Dr. Maria Elena Reyes is a third generation, Mexican American who was born in Eagle Pass, located along the Texas-Mexico border. She was raised in San Antonio and attended public
school in the South San Antonio School District. Her father, Jorge V...
Dr. Maria Elena Reyes is a third generation, Mexican American who was born in Eagle Pass, located along the Texas-Mexico border. She was raised in San Antonio and attended public
school in the South San Antonio School District. Her father, Jorge V. Reyes, was a WW II veteran who worked at Kelly Field Air Force Base in San Antonio for over 30 years; her mother, Maria Claudia Cardona Reyes, was a homemaker.
As a first generation college graduate, Maria attended the University of Texas at Austin during the mid 60's. She participated in the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movement while a student at the University. After this, she worked to unionize primarily Mexican and Mexican American agricultural workers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas for Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers' Union in McAllen, Texas in the late 1960’s.
From the 1960's until the late 1980's, Maria was a homemaker, and for almost ten years,she worked as a high school English teacher for the Eagle Pass School District in south Texas. During this period, she earned a master’s degree in secondary education. In 1991, she obtained her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialty in high education at the University of Texas in Austin where she received several university fellowships. As a graduate student, she served as president of the University's Chicana/o Graduate Student Association, worked for the renowned folklorist/ anthropologist Don Americo Paredes (who became a respected mentor and friend), and was involved in campus activities. From 1992-1996, after obtaining her doctorate, Maria developed and implemented the highly regarded University of Texas at Austin Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, which was funded by the University of Texas System and AT&T. This was a successful educational intervention program that targeted potential first generation college graduates [Latina students in grades 7-12] and their families. The program had an academic focus on STEM. The award winning
program has since been replicated in south Texas and other states. During this time, she also wrote a series of pre-college guides for high school students that was published by Hispanic Magazine and was distributed to thousands of students nationwide. In 1995, Dr. Reyes received a National Hispanic Achievement Award for her work with Latino families.
Dr. Reyes went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in summer of 1996, first heading the University of Alaska Fairbanks Teachers For Alaska Secondary Licensure Program,then working as a member of the graduate faculty with responsibilities in teaching research courses to students pursuing advanced degrees in education. From 1998-2001, she was the founder and faculty advisor to the first Latino college group in Alaska, the UAF Latina/o Culture Club. Her work at UAF included [1] serving as Co-PI and PI to Alaska’s two PT3 Projects,
funded by the USDOE, and Co-PI or PI to various other externally and internally funded projects; [2] developing distance delivered course work and workshops for preservice teachers in rural schools, primarily Alaska Natives, to encourage and support rural residents in becoming licensed teachers; [3] conducting research on the educational accountability and on the growing
disengagement of males in education. In spring of 2003, Maria became the first Latina to be tenured at UAF and, for three years, was chair of the UAF Chancellor's Committee on Diversity. In 2006, she became a founding board member of the BoysProject [see http://www.boysproject.net/], an organization
that supports the social and educational development of boys throughout the educational pipeline.
In summer of 2006, Dr. Reyes accepted a position at the University of Texas Pan
American, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her current research includes educational accountability, the male disengagement in education in Texas, and alternative education in high schools.
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