The First-Generation College and Low-Income Student Center (U-FLi) Center is a space dedicated to supporting Brown students who identify as low-income, first-generation, or undocumented. While the center was initially developed to meet needs of the undergraduate student body, the programing and staffing of the U-Fli Center is growing to address this community in the Graduate School.

Vania Pereira, the current Graduate Coordinator at the U-Fli Center, is a second-year Master’s student in American Studies. Pereira shares that her first year was spent transitioning and navigating, as well as becoming aware of resources available at Brown. Now, in her second year she’s been making use of those resources, a skill and opportunity that she values.

Pereira has a history of leadership and advocacy. As an undergraduate at Providence College, she was Co-founder of Providence Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC) and co-founder of the First-Generation Peer Mentoring Program. Pereira was excited about the chance of working at the U-FLi Center in a role that encompasses those identities. When she was an undergraduate, she says, “there were no centers like this, I felt out of place with the lack of resources and support.”

As the Graduate Coordinator, Pereira is working to fill this gap for students at Brown. Her work has included mentoring undergraduate students. She also has participated in planning the Class Dissonance and Undocu-Series, which brings awareness to the experiences of the undocumented community and the experience of being a first-generation student at a prestigious university. Pereira is also engaged in performing an assessment of the needs of graduate students who fall under the U-Fli umbrella. She wants to continue building graduate student support at the U-Fli Center, focusing on students’ strengths and connecting students to faculty on campus.

In her Master’s work, Pereira is looking at the parallels of mass incarceration and deportation and the effects of removing black and brown bodies on their communities and on children. Ultimately, Pereira hopes to gain experience working in different spaces in higher education to better understand student needs and offer support.