By Federick J. Ngo, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

I first met Tatiana in 2012 just after I had been admitted to the PhD program at USC Rossier. She exuded an uncommon warmth and kindness, and I knew I had to take the chance to work with her. 

It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. 

I came to USC knowing she was doing some exciting work on student success in community colleges at the time, but what I didn’t know was that this was just one aspect of her prolific research in higher education. Tatiana’s dissertation and early research asked new and novel questions about the role of colleges and universities in student success, and she was part of a wave of researchers who explored these questions using the economics of higher education. Her work helped pivot the field from a focus on student capacities and deficits to a focus instead on institutional responsibility and resources as they sought to support and graduate students. 

In her research, she paid particular attention to racial and ethnic minority students, low-income students, and transfer students. Tatiana also asked important research questions about institutional priorities, including the pursuit of prestige and the implications this pursuit had for inequities in faculty salaries. She also did fascinating and sophisticated quantitative work in international higher education to advance understanding of topics that are hard to study in the U.S. context due to data limitations. Through all this she was most proud of the work she did in support of community colleges, and she greatly treasured the partnerships she built with community college faculty and leaders throughout Los Angeles and the state. 

I feel so lucky to have had the chance to work with her as a graduate student at USC. We continued our collaboration after I graduated and joined the faculty at UNLV, and met once or twice a month for the past 12 years. I looked forward each time to hearing about her three kids, her multicultural multinational life and perspective, and sometimes (most times) even the latest academic gossip. She always had sage advice for my career and family life. Through her choices, advice and example, she single-handedly demonstrated to me a vision for faculty life that could be opposite to what the forces of the academy want us to be. She prioritized her family, she valued the connections and relationships more than the work, and she welcomed opportunities to learn and grow.

Losing an academic mentor has been such a unique form of grief and loss for a first-generation college student, graduate student, and professor like myself, because I felt that Tatiana knew me and supported me the past 12 years, perhaps better than my own parents did. I owe much of the life and career I have today to her guidance and support. 

I feel a sense of unease moving forward in my academic career without Tatiana, and a sense of sadness about how our field will be without her. Yet I also treasure all that I have received from her about how to act, think and be in this place. 

I am so grateful that our lives intersected. I am heartbroken by the loss, as we all are, but I am also comforted when I think of all the people in the USC community and beyond who got to meet or work with her, or even just have a short conversation with her. Even the shortest time with Tatiana was a gift.