Remembering Andrea Rodriguez Avila
On a spring night, Andrea Rodriguez Avila was wrapping up her Peer Academic Advisor training. Her close friend, Karen Martinez, wanted boba tea; it was nearing the end of the semester, and everything was "messy and unorganized," she said. The two went to The Tea Nook on campus — Andrea had never been. "We talked the whole way there," Martinez said, and all through their wait in the line.
"I could talk to her about anything," Martinez, a Jones College junior, said. Martinez had transferred to Rice in the fall, one semester before Andrea. "Whenever I was having trouble last semester, like deciding what I wanted to do for housing, we briefly discussed rooming together ... Her giving me that support meant a lot."
Originally from Nottingham, Maryland, a northeastern suburb of Baltimore, Andrea transferred to Rice at the beginning of the Spring 2024 semester. At the Community College of Baltimore County, where she attended before transferring, Andrea served as president of honor society Phi Theta Kappa, chaired the college-wide student programming board and was an active member of the college's business club, student honors council and multicultural student association. At Johns Hopkins University, where she spent last summer at a Mellon Foundation-funded research fellowship, Andrea produced a humanities research project titled "El Cadejo: A Mirror of Mayan Roots and Religious Oppression," according to her LinkedIn.
Transferring colleges was not an easy feat, Martinez said — especially when it meant coming to a small, close-knit university like Rice in the middle of the school year. Martinez sought out Andrea early on, bonding over what they shared: a similar uprooting, a similar love for makeup and a similar penchant for procrastinating essays.
“We would talk about what transferring was like. She was not scared at all, really," Martinez said. "She was just really brave and really balanced in doing things. She was self-assured. She knew what she was capable of.”
By the end of her first semester at Rice, Andrea had already thrown herself into political science courses, in addition to having spent months as an Honor Council representative and a Jones PAA. Her fall was shaping up to be even more involved. Over the summer, she joined the Transfer Student Association as its events chair and the Hispanic culture club Raíces Unidas as its social chair. On Monday, Aug. 26, Andrea was on the Student Association's agenda for immediate consideration to be appointed the SA's deputy parliamentarian.
“She was super enthusiastic,” SA president Jae Kim said. “She was excited to get involved campus-wide … She had lots of ideas on what she wanted to do with the SA and lots of different areas of advocacy she was interested in.”
Andrea had also just joined the Doerr Institute as a student ambassador.
"[As] a transfer student, [Andrea] took charge of her leadership development immediately upon coming to Rice and wasted no time enrolling in programs and getting involved as a leader on campus," Stephanie Taylor, Associate Director of Leader Development at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders, said in a statement to the Thresher.
After interviewing Andrea for the Raíces Unidas position this summer, president Ana Rivera said she was struck by her ambition so soon in her time at Rice.
"From the moment I spoke with her," Rivera, a Baker College sophomore, said, "she was just ready to go and make her time at Rice the best she could in the next few years she had planned. She wanted to be there for the Rice community, for the students, in any way possible ... it tells her story of the person she was.”
Reflecting on their friendship, Martinez echoes a similar sentiment: "She knew what she wanted and how to get it."
If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you or anyone you know are thinking about suicide or experiencing a health crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
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