For Bryan Rojas-Arauz, MS ‘19 Family & Human Services, PhD ‘21 Counseling Psychology, what was supposed to be a six-month stay in the US instead became a new home. Immigrating from Costa Rica at the age of 13, he landed in the San Francisco Bay Area. Reflecting on his journey, Bryan said, “I think down deep, I knew that I wasn’t going back home. My family told ourselves the story that it was a six-month trip in order to make it more digestible.”
As a teenager, Bryan struggled in school as he faced an environment rife with gang violence and the ever-present fear of deportation. During his sophomore year in high school, he lost a friend to gun violence.
“I remember a therapist coming in to talk to students afterwards, and she said, ‘I know what you’re going through.’ To which I responded, ‘You have no idea what I’m going through. You’ve never been where I’ve been.’ Years later, that experience made me want to go into psychology. If it had been me sitting across that table, I might have not said, I know what you’re going through. I might have said, ‘I understand what it’s like to lose someone to gun violence.’ I knew there weren’t a lot of therapists that could say that honestly. If I was the therapist sitting across that table, what difference would that have made for someone like me?”
After high school, Bryan went on to earn an associate degree before completing his bachelor’s degree at San Jose State. He hesitated to return to school for his master’s degree because he was still an undocumented student, but when he was granted permanent residency in the US, it made his continued education possible. He chose the UO because of the their commitment to social justice and the Spanish Language Psychological Service and Research Specialization Program.
Bryan’s drive to help other Latinx students facing similar struggles led him to reestablish and co-lead an after-school program working with immigrant Latinx youth and getting involved with the Dreamers working group at the UO, so that the university could better support students.
Bryan received the Claire Wilkens Chamberlin Memorial Scholarship and the César Chávez Research Award while at the College of Education. He said that receiving the awards validated his presence in the institution.
“For a lot of us, academia constantly excludes you, it tells you all the ways in which you shouldn’t be here, whether it’s because you’re a first-generation student, a student of color, or because you’re an undocumented immigrant. When I received the awards, it made such a big difference. The university was telling me that it cares about what I have to say.”
Bryan credits the influence of mentors in his program such as Ellen McWhirter, PhD, Benedict McWhirter, PhD, and Krista Chronister, PhD, professors in the Counseling Psychology Program, as well as COE staff that helped him navigate funding for his education, such as Andrea Olson, Director of Stewardship and Donor Relations.
“It was never things it was always people. It was people that helped me be successful. Seeing women of color such as Krista in a position of leadership was important to me, and represented diversity and social justice through action.”
Bryan’s doctoral dissertation, Undocumented Healing: Strengths and Resilience from the Shadows, was a qualitative investigation into the seven psychological strengths of undocumented students, which culminated in a collaborative set of poems highlighting their experiences.
“Some of the students were crying during the presentation, and I felt bad, but one of the students said, ‘I’m not crying because things are hard. I am crying because I have never seen myself reflected positively in research.’ To me, the validation from the community itself was just as important as the validation from my dissertation committee.”
Bryan is now a bilingual postdoctoral trauma therapist at Reaching Hope in Colorado, where he is working to develop a Spanish-language services program. He is also working on co-writing a book, Taking Action: Creating Social Change through Strength, Solidarity, Strategy, and Sustainability and helping to create a documentary focused on the experiences of immigrants who have recently been released from detainment and an accompanying cookbook exploring their connection to their country of origin through food.
Bryan said that earning his PhD still feels unreal, as he contemplates how far he’s come.
“I have been reflecting on what it means for me to be a doctor in psychology. It was not part of my script at any point, until it happened. Now it feels more real, but even now it’s hard to introduce myself as Dr. Rojas-Arauz. I’m still just Bryan for most people.”