Patricia Sánchez, Ph.D.

Patricia Sánchez is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a recent recipient of the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award (2017)—the highest teaching honor in the University of Texas System, given for excellence in undergraduate teaching. She currently serves as the Lead Editor of the Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal.  Dr. Sánchez—a first-generation college student—was born and raised along the El Paso-Juárez border in a bilingual Mexican immigrant home and also spent 8 years in Benson, Arizona.  For over two decades she has worked with non-profits, schools, and research organizations, both in Texas and California, to improve the educational and economic success of Latinx immigrants in the US.  She received her PhD in Social and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004.  During this time, she was awarded a prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.  Prior to becoming an academic, she was a second-grade bilingual teacher in Houston, Texas, as well as an admissions officer at a private university, and a non-profit community worker.