Dr. Merylou Rodríguez is a first-generation scholar-practitioner in higher education with nearly a decade of professional experience across various functional areas. Born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dr. Rodríguez proudly hails from Puerto Rican and Dominican parents. Dr. Rodríguez recently completed her Ph.D. in Higher Education at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Dr. Rodríguez's dissertation employed Boricua-centric methodologies to understand Puerto Rican undergraduate narratives of persistence in higher education. Given the extensive gap in the literature on Puerto Ricans in higher education, she intends to bridge the existing scholarship from K-12 to shed light on Puerto Rican college students’ unique experiences. She contends that Puerto Rican college students' educational narratives can inform this population’s current conditions and offer insights with practical and policy implications. Currently, she serves as the Associate Director of Research and Assessment in the Department of Residence Life within the Division of Student Affairs at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Dr. Rodríguez has engaged in equity, justice, and access work as an undergraduate paraprofessional and continues to guide her career through this framework. Additionally, Dr. Rodríguez has been an instructor on record in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities Studies, and the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program.