Yazmin Carrasco, PhD is an experienced educator who has worked collaboratively with an interdisciplinary team to develop and implement capacity-building programs . Dr. Carrasco is the Assistant Dean for Access, Belonging, and Student-Centered Success, Co-Director of the NIGMS T32 Weill Cornell Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), Director of the Advancing Cornell Careers Experiences for Science Students (ACCESS) undergraduate summer program , and Co-Director of the NIGMS R25 Advancing Success and Persistence in Research Education (ASPiRE). Dr. Carrasco and her team at the Office of Access, Belonging, and Student Success (OABSS) work towards providing an inclusive environment, fostering a sense of belonging and community where students can thrive and grow, both as scientists and individuals. We do this by providing one-on-one mentoring support, offering near-peer mentorship programs, cultivating a space where students can be their true selves, hosting community-building events, and social activities. We facilitate workshops for students that are student-centered and from an asset-based perspective. We recruit a talented graduate student body as part of our various recruitment events and our ACCESS summer internship program. We also engage with graduate student organizations that provide opportunities to give back to underserved communities.
Dr. Carrasco obtained her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at El Paso, where she was an NIH MARC Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U*STAR) Scholar. She completed her PhD training at UT Southwestern in the field of Analytical Chemistry, where she was a fellow of the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) training grant. She then joined the prestigious NIH-funded IRACDA postdoctoral training program at UCSF, where she had the opportunity to train in pedagogy and teach at San Francisco State University, while also doing her postdoctoral training in Chemical Biology at UCSF. After her four-year postdoc, she joined the team of SF BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), an NIH-funded program to enhance the diversity of the biomedical workforce.
