Malena Sparano ’26 is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow studying linguistics
By Nichola Monroe ’27
Some may argue that research in the humanities can be overshadowed by growing developments in STEM fields. For Scripps student Malena Sparano ’26, her recent Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship on how culture and language education form identity opened an opportunity to challenge that narrative.
“In STEM, you can kind of see more action, like trying to cure cancer or inventing a new biofuel,” Sparano says. “But society runs on whether we have economic policies that understand people’s needs; understand post-war mass migration movements; or know how the way languages are taught in school influences how people immigrate and emigrate for the rest of their lives. These are all important research aspects of society that I’m glad there is still support for.”
Empowering humanities scholars through the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) supports students from marginalized communities in their pursuit of graduate degrees in the humanities. The program aims to create a “demographic transformation in higher education” by recruiting prospective graduate students from its 47 member schools and three consortia.
Starting their junior year of college, fellows receive financial support from the Mellon Foundation, as well as mentoring and research support in preparation for graduate programs. Since its founding in 1988, the highly successful program has produced over 1,100 PhDs, including nearly 800 college professors and several fellows from Scripps.
Sparano, a linguistics major with a minor in Chinese culture and society, was recommended to the program by one of her Core professors at Scripps. Taking a shot in the dark, Sparano applied her sophomore year and soon became one of only nine juniors across The Claremont Colleges to receive the fellowship.
“You get a lot of academic mentorship and support for grad school applications, and you pursue research, write research papers, attend conferences, and give presentations at some of them. It’s really cool to see the humanities research being pushed,” Sparano says of her MMUF experience. “The fellows are all doing work in the humanities: I’m doing linguistics, and there are a lot of Chicanx/Latinx studies majors and African American studies majors.”
Sparano credits the fellowship with supporting the development of her senior thesis at Scripps.
“I pivoted my research to blend into my thesis of bilingual cognition and the construction of identity in Mandarin–English bilinguals and English–Spanish bilinguals,” she explains. “Specifically, I’m looking at how queer identities and gender compare between the two languages.”
Living the Research: Immersive language study in China
Sparano’s study of Chinese language and culture is also informed by her experiences working and learning in Taiwan and Beijing.
She was part of the Taiwan Education Experience Program (TEEP), a five-week program in partnership with a national university and the Taiwanese government to spur foreign exchange. Sparano observed college-level classes and taught English to middle schoolers in Tainan, a city in the southern region of the island.
“I was the first foreign teacher at the middle school I taught at, so everyone in the town knew me,” she recalls. “I also got to go to the university and work with my supervisor, who was one of the professors in the international program. I was looking at how they taught English and got to see a lot of their materials.”
There are so many things you can learn from how someone speaks about the way they view life—and that’s beautiful.
Eager to improve her fluency and find community abroad, Sparano spent the fall of her junior year in Beijing at Capital Normal University. Here, she put her linguistic skills to the test as she bonded with peers her own age and participated in research with grad students and faculty.
Now a rising senior, Sparano’s language learning and insights into identity formation have become focal points in her studies—revelations made possible through scholarships like the MMUF program.
“If you don’t learn other languages, you’re never really going to connect with other people,” Sparano explains, noting that while a lingua franca like English is helpful, broader language skills unlock deeper cultural understanding. “There are so many things you can learn from how someone speaks about the way they view life—and that’s beautiful.”