Title: Assistant professor in mathematical sciences & applied computing, Arizona State University at the West Campus
Education: Ph.D. and M.S., applied mathematics, Cornell University; B. A., mathematics, Wellesley College; B.A., economics, Wellesley College
Age: 34
Career mentors: Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Arizona State University; Ivelisse Rubio Canabal, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras What advice would you give young faculty? “It is important not to forget where you came from; no one gets to where they are by themselves. Even if you are the brightest person on the planet, someone created the opportunities so the doors could open to you.”
The Spanish word “ganas” cannot be defined by written words or loose paraphrases.
It is more than “a wish to do something,” as its English translation purports. In fact, “ganas” can only be interpreted through a life that embodies it.
As a high school student in East Los Angeles, Dr. Erika Tatiana Camacho didn’t know what ganas looked like. She aspired to only one thing: becoming a store cashier.
“That way I didn’t have to clean houses and work so hard like my parents did,” says Camacho, the youngest of four children who became angry watching her Mexican-born parents sacrifice wellbeing for menial wages.
Having immigrated to the United States as an 8-year-old, school wasn’t easy for Camacho — especially the part about speaking English. For Camacho helping the family survive superseded personal ambitions. She says she watched her older siblings start and stop in school, and it was only a matter of time before she would suffer the same fate.
But things changed, she says, the year she arrived at Garfield High School and into Jaime Escalante’s algebra class. Escalante, whom Academy Award nominee Edward James Olmos portrayed in the 1988 film, “Stand and Deliver,” was known for raising the achievement of his students, mostly Latino, and preparing them for college.
