Dr. Bonnie Gasior

Dr. Gasior’s experience as a Spanish Professor and her ten-year term as undergraduate advisor in her department substantiated the need to reframe mental health as an extension—if not significant determiner—of student success. A graduate of CSULB’s President’s and Provost’s Leadership Fellows Program, in which fellows collaborate across divisions to realize campus-impacting projects, Dr. Gasior has since been able to empower faculty as mental health first aiders, serve students in academically adjacent ways and ultimately advocate for a scaffolding approach to addressing students’ mental health issues. She currently serves on CSULB’s Mental Health Advisory Committee and hopes to embark on new research that involves student mental wellness as it relates to the University Honors Program in her position as Interim Director. Dr. Gasior is a first-generation college student originally from Pittsburgh, PA and a former Division-I athlete. She earned her MA and PhD in Spanish Literature from Purdue University and recently published two articles (2019), one in Laberinto Journal (“Women’s Mental Health Advocacy in Lars and the Real Girl and the Don Quixote Connection” and the other in Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America (“La locura como crítica social: reexaminando el cuento del loco de Sevilla (Don Quijote II.1)”, both of which explore mental health issues in early modern Spanish literature.