Sylvia Mendez (Speaking: Monday, October 26, 2009 Time: 9:00 - 10:00)

Civil Rights Leader
My Legacy: Mendez vs. Westminster
Sylvia Mendez is the oldest daughter of Gonzalo Mendez, a Mexican immigrant, and Felicitas Mendez, a Puerto Rican, who fought so she and her brothers could have equal education through the case of Mendez et al v. Westminster et al. Sylvia continues with the legacy left by her parents to campaign for education. Miss Mendez attended Orange Coast College where she earned her Associate of Arts degree in nursing. She went on to California State University at Los Angeles where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and a Public Health Certificate. Sylvia Mendez worked for 33 years as a nurse at the USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. Her final five years of service she held the position of Assistant Nursing Director of the Pediatric Pavilion. Ms. Mendez spends her retirement traveling abroad and speaking in Universities, conferences and schools across the nation. Her sole intent is to convey the importance of obtaining and education by encouraging students to stay in school.

Kris Gutierrez, Ph.D. (Speaking: Monday, October 26, 2009 Time: 3:50 - 4:50)

University of California at Los Angeles
Kris Gutierrez is professor of Social Research Methodology with UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Recently elected as the president for the AERA, her current research interests include a study of the sociocultural contexts of literacy development, particularly the study of the acquisition of academic literacy for language minority students. Her research also focuses on understanding the relationship between language, culture, development, and pedagogies of empowerment. Professor Gutierrez was the 2005 recipient of the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award and is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences 2006-07. She was also the Noted Scholar in Residence, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, July 23-August 10, 2006

Alejandro Portes, Ph.D. (Speaking: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Time: 9:00 - 10:00)

Princeton University
Dreams fulfilled and shattered: Determinants of segmented assimilation in the second generation
Alejandro Portes is a premier sociologist who has shaped the study of immigration and urbanization for 30 years. He is chair of the department of sociology at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) as well as co-founder and director of Princeton's Center for Migration and Development. He has authored and edited numerous books and has published articles on a range of policy issues, including immigrant assimilation, Latin American politics, and United States/Cuba relations. A Cuban exile himself, Portes has spent his career tracking the lives of different immigrant nationalities in the United States. He has chronicled the causes and consequences of immigration to the United States, with an emphasis on informal economies, transnational communities, and ethnic enclaves. Portes has published on the children of immigrants and the factors that determine their successful adaptation to life in the United States, such as family support and school socioeconomic status (SES).

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. (Speaking: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Time: 3:50 - 4:50)

University of Texas at Austin
Teacher Quality and Latina/o Youth: Building a National Advocacy Imperative for Educational Reform
Angela Valenzuela is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Valenzuela’s research and teaching interests include the sociology of education, race and ethnicity in schools, urban education reform, and educational policy. She is the author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, winner of both the 2000 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award and the 2001 Critics' Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. She is also editor of a volume titled, Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-styleAccountability Fails Latino Youth. As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Valenzuela taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico and conducted research in the areas of immigration, human rights, and binational relations. She is also the recipient of a Cissy McDaniel Parker Fellow.

Luis Moll, Ph.D. (Speaking: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Time: 9:00 - 10:00)

University of Arizona
Education as cultural processes: Mobilizing knowledge, languages, and educational practices
Luis C. Moll, born in Puerto Rico, is a professor with the Department of Language, Reading and Culture in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. He joined the faculty of LRC in 1986. Prior to that, from 1979-1986, he worked at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition and the Communications Department, both of the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Moll’s research addresses the connections among culture, psychology and education, especially in relation to the education of Latino children in the US. Among other studies, he has analyzed the quality of classroom teaching, examined literacy instruction in English and Spanish, studied how literacy takes place in the broader social contexts of household and community life, and attempted to establish pedagogical relationships among these domains of study.