February 19, 2025 - 12:00pm-1:00 p.m. Leticia Zavala, Ph.D Lecturer II, Sociology, College of Liberal Arts

Empowering first generation college students; navigating success through community engagement

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I am a Lecturer II in the Department of Sociology at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where I teach a variety of courses within the Sociology program. In my role, I serve as the chair of the Sociology Undergraduate Core Assessment, ensuring the continuous evaluation and improvement of the program. Additionally, I mentor and train graduate students as the faculty mentor for Graduate Teaching Assistant Fellows, preparing them to effectively teach introductory sociology courses.

I earned both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Sociology from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and completed my Ph.D. in Psychology, specializing in gender diversity, at Northcentral University. My professional credentials also include training as a Community Health Worker through the Texas Department of State Health Services.
My research explores the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and justice, with a particular focus on critical issues such as forced sterilization and eugenics, intimate partner violence, and health disparities among sexual and gender minority adults. As an applied sociologist, my goal is to bring awareness to these pressing social issues and contribute to meaningful discussions on equity and social justice.

Teaching and mentoring are at the core of my professional mission. I am dedicated to fostering a comprehensive and supportive learning environment that empowers students to critically engage with sociological concepts and apply them to real-world contexts.

March 13, 2025 - 01:00pm-02:00 p.m. David Bennett Carren, PhD. Professor, Theatre, College of Fine Arts

How Critical Thinking in relation to Creative Research Can Enrich Classroom instruction

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My work as a producer and/or screenwriter in film and television includes the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stargate, SG1, as well as films like Mr. Hell and Waiting for Sandoval. This has allowed me to offer my students firsthand professional experience that provides them with important support in creating their own projects as well as a strong direction in achieving their career goals. This approach not only applies to my instruction in television and film but prose and playwriting as I have a background in these areas as well.

I have also written a screenwriting textbook, Capturing Big Ideas for Less in Feature Film, which Routledge Publications will be releasing this next Spring. As I developed this project, I discovered fresh ideas and concepts that will further inform my instruction. The same can be said my first textbook, Next Level Screenwriting, which was released through Focal Press in 2019.

I earned my bachelor's in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and my master's in fine arts at Spalding University. I have served as a chair of the Department of Theatre in the College of Fine Arts, and I teach scriptwriting, film history, and field production.

April 07, 2025 - 11:00am-12:00 p.m. José Luis Cano Jr., PhD Assistant Professor, Writing and Language Studies College of Liberal Arts

Meshing Teaching with Research through Autohistoriando

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I grew up on the Brownsville-Matamoros border, so I use the border geography to understand the confluence of global forces in my research into immigration enforcement, digital expressions, and border rhetorics. As a scholar in rhetoric and composition, I attune myself to the ways I compose academic texts as much as the methodologies I employ in my research projects. Therefore, I’ve published in digital and print venues, including the following works: “Code Switching” in Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, “El Retén Fronterizo: Un Foto Ensayo / The Border Checkpoint: A Photo Essay” in Latinx Talk: Research, Commentary, and Creativity, and a forthcoming digital essay titled “Writing with Light in the Carceral State” in enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture.

I continue to improve on teaching by incorporating it into my research, where I examine my teaching approach and student learning in classroom spaces at the border. These efforts have led to the publications “Composition Studies at the US-Mexico Border” in College Composition and Communication and “A Scyborg Composition Course” in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. In my teaching and research, I aim to cultivate the “border” voices from students in the region.

I earned my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University, an MA in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas State University, and a BA in English Literature from Texas A&M University. Before transferring to Texas A&M University, I attended UTB/TSC.

May 09, 2025 - 12:15pm-01:15 p.m. Xuan Wang, Ph.D Associate Professor, Information Systems Robert C. Vackar College of Business & Entrepreneurship

From Data to Global Impact: Leveraging Service Learning & Collaborative Online International Learning

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I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems at the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship. In 2022, I received the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship Teaching Award in the Tenure-Track category. My research focuses on causal inference, Artificial Intelligence, and advanced methodological applications. I have developed multiple courses that blend theoretical foundations with applied, hands-on learning.

I have also played a pivotal role in advancing cloud computing education at UTRGV by serving as the central point of contact for AWS Academy. In this capacity, I have facilitated faculty teaching sessions designed to help educators integrate AWS services into their curriculum, ensuring students gain practical experience with cloud computing and its real-world applications.

Furthermore, I pioneered a distinctive course that integrates service learning with Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), offering students hands-on, global perspectives on community challenges. By partnering with international institutions, community organizations, and local stakeholders, this course encourages students to engage in real-world problem-solving while simultaneously developing intercultural competence. Students collaborate on projects that address community needs—such as data-driven social initiatives, health advocacy, or technology skill-building—combining theoretical knowledge with meaningful service activities. This holistic approach not only enriches the student learning experience but also provides tangible benefits to the communities involved. I also received an award from Texas International Education, to support the innovative impact of this course design.

For the upcoming session, I plan to use this course as an example to illustrate how I integrate both service learning and COIL, emphasizing students’ research experiences to enhance their data analytics skills in real-world applications.

January 17, 2024 - 00:00am-00:00 p.m. Cristina Sanchez-Conejero, PhD Professor/ Spanish

Research Integration in an Undergraduate Spanish Course Syllabus and in Teaching

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I am a Full Professor in the Department of Spanish at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2003) and my Master's Degree from Villanova University (2000). My major fields of research are 20th-21st Century Spanish Literatures, Cinemas and Cultures. I am the author of the books Sex and Ethics in Spanish Cinema (2015), Rain, Bamboo (2012), Lluvia, bambú (2011), Una niña postfranquista (2010), Novela y cine de ciencia ficción española contemporánea (2009), ¿Identidades españolas? Literatura y cine de la globalización (1980-2000) (2006), the editor of Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th-21st Century (2007), and over twenty articles published in such journals as Cincinnati Romance Review, Romance Quarterly, Hispanic Journal, Hispanófila, Revista Hispánica Moderna, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Crítica Hispánica, etc. I directed the award-winning films Hispanosophy (2011) and W.H.O.R.E.S (2019, Wanting Humans Onto Reinventing and Educating Society) which I also wrote and executive produced.  

I integrate my research into my teaching in several ways including keeping my course content up to date, teaching students to use our most popular database in the profession for research, sharing my own current research findings on the topic/s of the course and applying them to class teaching, relating them to the real world/community engagement, especially with the use of Spanish in our community, etc. The title of my presentation for the TRICC Speaker Series today is “Research Integration in an Undergraduate Spanish Course Syllabus and in Teaching”. I will use the specific example of the Spanish 3314 “Techniques of Literary Analysis” course that I will teach in Spring 2024 at UTRGV to illustrate more specifically how research can be integrated into teaching. 

February 13, 2024 - 11:00am-12:00 p.m. Kelsey Baker, PHD Assistant Dean of Educational Affairs, Pre-clerkships Assistant Professor of Medicine Director for Medical Student Research Neuro and Behavioral Health Integrated Service Unit (ISU) UTRGV School of Medicine

Empowering Physician Scientists by Bringing the Scientific Method to the Medical Education Curriculum

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Research and education are at the forefront of my passion and the driving forces behind my professional growth and development.  Since graduating with my PhD, I have sought to merge the two passions as I continue in my career.  I currently serve as an Assistant Professor at UTRGV School of Medicine as well as have the opportunity to serve as the Director of Medical Student Research and Assistant Dean of Educational Affairs Preclerkships.   My research lab is housed within the new Institute of Neuroscience that has a state-of-the-art imaging suite on the first floor, including clinical space and a second floor dedicated to clinical research.  I have over 9 years of research experience in the field of neuroimaging, neurodegeneration and plasticity.  I have individually mentored over 75 students in my research lab.  Students have included medical students, undergraduates and high school students.  My main research interests lie in (1) elucidating how varying degrees of damage in the brain and spinal cord can limit performance of devices that interface with the central nervous system, (2) developing technologies to boost adaptive re-mapping in hopes to circumvent inherent damage and (3) evaluating strategies to boost re-myelination in the brain following neurological insult.

April 02, 2024 - 1:00pm-2:00 p.m. Criselda Garcia, EdD. Professor, Teaching & Learning Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the College of Education and P16 Integration

Utilizing Student-Focused Research to Inform Teaching Practice

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As a teacher educator, I recognize the critical intersection between teaching and research with two distinct benefits: producing new knowledge to inform teaching practice and to model evidence-based practice for future teachers. Through my scholarship, I have been able to make these explicit connections. The best examples of this include recent collaborative projects demonstrating this reciprocity involving a two-year multi-institutional research regarding the use of innovative technologies for coaching teacher candidates along with another scholarly inquiry for building a faculty mentoring model for connecting with aspiring teachers at freshman level.

Specifically, using a design development and improvement science approach, one multi-year exploratory study focused on using mixed reality simulation for coaching future teachers culturally sustaining pedagogies with an equity-focus. Through this line of research, coaching of teacher candidates has transformed to include new learnings from this inquiry. The second ongoing project is a case study for developing a mentorship model for supporting teacher candidates early in their academic trajectory by creating a learning community. The selection of methodologies adopted for my research enabled me to approach both teaching and scholarship as iterative, reciprocal processes.