Insights for Graduate Students
Fostering Student Agency For Community Engagement
(Graduate Student Session)
Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 12pm – 130pm (Lunch Provided with registration)
ACES Heritage Room
Hey graduate students! Are you hoping to be more involved in meaningful community engagement work? What does that mean? Looking for ways to make a difference beyond the classroom? Curious about how community engagement can strengthen your leadership skills, expand your professional network, and shape your future career? Wondering how other students got started and what they learned along the way?
Join us for a conversation with current and former students who have taken active roles in community-engaged research and leadership. Hear from Kelsi Walters (Social Work), Nikita Chigullapally (Carle Illinois College of Medicine), and Melany Romero (Community Health) as they reflect on their journeys, the opportunities and challenges, and how community engagement has shaped their personal and professional growth.
They will be joined by their faculty mentors Dr. Kevin Tan, Dr. Margarita Teran-Garcia, and Dr. Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, who will also share insights on fostering student agency and creating opportunities for students beyond the traditional classroom to become leaders and change agents in their communities.
Presented by the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity and the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute, this session will be facilitated by Dr. Kevin Tan (Social Work).
Kelsi Walters, MSW, is a school social worker, research assistant, and project coordinator who began working with Dr. Kevin Tan in Spring 2022 while pursuing her Master of Social Work degree. Since graduating in 2023, she has remained actively involved in community-engaged projects with Dr. Tan.
Her work with Dr. Tan has included a school-based health center partnership with Promise Healthcare, social-emotional initiatives in Rantoul and Danville, and national efforts related to the National School Social Work Practice Model 2.0. Kelsi has also been featured on the Dare to Soar podcast and co-authored an editorial on The Butterfly Effect. Through these experiences, Kelsi has been empowered to be a voice for vulnerable and marginalized youth and families, and she advocates for stronger connections between schools, communities, and systems of support.
Dr. Kevin Tan is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Engagement, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the School of Social Work. Since joining the faculty in 2016, he has secured $3.0 million in external funding to support community-engaged initiatives focused on youth well-being, social-emotional learning, school mental health, and racial healing.
Dr. Tan teaches a doctoral seminar on classroom teaching and a graduate social work practice course, where he integrates community-engaged approaches, civic discourse, and partnership-building into student learning. He has been a Faculty Fellow with the Institute of Citizens & Scholars through the Office of the Provost, supporting campus efforts to strengthen dialogue across differences in the classroom on campus. In 2023, he received the University of Illinois Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Public Engagement, and in 2021 he was recognized nationally with the Gary Lee Shaffer Award for his academic contributions to the field of school social work.
Nikita Chigullapally is a third-year medical student at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine with a B.S. in Nutritional Sciences—Physiology & Metabolism from UC Berkeley. She has been an active contributor to the Illinois Extension's Community Seminar Series, where she has presented on nutrition and pediatric health topics for community audiences.
Nikita currently works with Dr. Margarita Teran-Garcia on the Nurturing Foundations webinar series — a collaboration between Illinois Extension and Carle Illinois College of Medicine that promotes maternal and early childhood health, raises awareness of disparities in maternal care, and delivers evidence-based education to families, community health workers, and outreach professionals.
Her community engagement work is grounded in a commitment to health equity and accessible health education, shaped by earlier work with Hygiene Heroes designing nutrition and hygiene curricula for children in low-resource communities. She is pursuing a career in pediatrics, with a particular passion for empowering families to build healthy foundations from the earliest stages of life.
Dr. Margarita Teran-Garcia is Director of Applied Health Professions at Illinois Extension, Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, and faculty at CI MED. A physician-scientist with expertise in nutrigenomics, obesity prevention, health disparities, and community-engaged health promotion, she has led and collaborated on research and outreach initiatives that have secured more than $15 million in external funding, including over $3.8 million as Principal Investigator, to improve health outcomes among diverse and underserved populations.
Dr. Teran-Garcia’s work integrates precision nutrition, community-engaged research, cultural humility, and health equity. She has developed and led innovative, evidence-based programs, including “Abriendo Caminos,” a nationally recognized, culturally tailored intervention that promotes healthy lifestyles among Hispanic families, as well as initiatives focused on maternal and early childhood health, vaccine literacy, personalized nutrition, community health worker training, and chronic disease prevention.
Her scholarship spans basic, clinical, and translational sciences, with more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and a sustained commitment to mentoring students and emerging scholars.
As an educator and mentor, Dr. Teran-Garcia has taught hundreds of learners at the undergraduate, graduate, medical, and professional levels, directing courses in nutrition, metabolism, and related areas across the health professions and in education, while fostering interdisciplinary and community-based learning experiences. Many of her mentees have received national fellowships, travel awards, and research honors.
Her leadership and contributions to public engagement, diversity, and nutrition education have been recognized with multiple national and institutional honors, including the Jeanne M. Priester Health Award for the Abriendo Caminos program (2024) for modeling next-generation work in health and wellness, the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior Program Impact Award (2021), and the American Society for Nutrition Foundation Volunteer of the Year Award (2021) for her leadership in advancing diversity and inclusion in the nutritional sciences.
Melany Romera is a Community Health PhD student who joined Dr. Sandraluz's Laboratory for Emotion and Stress Assessment (LESA) in 2023, initially serving as a research assistant focused on translating study materials and preparing participant-facing documents. Through this early work, she developed a deeper interest in intervention research and implementation science in maternal health, which led to her transition into a project coordinator role within the lab.
In her current role, she works closely with Dr. Sandraluz on a maternal health intervention study focused on improving emotional well-being and health outcomes for postpartum women. She supports the coordination and implementation of the study, including participant recruitment and onboarding, management of study materials, and oversight of data collection across pretest, posttest, and follow-up time points. She also plays a key role in training and supervising research assistants, ensuring they are prepared in study protocols, data collection procedures, and participant engagement strategies, while helping maintain consistency and quality across all research activities.
Her research interests are grounded in advancing equitable maternal health care, with a particular focus on minority women who are often underrepresented in research and underserved by existing interventions. She is especially interested in improving the cultural and contextual relevance of intervention design and evaluation, and in strengthening how research can better capture and address disparities in maternal health outcomes.
Dr. Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology in the College of Applied Health Sciences (AHS). Since joining Illinois in 2015, Dr. Lara-Cinisomo has secured internal and external funding to improve health services for underserved populations, including racially and ethnically diverse and immigrant perinatal (i.e., pregnant and postpartum) women. Her research focuses on identifying risk factors (e.g., psychosocial, hormonal, etc.) for depression and anxiety among her study populations and creating culturally responsive interventions to meet the mental health needs of mothers. Her work informs providers, policymakers, and community organizations on perinatal depression and anxiety.
Dr. Lara-Cinisomo’s graduate students come from diverse backgrounds and possess varying research experiences. Many of these students are participating in community-level research for the first time. To support their professional development, Dr. Lara-Cinisomo introduces them to foundational research experiences that will enhance their research skills, enabling them to lead community-engaged projects with racial, ethnic, and immigrant communities. She also teaches a course that helps students develop a conceptual framework for understanding and facilitating change in health behaviors. Dr. Lara-Cinisomo earned several mentoring awards, including the AHS and Illinois Excellence in Graduate & Professional Teaching.
Fall 2025 Insights for Graduate Students
On October 21, 2025 the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity and the Interdisciplinary Health Science Institute co-hosted a panel on "Community Engaged Research in Action: Insights for Graduate Students". Co-sponsors included the Humanities Research Institute and the Graduate College Career Development Office.