Hello,

Please see the message below from Dr. Alejandra Elenes.

Dear COEHD Community,

We are pleased to announce that Drs. Gloria Vásquez Gonzáles and Lilliana P. Saldaña, faculty members in Mexican American Studies in the REGSS Department are the recipients of the 2025 Scholar Activist Award from Critical Educators for Social Justice (CESJ), a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for their work as Co-Directors of the MAS Teachers’ Academy and their oral history project with MAS Teachers in San Antonio.

As the largest SIG, CESJ creates space within AERA to develop, support, and promote critical frameworks, public scholarship, and community engagement to challenge inequity in schools and society. The Scholar-Activist Award recognizes a scholar-activist (any rank) who has made significant contributions to the promotion of social, environmental, and/or economic justice (e.g., racial, disability, queer, trans, immigrant), or human rights through research and scholarship collaboration(s) with community partners, artists, or cultural, grassroots, and/or social movement groups.

The committee’s selection criteria included evidence of 1) significant contributions to the collective pursuit of educational justice through research and scholarship collaborations; 2) developed and sustained work and relationships with community; and 3) evidence of critical advocacy research productivity.  The selection committee noted that “You both have demonstrated a sustained commitment to your community work, which seamlessly transitions into your research and critical advocacy. Your oral histories is particularly impactful given the sociopolitical context in Texas.”

Drs. Saldana and Gonzales will be recognized at this year’s CESJ Business Meeting at the AERA conference in Denver, Colorado.

Best,

-- 

C. Alejandra Elenes, Ph.D.

Chair, Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The University of Texas at San Antonio

College of Education and Human Development

One UTSA Circle

San Antonio, TX 78249-3209