Tiger Heritage Spotlight: Wilfredo Alvarez BS ’02

Wilfredo Alvarez Ph.D., BS '02 Wilfredo Alvarez, Ph.D., BS ’02 (he/him/his) is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Utica University and author of Everyday Dirty Work: Invisibility, Communication, and Immigrant Labor, a book that focuses on Latinx immigrant essential workers. Wilfredo studied Communication at RIT and his teaching and research focus on communication issues related to social identity (i.e., race, ethnicity, social class, immigration, gender, sexual orientation, and ability status). He primarily teaches courses in intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, and communication, difference, and social justice. In his leisure time, Dr. Alvarez enjoys traveling, fitness activities, watching classical Hollywood cinema, and stimulating conversations with friends, family, and strangers.

What led you to RIT?
My mentor and college advisor (two different people) in high school. Also, computers were popular in the late 1990s, and after running into a RIT brochure that I shared with one of them she said “RIT is a very good school and computers are very popular right now.”
After comparing final aid packages between RIT and other schools, my college advisor said that I should go to RIT. Choosing RIT was one of the best decisions that I made in my life!

What about college were you least prepared for vs prepared for?
Least prepared: Almost everything (e.g., I had lived in the U.S. for only two years so the language (English) was still a challenge)
Most prepared: Almost nothing (I needed much help by many people to reach this point – i.e., being prepared)
To say that I was prepared for anything would be a grotesque mischaracterization of how I felt at the time. My truth is that I was not well prepared for college for various reasons. First, I had been in the country for two years so I was still learning the language and culture. Second, I attended one of the worst and most under-resourced high schools in NYC. I did not know better at the time, but although I perceived that, my high school education was “good,” in hindsight I could have been better prepared for college.

What were your favorite classes and why?
Interpersonal Communication and Intercultural Communication.
My communication courses equipped me with the language to speak about the thoughts and experiences I was having related to my family dynamics. I was trying to understand why my relationship with my parents was the way it was, and these courses provided clarity and perspectives that were useful later on as I sought to understand those experiences more in depth.
These courses also led to my desire to study interpersonal communication and intercultural communication in graduate school. These experiences eventually led to me becoming a college professor like my academic advisor.

Who influenced you most during your time at RIT?
My academic advisor and my fraternity. My relationship with my academic advisor and members of my fraternity were perhaps the most influential elements of my college experiences. Those individuals provided perspective, guidance, and support whenever I needed it, and it made a significant difference between me staying at RIT and returning to the Bronx.

What are some of the things you would change about your undergraduate experience and why?
I had such a positive experience that the only regret I have is not studying abroad.
I would have loved to spend a semester overseas. This experience would have expanded and enhanced my overall college experience.

When I think back to my time at RIT, I think about the people with whom I formed and developed relationships, and because of this I’m not sure that there is much that I would change about my time there.

What sparked your interest in teaching?
My academic advisor. As I look back at how my academic advisor influenced me, and also as I think about today’s conversations pertaining to how black and brown students need role models I remember how I looked at my academic advisor and thought “I want to be like him some day. What do I need to do to get there?”

He was both a symbolic and material marker of what was possible for people who are not part of the social dominant group in the United States (i.e., White European Americans).

What led you to write your book, Everyday Dirty Work: Invisibility, Communication, and Immigrant Labor, that focuses on Latinx immigrant essential workers?
My experiences with language, culture, and identity. My experiences as an immigrant navigating this society. My initial motivation was to understand what it is like for people who do not speak the dominant language, English, and who are socially and organizationally stigmatized. Eventually, I decided to study janitors/custodians of Latin American descent.

In this journey, I sought to understand my own experiences, but also those of others who are different from me in many ways.

What I learned is that there is much to be discovered from people whom we perceive to be so different on the surface. The janitors in the book are as complicated, witty, eccentric, and intelligent as many Ph.D. holders that I know.

I know that had their journeys been different, we could have been in reversed roles. They would have been the researcher and I could have been a janitor. I was not far from that being my reality when I first arrived in the United States.

What key points would you like to reader to take away?
I am aware that intercultural interactions are challenging for many, but there is much richness and opportunities that we gain when we choose to connect with different others beyond the surface

There is much to learn about others and ourselves if we choose to connect. I believe this type of growth is fundamental for us to preserve civil society, and also to create a more compassionate and empathic world

I believe that communicating aspects of our shared human experience creates a stronger fabric to preserve our interwoven social existence. If we orient ourselves differently and choose to connect with culturally different others, those experiences will influence how we perceive others and thus how we treat them in the workplace and other social contexts.

What advice would you have for your 18-24-year-old self?
Continue to seek and nurture close personal relationships. This is your greatest source of strength, resilience, and stability in an often-tumultuous life journey.

What is something about your Dominican heritage you would like others to know?
Dominicans are very warm and expressive/folkloric people. I also perceive Dominicans to be loyal – when we commit to someone or something; we are there through all the challenging periods.

Like most humans, we are a complicated people who have been shaped by complicated histories of race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic relations.

Fun Fact about yourself?
I was born with six fingers on each hand.