UNC Asheville Students Extend Studies in Human Rights through International Partnership with University of Essex Graduate Program

Alexla Perez-Sanchez First Student to Embark

By UNC Asheville

September 15^th, 2021

Alexla Perez-Sanchez was three when she immigrated with her family from Mexico to the United States. Now, a senior political science major at UNC Asheville, she’s preparing to move to a new country yet again, this time across the ocean to England, as the first student in UNC Asheville’s new partnership with the University of Essex. When she graduates in 2022, she’ll have her bachelor’s degree from UNC Asheville, AND a master’s degree from Essex’s prestigious human rights program.

“It makes me ecstatic to think that this is the tool that I have been waiting for in order to help open doors,” Perez-Sanchez said. “It’s not even necessarily about opening doors for me, but it's more about what doors I am now going to be able to open for others. That is almost like my craziest, wildest dream like coming into fruition.”

“We know she's an outstanding student, and she's also just got that drive,” said Linda Cornett, chair and professor of political science at UNC Asheville. “Sometimes that drive can come with a hard edge, but with Alexla it's a drive with an open heart. And that seems to be a really rare and precious combination. Especially in human rights. You need that.”

Perez-Sanchez will be working towards her Master of Arts in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at Essex, which examines the history, theoretical development and implementation of human rights. Essex’s interdisciplinary Human Rights Centre is the UK’s leading center for the study of the theory and practice of international human rights, and has a worldwide reputation for research, teaching and practice. In 2010 the program was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in recognition of their work in advancing human rights across the globe.

UNC Asheville has had a number of alumni pursue graduate degrees from University of Essex as a result of their studies in UNC Asheville’s human rights program, many encouraged by Mark Gibney, Carol G. Belk Distinguished Professor at UNC Asheville and an Affiliated Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden. A nationally an internationally recognized human rights scholar, Gibney is the director of the Political Terror Scale and a founding member of the Extraterritorial Obligations Human Rights Consortium. In another testament to the human rights program’s strength, the Political Science Department is home to UNC Asheville’s interdisciplinary minor in human rights, and in 2020 UNC Asheville students spearheaded the UNC System’s first undergraduate human rights journal, Dignity.

“We do have a critical mass of human rights expertise and interest at UNC Asheville. Certainly that's the case in our department. I think it’s a testament to the quality of our students that we have been feeding our graduates into Essex on a pretty regular basis,” Cornett said. “Essex actually approached us and ask if we would like to set up this program. This is the first dual degree program they have with an undergraduate university in the U.S.”

First edition of "Dignity," the UNC System's first undergraduate human rights journal.

Perez-Sanchez, who initially came to UNC Asheville with the intention to major in art or focus on video production, quickly found her calling after taking a course in the Political Science Department.

“I took I think one diversity intensive course for an immigration public policy class and that just changed everything for me,” Perez-Sanchez said. While she always knew she wanted a career helping people, she had never labeled it as an interest in human rights until her encounters with UNC Asheville faculty including Mark Gibney, Ashley Moraguez and Giovanny Pleites-Hernandez.

“I'm just so thankful that I have like the support of this faculty at UNCA, because I think that if I would have gone to a different school—I know it's kind of unfair to say this—but I genuinely feel that it wouldn't have been the same amount of support, or confidence that they felt in me,” Perez-Sanchez said. “I was finally able to accept it and start turning it into towards myself.”

Perez-Sanchez has already launched into her goal of serving others with two terms in AmeriCorps, logging more than 600 volunteer hours devoted to the community through the program’s Summer of Service at Conserving Carolina. Her projects focused on connecting the conservation community with the Latinx community through leading a series of bilingual walks, translating materials into Spanish, creating youth-oriented social media content, and producing videos that engaged people with conservation and wildlife. Before attending UNC Asheville, Perez-Sanchez graduated with an associates degree from Henderson County Early College, becoming the first person in her family to attain a college degree.

UNC Asheville Students Extend Studies in Human Rights through International Partnership with University of Essex Graduate Program

Perez-Sanchez leaves for Essex in October 2021, and will complete her coursework in October of 2022. In the meantime, she is preparing for her next steps by making living arrangements in Essex, setting up a GoFundMe to help cover expenses that aren’t already funded by scholarships and grants, and of course, making sure she has the right clothes for a new country and a new climate. She’s also hopeful for the future of the program she’s pioneering.

“I hope this program and this opportunity really just takes off, and I'm going to really try my best to represent UNCA well, and to represent the Political Science Department well,” Perez-Sanchez said. “But most of all I think I'm going to try to represent myself well, and I say that as a woman of color…I hope to see a lot of diversity within this program in the future. If I didn't have scholarships, and I didn't have the amount of financial aid that I do, I don't think that I could do this ever in my wildest dreams. So, I hope people can come together to support future candidates.

“I just want anybody to feel like they can step up to this plate and that they deserve it,” Perez-Sanchez continued. “I hope that everybody gets an equal shot… It is a great program, and if that program's going to make an impact, it needs people with different backgrounds and different experiences.”

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