCSD Ph.D. Candidates in the Arts and Humanities. Fellows will be introduced to a range of academic leadership positions and career options within the Community College system and focus on three major components: teaching, administration, and mentoring. See all of the past Fellows (PDF).

Evelyn Vasquez, Ph.D

evelyn vasquez Evelyn Vasquez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, with an emphasis in Cultural Studies. Her interdisciplinary research examines how authors and visual artists use imagery and representations of built and natural environments to illuminate experiences of housing, displacement, and inequality across the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing from immigrant, Native American, and Black literature and visual culture, her scholarship considers the intersections of architecture, geography, housing policy, and institutional power, including the ways legislation such as the Tenement Acts, Homestead Acts, and Fugitive Slave Acts shaped experiences of housing and place prior to the establishment of federal housing policy during the New Deal. Raised in Lincoln Heights and East Los Angeles, Evelyn’s scholarly interests are deeply informed by her experiences in working-class communities and her desire to better understand the historical, social, and cultural forces that shape housing development and residents’ lived experiences. Her research brings together perspectives from the arts, humanities, and social sciences to explore how these experiences are represented, documented, and interpreted.

Evelyn is also a proud community college transfer student, having attended Pasadena City College before transferring to UC Davis. As an undergraduate at UC Davis, she participated in the Mentorship for Undergraduate Research in Agriculture, Letters and Science (MURALS)program, where she researched the garden design and spatial layouts of East Los Angeles housing projects constructed following World War II. After graduating, she returned to Pasadena City College and worked in the Transfer Center, supporting students with personal statements and applications for FAFSA, EAOP, the University of California and California State University systems, and the Common Application. She also facilitated workshops tailored to STEM and MESA students preparing to transfer.

Evelyn later joined UC San Diego’s STARS program, where she connected her field research on housing in Los Angeles with literary analysis of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. She subsequently served as a Fulbright English Scholar in Mexico, where she supported local reading and literacy programs.

Throughout her doctoral studies, Evelyn’s interdisciplinary scholarship has received numerous honors and fellowships. The Comics Studies Society recognized her conference essay, “Socializing the Tenement as Depicted in Comic Art,” with the Hillary Chute Award. A Jewish Studies Fellowship supported her archival research with the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement records at the New York Public Library and research at the Tenement Museum. Her scholarship has also been supported by the Sawyer Seminar Fellowship, GPSA Interdisciplinary Research Award, UC Humanities Consortium Graduate Society of Fellows Dissertation Award, Oceanids Fellowship, Black Studies Travel Grant, and an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Dissertation Fellowship.

In addition to her research and teaching interests, Evelyn is an advocate for students with disabilities. Through her work as an OAR² GEPA intern, she developed programming and events designed to support graduate and professional students with disabilities. Her experiences as a community college transfer student, researcher, educator, and student advocate continue to inform her commitment to educational access and student success.

Bahar Abdi, Ph.D. (she/her)

Bahar Abdi, Ph.D. is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature at the University of California, San Diego with a specialization in Critical Gender Studies. She received her B.A. in Persian Literature from the University of Tehran and her M.Litt. in Middle Eastern Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of St. Andrews. Her research focuses on performance, socially engaged art, and everyday forms of resistance in Iran. She is especially interested in how performance can preserve suppressed histories and help communities imagine a different future. Her dissertation examines how people remember histories of violence when official archives are incomplete or controlled by the state. Thinking from “the South” as both a marginalized geography and a critical perspective, she explores how erased histories endure through bodies, sound, ritual, ruins, water, wind, and other more-than-human forms of memory.

At UC San Diego, Bahar has taught in the Department of Literature and the Dimensions of Culture writing program. She also has several years of experience teaching Persian literature at high schools in Iran. As an immigrant and multilingual student and educator, her teaching is shaped by her own experience of moving across languages and educational systems. She particularly enjoys helping students develop confidence in their voices and value their own experiences as meaningful sources of knowledge. Across both her research and teaching, Bahar sees the humanities as a space for examining power and imagining more just futures.

Phuong Vuong, Ph.D.

Phuong Vuong is a PhD candidate in Literature with a specialization in critical gender studies at UCSD. She researches Asian American feminist and queer texts’ approaches to history, refusal, and relations to land and water. She is interested in how Asian American artists and writers navigate visibility, opacity, and de/colonization in the context of relational racialization and settler colonialism. Before coming to UCSD, Phuong worked in community organizing and secondary education. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Colorado- Boulder, where she studied poetry, and a BA in Black Studies from Amherst College. She has taught as an instructor of record in UCSD's Literature Department and CU Boulder's English Department, and she has worked as a teaching assistant in the Dimension of Cultures (DOC) writing program at UCSD. As a first-generation college student herself, Phuong encourages students to take advantage of mentoring, cultural, and political opportunities to build community and develop critical perspectives.

She hopes to further these goals through her writing as well, where she often examines language, migration, and diasporic relations. Phuong is the author of two poetry collections, A Plucked Zither (Red Hen Press, 2023), which won the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award 2021, and The House I Inherit (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poetry and essays have been published in a range of literary journals, including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her academic writing can be found in the Journal of Asian American Studies.

Path Highlights

	March 10, 2020: Reclaiming Our Stories 2: A Reclaiming the Humanities Speaker Series event at City College. Authors Graciela Uriarte, David Grant, and Candice Tan-Custidio otherwise known as ‘DJ Kuttin Kandi’, read their very own moving pieces from the book “Reclaiming Our Stories 2”.
	November 20, 2019: Reclaiming the Humanities Speakers Series Event at Miramar College. Students were able to academic and professional journeys of guest speakers: Los Angeles artist Mario Ybarra, UC San Diego graduate student Oscar Magallanes, and Miramar College professor Adrian Arancibia.
	December 4, 2019: For the Love of the Humanities- A Reclaiming the Humanities Speakers Series event at Mesa College. Students learned about the educational and career experiences of Mesa College and UC San Diego Arts and Humanities faculty.