María González
Identity Stratification
Dr. María González is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Miami University. She teaches classes on the fundamentals of ecology, parasite and disease ecology, and limnology alongside graduate and undergraduate seminars pertaining to ecological topics. In addition to teaching, Dr. González conducts research on the effects of environmental stressors such as warming and eutrophication on aquatic food webs. This research also involves mentoring graduate and undergraduate students who work in her lab. Outside of the lab, Dr. González is a member of the Association of Latinx Faculty and Staff (ALFAS) at Miami University, which strives to foster Latinx representation in the community.
Dr. González is originally from Caracas, Venezuela where she lived with her parents and sister. Her mother and father were Spanish immigrants who worked as a dressmaker and taxi driver, respectively. After completing her undergraduate degree at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, she moved to the United States at 25 years old. She earned her MA and PhD at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. After her graduation in 1992, she moved to Michigan, where she was a postdoc. She then taught at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio for the next seven years and earned tenure. For the last 20 years, Dr. González has been a part of the Miami University Department of Biology, where she has inspired countless students to continue their education in the fields of ecology and biology.
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Dr. González describes feeling nervous about her move to the United States. “For me, it was kind of an adventure, a scary adventure. I didn’t know much English, and that was kind of my handicap.” However, she did not let that deter her from taking advantage of the opportunity and taking this big step forward in her career. She credits her good integrating skills to her upbringing in Venezuela. “My resilience or flexibility to do new things and to start in a new country were maybe related to the fact that my mother and my father were also immigrants. They moved to Venezuela in the 1950s.” Being raised in a family that still had strong Spanish traditions, being surrounded by the many other immigrant cultures in their neighborhood as well as partaking in Venezuelan culture all helped Dr. Gonález as she transitioned to her new life in the United States.
Originally, she planned to move back to Venezuela after completing her MA, but the longer she stayed, the harder it became. Between career opportunities and starting a family, it became less and less feasible to try and move back to Venezuela. This decision also was not made any easier by the declining political and economic situation in the country either which she stated, “The political situation in my country is just devastating, devastating”. In 1989, Carlos Andrés Pérez returned to the presidency and his four year term was plagued with corruption and civil unrest. The situation remained dismal until Hugo Chavez emerged as a presidential hopeful. He promised change and an end to corruption but instead, after he became president in 1998, he changed the constitution and turned Venezuela into a dictatorship.
Moving away from Venezuela also allowed Dr. González to develop a new and more objective perspective of her home country. She has realized that there are both good and bad aspects of the country, and with the current political situation she fears that “[t]he Venezuela that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore.” However, this should not take away from the country’s rich culture and resilient people who still hold out hope that one day their country will return to its former glory.
As Dr. González transitioned to life in the United States, she developed a greater appreciation for what she had in Venezuela, such as some of the amazing food and fruits that can be hard to find in the U.S. She describes Caracas as having the perfect weather because although it was hot most of the time, it was a dry heat. The location was also ideally situated in a valley next to both the Caribbean coast and surrounded by El Avila National Park which is home to El Avila Mountain. One of the major cultural differences that she misses is how easy it is to talk to people in Caracas. There it is much more normalized to strike up a conversation with strangers, something that is not often seen in the U.S.
Despite all of the political and social changes that have occurred in Venezuela over the last 30 years, Dr. González says she will always consider herself a Venezuelan and an American.
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