Nichole Margarita Garcia, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Higher Education, has always been interested in teaching as well as reading and writing books that reflected her experience as a Chicana/Puerto Rican. From her experience in college classrooms and K-12 settings, Garcia was immersed in community partnerships working with elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students of color. Exposing these students to various college campuses and the different disciplines available to them fascinated and led her to realize that she had a very strong interest in education. Upon realizing the low statistics of Latinas and Chicanas in higher education – only 1% go on to graduate with a Ph.D. – her willingness to ensure that her community had access to education became the driving force in her research. Focusing on comparative studies of Chicanx/a/o and Puerto Rican students, her research addresses group differences and the need to disaggregate to best articulate sources of support and barriers in terms of college access and completion. In particular, she studies Chicanx/a/o and Puerto Rican families that have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher to try to understand how intergenerational resources are utilized. Aligning herself with the anti-deficit perspective, her work confronts institutional issues and how they can be addressed to grant families the resources they need for pursuing a higher education.