Stephen Pearson

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Stephen Russell Pearson-Ocaña is a 1st-year transfer undergraduate student majoring in Chicana/o/x Studies and minoring in Central American Studies with plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Chicana/o/x Studies or History. A born and raised 5th generation resident of Southeast Los Angeles, Stephen is a proud product of the City of Pico Rivera and a working-class background that includes Mexican American, Yaqui-Yo’eme, and New Mexican Hispano heritage. He proudly identifies as a low-income, first-gen transfer student, Chicano, Indigenous, and a neurodivergent student. Besides being a Mellon-Mays Fellow and a Chancellor’s Scholar, Stephen is also a Chancellor’s LINK Scholar and active in the Latina/o/x/e Bruin Community through organizations such as MEChA de UCLA. He earned three associate degrees with honors from East Los Angeles College and admission into all nine institutions within the University of California system before choosing to attend UCLA as a Chancellor’s Scholar and an alumnus of the UCLA CCCP Scholars Program and the ELAC Puente Project, fulfilling his dream of becoming a Bruin that started with a visit to the Fowler Museum when he was 15 years old. His Mellon-Mays research explores conscription and the military-industrial complex in Mexican American communities in Los Angeles County and how suburbanization, industrialization, and the military created cycles of growth and decline in working-class intercity districts and middle-class suburban barrios, much like the ones his family has called home for generations. Stephen’s interests concentrate on the dynamics of identity within Chicana/o/x communities in Los Angeles’s barrios between the 1940s and 1980s, emphasizing ideas of masculinity, gang culture, generational shifts in conscious values, and generational poverty. These interests directly reflect his family history and involvement in social movements and the greater Chicana/o identity within Los Angeles, which his family has witnessed and experienced through formulative events such as the Zoot Suit Riots, Grape Boycotts, the New Mexican Land Grant Movement, student protests, Lowriding, and the Moratorium of 1970. Ultimately, Stephen looks forward to building upon his research as a passion project that leads him to a dissertation and acts as an opportunity to represent his family’s story, community, and culture as an organic intellectual and a Chicano Bruin. He hopes to become a professor at an R1 Institution close to his hometown.

Stephen Russell Pearson-Ocaña is a 1st-year transfer undergraduate student majoring in Chicana/o/x Studies and minoring in Central American Studies with plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Chicana/o/x Studies or History. A born and raised 5th generation resident of Southeast Los Angeles, Stephen is a proud product of the City of Pico Rivera and a working-class background that includes Mexican American, Yaqui-Yo’eme, and New Mexican Hispano heritage. He proudly identifies as a low-income, first-gen transfer student, Chicano, Indigenous, and a neurodivergent student. Besides being a Mellon-Mays Fellow and a Chancellor’s Scholar, Stephen is also a Chancellor’s LINK Scholar and active in the Latina/o/x/e Bruin Community through organizations such as MEChA de UCLA. He earned three associate degrees with honors from East Los Angeles College and admission into all nine institutions within the University of California system before choosing to attend UCLA as a Chancellor’s Scholar and an alumnus of the UCLA CCCP Scholars Program and the ELAC Puente Project, fulfilling his dream of becoming a Bruin that started with a visit to the Fowler Museum when he was 15 years old. His Mellon-Mays research explores conscription and the military-industrial complex in Mexican American communities in Los Angeles County and how suburbanization, industrialization, and the military created cycles of growth and decline in working-class intercity districts and middle-class suburban barrios, much like the ones his family has called home for generations. Stephen’s interests concentrate on the dynamics of identity within Chicana/o/x communities in Los Angeles’s barrios between the 1940s and 1980s, emphasizing ideas of masculinity, gang culture, generational shifts in conscious values, and generational poverty. These interests directly reflect his family history and involvement in social movements and the greater Chicana/o identity within Los Angeles, which his family has witnessed and experienced through formulative events such as the Zoot Suit Riots, Grape Boycotts, the New Mexican Land Grant Movement, student protests, Lowriding, and the Moratorium of 1970. Ultimately, Stephen looks forward to building upon his research as a passion project that leads him to a dissertation and acts as an opportunity to represent his family’s story, community, and culture as an organic intellectual and a Chicano Bruin. He hopes to become a professor at an R1 Institution close to his hometown.