CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — From sitting in the sunlight to sitting in the limelight at her mentor fellow’s private talk, rising senior Serafina Cortez (Redwood City, Calif./Castilleja School) has gained much from her Radcliffe Research Partner (RRP) experience.
Before joining a Harvard Radcliffe Institute program, Cortez ’27 was drawn to the creative and magical atmosphere of Radcliffe, spending warm, sunny days lounging in the lawn chairs in Radcliffe Yard.
Cortez is concentrating in environmental science and public policy and African American studies. She’s on the women’s water polo team, where her community presented a way into Radcliffe: One of her teammates saw an opportunity related to environmental science and pointed Cortez to it. “It wasn’t even with the fellow I’m working with currently,” Cortez recalls. “But I ended up finding Dr. Montgomery’s ‘Black Feminists and Botany’ project and [thought] I can’t not apply to this, because it is literally the perfect fusion of everything I’m studying, all my interests.” Thus, she became a Radcliffe Research Partner (RRP).
Beronda L. Montgomery, the 2025–2026 Sally Starling Seaver Fellow at Radcliffe, is a plant biologist and researcher who writes books for a general audience. Learning about Montgomery was significant to Cortez because her own two great interests—biology and writing—are subjects she previously felt didn’t have a lot of natural overlap in academics. She says that it was very special to find “someone in academia bringing together science and writing in this kind of different communication style.”
Cortez wasn’t sure what to expect as an RRP. She found a mentor in academics and in the more mundane, day-to-day moments.
It has even inspired her to pursue research funding for a senior thesis, for which she asked Montgomery to write a recommendation letter. “It was a no-brainer for me—of course I’m going to ask Dr. Montgomery,” Cortez says. “She just knows me so well.” She’s currently waiting to hear back about the summer funding she applied for; if she receives it, her thesis will be on community-based flooding solutions and climate adaptation policy in different areas of the United States, potentially adding a Black feminist ecological lens as a mode of analysis.
Cortez’s research path has been strongly influenced by her partnership with the fellow. She wasn’t sure what to expect as an RRP but assumed it would be providing whatever the fellow requested, whenever they needed it. However, she found the research much more engaging and reciprocal than she anticipated. She found a mentor in academics and in the more mundane, day-to-day moments. Emboldened by Montgomery’s trust in her, Cortez adds sources she finds relevant and makes connections between the materials Montgomery provides with resources she has encountered in her own undergraduate
She confesses that she had some worry that her connections were too tenuous or obscure, but as it turns out, Montgomery always sees where she’s coming from and “that makes what I interpret and how the things I see feel important.” She confidently adds her own notes and thoughts to the research through emails, within her handwritten notes from the Schlesinger Library archives, or by commenting in their shared Google Docs.
At Radcliffe, Cortez has discovered new ways to entwine two fields that she’s very interested in. “I sometimes feel like a walking ad for Radcliffe,” she says. “I just love this place so much, and I feel really grateful that I’ve had such a wonderful experience.” While the focus is on interdisciplinary research, Radcliffe students grow as academics, gain confidence in their own abilities, and forge connections in their studies and academic peers. Cortez attended Montgomery’s private fellow’s talk (another perk of program participation), where she received an enthusiastic public shout-out from the mentor fellow. The connection they’ve forged is a meaningful and enduring one: Cortez now considers Montgomery “someone that I will want to stay connected with forever.”
Information courtesy Harvard University
