Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Point Foundation
The National LGBTQ Scholarship Fund
5055 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 501
Los Angeles, CA 90036
February 26, 2018
Dear Scholarship Committee:
I am pleased to submit this letter in strong support of Kristen Surla’s application to the
Point Foundation scholarship. I have known Kristen since October 2012, when she
took the initiative to seek me out and ask me to supervise her senior honors thesis on
Filipinx American and Southeast Asian American college access. After she graduated
from college, she worked as a multicultural affairs staff member at Oberlin College.
We stayed in contact with each other, and published part of her senior thesis as a co‐
authored article. I have always been impressed by Kristen’s strong commitment to
understanding complex problems of educational access and equity, particularly as
they relate to various forms of systemic oppression including racism, sexism,
homophobia, and transphobia. She has very strong instincts, talents, and passion for
research and writing, and working toward social justice and equity in education. In
selecting Kristen for a scholarship, the Point Foundation would be making a valuable
investment into someone who is surely to become a leading scholar advancing critical
theories and research on LGBTQ populations and issues in higher education.
As a faculty member at Loyola University Chicago, I had the privilege of working with
Kristen again when she started her M.Ed. in the Higher Education program in fall 2016.
She was a student in my Higher Education Policy seminar, for which she wrote a very
well‐researched analytical paper on higher education policies and transgender
students. She has also been an integral member of my research team.
Kristen is an emerging scholar with a rare enthusiasm to engage in research, theory,
and writing. I have been honored to walk alongside her academic journey. After
completing her senior thesis in spring 2013, she and I worked to revise her paper
entitled “Visualizing social influences on Filipino American and Southeast Asian
American college choice” and presented it at the 2014 American Education Research
Association (AERA) annual conference. In 2015, the paper was published in the Journal
of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, a peer‐reviewed journal.
Given her experiences to independently complete her thesis, present it at academic
conferences, and publish it as a journal article, Kristen has been an invaluable member
on my current research team, which is engaged in a Critical Race Theory project to
analyze the racial politics of affirmative action in selective college admissions. She has
played a lead role in supporting and mentoring her peers on the team as we engaged
in a complex data analysis process, drafted and edited the first paper from the project,
and presented it at the 2017 Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE)
conference.
Even though she has had a fair amount of scholarly research, presentation, and
publication successes to this point in her career, Kristen remains humble, gracious,
and professional. She is simply a delight to work with not just as a student but as a
research collaborator and leader. Do not, however, be fooled by what seems to be a
quiet and low‐key demeanor. She has a deep hunger to learn and engage in scholarly
inquiry to advance radical social justice values. Because of this and her
professionalism, she welcomes feedback and mentorship as opportunities to grow and
develop her skills as a researcher. At the same time, she does not hesitate in asking
challenging questions to advance collective scholarly discourses and work.
I attribute Kristen’s maturity to her experiences growing up in an immigrant working
class family that instilled in her a solid set of skills for persistence and working in
community. These skills have set her up well for success in academics and in
organizational leadership, as demonstrated during her post‐baccalaureate
professional experiences at Oberlin College. There she worked with and empowered a
diverse population of college students to advance transformative efforts. Few recent
college graduates are capable of succeeding in a professional staff position in the
multicultural affairs office at Oberlin, which has a troubling organizational history like
so many other institutions. The accomplishments and challenges she experienced
there have enriched her intellectual perspectives and motivation to develop as a
critical research scholar grounded in praxis.
Quite simply, it is a joy to work and learn with Kristen, and to witness her growth over
the years. She is more than ready to take on the challenges of a rigorous academic
doctoral program. I am delighted to finally see Kristen take the first step toward
earning her Ph.D. Kristen’s academic gifts, personal experiences, professional
dispositions, and commitment to social justice position her to be a successful doctoral
student with a very bright future. She is very worthy of a scholarship from your
foundation. Without reservation, I highly recommend Kristen Surla to be a scholarship
recipient. Such support will help Kristen start and successfully complete a doctorate,
so that she can continue contributing toward research and wellness of LGBTQ and
other diverse students in higher education.
Sincerely,
OiYan Poon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Higher Education Leadership