During the Alumnae Association Champagne Brunch on Wendnesday, the Saint Mary’s College Alumnae Association Board of Directors honored senior Giselle Martinez with the 2026 Outstanding Senior Award for her academic and professional excellence. Held Wednesday at Noble Family Dining Hall, the board of directors publicly announced Martinez as the recipient and welcomed current students and alumnae to recognize their accomplishments on and off campus.
Martinez viewed the event as celebratory, as she reflected on the past four years of her collegiate career as a student, mentor and active community member.
In an interview with The Observer, Martinez spoke about her journey navigating school and the community she found within Saint Mary’s. From volunteering at Our Lady of the Road, where she leads students every Friday morning, to serving as vice president for both the Student Diversity Board and La Fuerza, she said that it was the direct opposite of her original perspective that the college experience would only be lectures and studying.
A double major in psychology and gender and women’s studies with a minor in sociology, she noted that her senior composition has served as a culmination of her studies.
“My focus of study was looking at how Latina and Hispanic American women navigate dual cultural gender expectations in higher education,” Martinez said. Her work highlights how internal work interactions “affect their stress and coping mechanisms, especially in a college setting.”
Currently, she is in the process of publishing her research with the help of psychology and gender and women’s studies professor Bettina Spencer. Martinez has worked with her as an adviser for the past four years and served as a teaching assistant for Spencer’s psychology of belonging class.
“I am working on publishing that right now with my faculty adviser, Dr. Bettina Spencer, who I’ve grown super close with these past couple years. I’ve had her every year. She’s been my adviser throughout the whole process,” Martinez said.
Martinez has presented her research at conferences across the country and internationally, including Chicago, Austin and Mexico.
Martinez says her collaboration with psychology professors Marjorie Schaeffer and Alissa Russell was pivotal in her academic career.
“I think in a combination of making my own comprehensive study and working on theirs, it’s really allowed me to grow in quantitative, qualitative writing skills and proposal analysis and just really understanding the process in which research is done,” she said.
In her junior year, Martinez decided that she wanted to continue her studies after undergrad. Her return to campus at the start of senior year marked the beginning of her journey to apply for graduate school.
“I just really enjoy the process of continually learning, and I feel like you can never have too much knowledge. Knowledge is power. So I knew I wanted to continue higher ed,” Martinez said.
Having this support throughout her time at Saint Mary’s, Martinez reflected on her experience as a first-generation college student. In Belles Connect, a program for underrepresented students, she served as both a scholar and leader, providing guidance that she once received as a freshman.
“I just noticed that there’s just such a community here that is so supportive and wants to uplift you. And I wanted to be a part of that,” Martinez said.
Martinez says she will leave Saint Mary’s with a desire to pay forward the support that she received throughout her academic career.
“In high school, there was a slogan we had. It was called, ‘protect the dream’ and your dream was whatever you wanted it to be. And I really feel like for me, my dream was being the first in my family to receive a bachelor’s, and so I just constantly carried that and I constantly protected my dream,” Martinez said.
