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During a normal semester, Sarah Crawford’s job as program assistant at UNM’s Women’s Resource Center requires her to mentor and empower women.
But in November, Crawford will become the one receiving mentorship.
The American Association of University Women selected Crawford to serve with its national Student Advisory Council. She was one of the 10 women selected annually by the organization.
The senior majoring in Spanish said she is excited about the learning opportunity that she would get from the experience, Crawford said.
“I’m super fortunate and really lucky to be picked by those individuals,” she said. “As far as the program is concerned, it’s really a mentoring program for me. Individuals in this national women’s organization has been around since 1881, and they’re going to take me under their wing.”
Crawford will start her new position in late November in an orientation trip to Capitol Hill and will keep it until June next year. She said her roles would include website management and campus promotion for the organization.
Because UNM does not have an AAUW chapter yet, Crawford said she would strive to establish one on campus during her term as councilor. She said this effort would help push women to participate in male-dominated fields, including politics and science, technology, engineering and math.
“A lot of times, it just takes just a little bit of encouragement,” she said. “I wonder if I would be more interested in science today if I was more encouraged when I was still a little girl. I wonder if I would be planning to office if I saw, throughout my childhood and adolescence, more role models.”
And as always, Crawford emphasizes that women should get involved in these fields.
“We are 51 percent of the population worldwide, but in these fields, we don’t get involved for whatever reason,” she said. “There was discrimination in the past. It could be not thinking that we can because we don’t see a lot of women working in science or…in politics. There’s room for expansion.”
Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, where “there’s not much green chile,” Crawford moved to Albuquerque three years ago for college and fell in love with the place. She said that after she graduates in May, she plans to continue at UNM for graduate school and study Spanish linguistics in preparation for a potential teaching career.
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Crawford, 32, said she is excited to share her different views and to represent the University in the council soon.
“It gives me a unique perspective as a nontraditional student,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity to represent the diversity of UNM. UNM is known as a university that has a really high number of nontraditional students. I’m excited… to be representing this campus.”
