We would like to congratulate Project MALES Faculty Affiliates Dr. Sarah Rodriguez, Assistant Professor in Higher Education at Iowa State University and Dr. Claudia Garcia-Louis, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, who were recently were selected to form part of the 2017-2018 NASPA Emerging Faculty Leader Academy.
The NASPA Emerging Faculty Leader Academy is a one-year program for emerging faculty leaders who want to gain knowledge, techniques and experience in order to develop and sustain a fulfilling faculty career. Seven participants, one from each of the 7 NASPA Regions, will participate in on-line and in-person professional development and educational sessions in order to gain additional knowledge and skills about being a leader as a faculty member. Potential topics may include: teaching strategies and curriculum development, resources to deal with issues of tenure, merit and performance, and serving within professional associations such as NASPA.
The cohort who completes the NASPA Emerging Faculty Leaders Academy will be able to:
- Define leadership in a faculty role for themselves
- Identify individual plans to excel in a faculty career
- Target at least one “take away” from the individual plan to actuate
- Expand network of colleagues to collaborate within faculty work
- Explore ways to be involved in NASPA as a faculty member
Dr. Sarah Rodriguez, PhD, is an assistant professor of Higher Education at Iowa State University. Dr. Rodriguez’s research addresses issues of equity, access, and retention for Latina/o students in the higher education pipeline, with a focus on STEM identity development and the experiences of Latino men in community colleges. She is involved with several large-scale interdisciplinary research projects focused on institutional environments and STEM identity development which have been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). She has also served as a New Mathways Project Mentorship Program Coach for the Charles A. Dana Center, supporting college implementation of multiple mathematics pathways, acceleration to complete college level math courses quickly, and intentional use of strategies.
During her career, Dr. Rodriguez has been named an American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Graduate Fellow, an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Emerging Scholar, and a Gates Millennium Scholar. Dr. Rodriguez also serves as an Affiliate Faculty Member for the Minority Male Community College Collaborative (M2C3) and Project M.A.L.E.S. (Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success). She received her PhD in Higher Education Leadership from The University of Texas at Austin and holds masters from The University of Tennessee as well as a BA in English and Spanish from Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Dr. Claudia García-Louis is an assistant professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, a Project MALES faculty & research affiliate, and an AfroLatin@ forum research affiliate. She received a BA in Psychology and a BS in Anthropology with a focus in Archaeology from Oregon State University, a MA in Student Development Administration from Seattle University, and a doctorate in Higher Education Leadership from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research seeks to disrupt deficit thinking about communities of color, disadvantaged populations and underrepresented students. Her goals are to expand the definitions of Latinidad and Blackness in higher education, to make a critical contribution to a newly formed line of inquiry that explores the educational experiences of AfroLatinxs, and to conduct research that highlights Latinx heterogeneity.
Prior to attending graduate school, García-Louis worked at Linfield College as Director of Multicultural Programs where her outreach program, Ayudando Podemos, received national recognition from Excelencia in Education for its remarkable three-fold increase in Latina/o student enrollment. García-Louis draws from over six years of student affairs experience in order to bridge theory to practice and back again. Her core values as an educator are to uphold social justice, equity, and respect at all times with an emphasis on the mastery of knowledge.
Congratulations and we look forward to your future successes!
