Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González is Professor in the Mexican American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona. Until fall 2004 she was Professor of Chicano Studies and German Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She studied at four German universities and was among the first women of color to receive a doctorate degree from Stanford University. As an undergraduate she attended the University of Arizona and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She is a native of the Arizona/Sonora desert and is rooted in the Yaqui-Mexican culture.
The many firsts in Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González’s career have helped blaze trails for women, both academically and in the women’s rights arena. She was the first indigenous woman to receive a doctorate in German Studies and later became the first woman of color to be tenured at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1985). In 1991 she became the first native Chicana woman to chair an academic department within the University of California system and was among the first native women in the nation to be promoted to full professor at a major research university. Under her leadership the very first proposal for the Chicano/a Studies doctorate degree in the nation was created.
In 1996 Dr. Broyles-González was honored with the lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies. The award recognizes Professor Broyles-González’s “multiple and invaluable scholarly contributions and her advocacy for the Chicana/o Studies discipline.” Other distinguished national and international awards have come from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange Service, which funded her research in Germany for five years.
The focal points of her research and teaching are popular culture, gender, oral tradition, Native American culture, and the popular performance genres of the US-Mexico borderlands, of which she is a native. Among her most recent publications is the first academic study of the legendary singer and National Medal of Arts recipient Lydia Mendoza, entitled Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music/La Historia de Lydia Mendoza. Norteño Tejano legacies (published by Oxford University Press, bilingually and with a CD, 2001). Broyles-González also recently published a comprehensive raza women’s anthology entitled Re-emerging Native Women of the Americas. Native Chicana Latina Women’s Studies (Kendall Hunt Publishers, 2001).
Broyles-González has made many contributions to the field of performance studies. Her landmark book El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas Press), helped lay the foundation for the study of women and performance and it has become required reading at many universities across the country. It is the only book-length study of a Chicana/o performance ensemble. More recently she has written on performance artist María Elena Gaitán and on women musicians of the US-Mexico borderlands.
In 1996 Professor Broyles-González made national news by legally challenging the unequal payment of women and minority professors within the University of California system. In 1998 President Clinton honored her at a White House ceremony marking women’s struggles for equal pay.
Broyles-González first book, The German Response to Latin American Literature, was published in Germany. During her ten years of research/study in Germany, Professor Broyles-González also pioneered in bringing Chicano/a literature (and an interest in Chicana/o Studies) to a European readership. She was the first to translate a Chicano novel into the German language (published by Germany’s premiere literary publishers, Suhrkamp Verlag).
Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González has also been active in journalism, writing for the San Antonio Light and the Los Angeles Times. She has also gained distinction as a teacher and community activist. In 1994 she was selected as one of "Ten Terrific Teachers" at the University of California Santa Barbara; in 1997 she received an award as Outstanding Faculty Member at UCSB “for her dedication and contributions to the education of UCSB students.”
Broyles-González is interested in educational issues and she has volunteered in public schools. In 1994 she piloted the first Chicano Studies course ever taught at a Santa Barbara high school (San Marcos High School). In 1994 she also received an award for Ten Years of Distinguished Service to the Community from a coalition of Santa Barbara community organizations.
Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González is married to Mexican harp player Francisco González. They have two children: Esmeralda Guadalupe Broyles-González (16) and Francisco Broyles-González (21).

Julio Cammarota is an assistant professor in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology and the Mexican-American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona. He completed a doctoral program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education in May of 2001. His dissertation, entitled "First Jobs: The Perceptions and Experiences of Work for Latino Youth," is based on an ethnography of Latino youth from Oakland, California. He has published papers on family, work, and education among Latinos and the relationship between culture and academic achievement. Cammarota has also co-authored a seminal article on applying a social justice approach to youth development practices. Currently, he is the director of the Social Justice Education Project in Tucson, Arizona, and the Anthropology and Education Program at the UA.

Rosario Carrillo is a post-doctoral fellow at the MASRC. Born in Mexico City and raised in Los Angeles, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Chicana/o Studies at UCLA in 1993 at the height of the student hunger strike for a Chicana/o Studies Department. She later taught Latina/o elementary students in the Long Beach Unified School District, college students at the University of Michigan, and adult students in the Detroit Public Schools. In 2000, she completed a master’s degree in literacy and educational technology at the University of Michigan. For her master’s thesis, she investigated how Latina/o familial funds of knowledge can be harnessed for computing and literacy learning. Her research was published in Scholars in the Field: The Challenges of Migrant Education and won the Judith and Howard Sims Medal Award in 2001. Dr. Carrillo has also written about the engendered genre of humor casero mujerista (womanist humor of the home) in the landmark book Chicana/Latina Education in Everyday Life: Feminista Perspectives on Pedagogy and Epistemology. She was awarded membership into the National Council of Teachers of English Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Grant Program from 2000-2002. Her dissertation focuses on how Latina mothers’ everyday ways of knowing make use of three communicative practices — oral, literate, and embodied. Her scholarship is informed by her experience as a community activist in organizations like MANA of Detroit, a Latina organization. She continues to examine the role of Latina mothers in constructing and reflecting ways of knowing that are pedagogical and aesthetic, as well as instrumental in the academic, personal, and communal well-being of Latina/o adults and youth.

Scott Carvajal, is an Assistant Professor/Associate Research Professor, and has been at the MASRC since 2000. He also holds joint faculty appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Division of Health Promotion Sciences in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology with a Minor in Quantitative Methods from the University of Houston in 1996. He also received an M.S. in Psychology from the University of Houston and completed an M.P.H. from the University of Texas School of Public Health during his post-doctorate at the latter institution. Dr. Carvajal’s research is in health, applied social, and quantitative psychology, though he also integrates theories and advances from cultural psychology, research design and evaluation, personality psychology and health education. At the UA, Dr. Carvajal has received funding by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to investigate integrative models of risk and protective factors for Latino and non-Latino youth. He also is a co-investigator on other large-scale, Latino-focused health research projects being conducted by the Arizona College of Public Health and Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Carvajal teaches the undergraduate course, Sex, Health & AIDS, offered through MAS as part of the general education curriculum, and he teaches the Advanced Research Methods course in the MAS graduate program.

Antonio "Tony" Estrada is a Professor of Mexican American Studies and Public Health, and has been with the MASRC since 1991. He received his master's and doctorate degrees in Public Health, graduating from the UCLA School of Public Health in 1986. His primary interests are in Hispanic health, focusing on health promotion and disease prevention within this population. Additionally, he is very interested in applied public health policy as it affects the health status and access to health care among Hispanics. He is the principal investigator of a five-year study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), to develop, implement and assess a culturally innovative HIV/AIDS risk reduction program targeting Hispanic injection drug users and their female sexual partners in Tucson (One To One Program). He is also the principal investigator for another NIDA funded study on the U.S.-Mexico border, targeting Mexican-origin drug injectors for HIV/AIDS risk reduction (Por Nosotros). Dr. Estrada also teaches chronic disease epidemiology, Hispanic health, and applied research methods at the University of Arizona.

Jaime Fatás Cabeza (Profesor Superior de Música, MMA) is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Arizona in Tucson and director of the Undergraduate Program in Translation and Interpretation in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the MASRC. He is a faculty member at the UA National Center for Interpretation, Testing, Research, and Policy. Jaime is accredited as a Federal Court Certified judicial interpreter and translator, as a medical and conference interpreter, and as a translator (Eng. to Spa.) by the American Translators Association. He has been a staff judicial interpreter, translator and supervisor for the Trial Court of Massachusetts; Operations Supervisor of Interpreting Services at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and president elect of the Judicial Interpreters of Massachusetts. He is an official translator and interpreter for Spanish and Mexican consular offices. Jaime has taught Translation and Interpretation at the School for Professional Studies at Boston University, at Bentley College, and Music and Spanish Language and Culture at Tufts University. Jaime has been a staff translator and editor for school and college divisions at Houghton Mifflin, Prentice Hall, and Simon and Schuster. He has published literary, technical, and academic translations. Recent releases include the books El estudio de la orquestación (The Study of Orchestration by S. Adler/ Juilliard School of Music/Norton Publishing Co., 2006), and La búsqueda de la seguridad (Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse by L. Najavits/Harvard University, 2006). Currently he is translating Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2., a book of scholarly articles about a recently restored Chichimec codex from 1580. The project is sponsored by the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

As the daughter of Kickapoo, Commanche and Macehual peoples who migrated across present-day United States and Mexico, Patrisia Gonzales specializes in Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous medicine. She was an Advanced Opportunity Fellow at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the Department of Life Sciences Communication. Her works have been cited in various anthologies and scholarly endeavors and she has received various human rights award for the national Column of the Americas, which she co-authors with Roberto Rodriguez, and for her book The Mud People: Chronicles, Testimonios & Remembrances (Chusma 2003). Her scholarship examines Indigeneity from a hemispheric perspective; Indigenous communication practices; Mesoamerican symbols and codices as medicinal texts; and Indigenous medicine as a parallel system(s) of knowledge that challenge and expand the paradigms of Western Science. As a Kellogg Fellow, she explored community healing and Indigenous medicine and helped to establish a promotora project on traditional medicine in New Mexico. She is a promotora of Mexican Indigenous Medicine and an herbalist. She apprentices with Macehual elders as a Traditional Birth Attendant. As a “promotora-investigadora” or community health promoter-researcher, her courses and research combine applied Indigenous medicinal knowledge with explorations into under-girding philosophies and world views. She collaborates with the Indigenous Birthworkers Network and is affiliated with the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute at the University of Washington.

Dr. Anna Ochoa O'Leary, an adjunct lecturer at the MASRC, received her doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. Her dissertation, "Investment in Female Education as an Economic Strategy among U.S.-Mexican Households in Nogales, Arizona," was supported by NSF funding. She has been a lecturer at the MASRC since 2000, teaching a range of classes on Mexican American culture and contemporary issues related to U.S. Latinos. A Chicano Studies textbook based on her teaching Overview of Mexican American Studies (MAS 265) was published in 2007 by Kendall Hunt Publishing. She is also a 2006-2007 Fulbright Scholar. Her current research and teaching interests continue to focus on the education, culture and urban politics of Mexican/U.S.-Mexican populations, the political economy of the U.S.-Mexico border, and gender issues. Her community activities include participation in several non-profit community-based groups, such as the Arizona Border Rights Foundation, Fundación México, and Las Adelitas Political Association.

Lydia R. Otero is an assistant professor at the Mexican American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona where she teaches courses in Chicana/o culture and history. She received a master’s degree in history from California State University, Los Angles, and her Ph.D., also in history, from the University of Arizona. Her research concentrates on the histories of diverse ethnic groups in the Southwest, with an emphasis on Chicanas/os, gender and racial formations, border, urban, cultural and social history. Her article, “Refusing to be Undocumented: Mexican Americans in Tucson during the Depression Years” is included in, Visions in the Dust: Arizona through New Deal Photography, published in 2005 by the University of Arizona Press, and she is currently in the process of completing a manuscript that examines urban renewal, historical preservation and the politics of saving a Mexican past.

Gregory Rodríguez was born in Los Angeles, California and attended high school in Sacramento, California. Rodriguez, received his B.A. in History from California State University, Sacramento, in 1990. He attended the University of San Diego, California, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History. His research interests include the historical uses of popular culture for the mobilization of ethnic, national, and gender identities within Mexican nationals and Mexican-American communities. His dissertation is entitled, "‘Palaces of Pain’–Arenas of Mexican-American Dreams: Boxing and the Formation of Ethnic Mexican Identities in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles." He is also interested in advancing the fields and techniques of Oral History and Public History in the Tucson area.

Roberto Rodriguez is a research associate at the Mexican American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona. He is a longtime-award-winning journalist/columnist who returned to school in 2003 in pursuit of a Master's degree (2005) and a Ph.D. in Mass Communications (Jan. 2008) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Many of his awards have come about in the area of defense of the First Amendment and human rights. He returned as a result of a research interest that developed pursuant to his column writing concerning origins and migration stories of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. His current field of study is the examination of maize culture, migration, and the role of stories and oral traditions among Mexican and Central American peoples. For the past several years, in conjunction with UCLA's César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies – where he and Patrisia Gonzales were named Distinguished Community Scholars in 2003 – he has also embarked upon collaboratively creating Indigenous Studies within the discipline of Mexican/Chicana/o Studies. His work, based on a series of interviews with Indigenous elders throughout the continent, has resulted in several documentaries, including: Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan – We Are One (2005). He continues to write Column of the Americas, a column first syndicated by Chronicle Features, then Universal Press Syndicate. He was a senior writer for Black Issues in Higher Education from 1990-2000 and is the author of: Justice: A Question of Race (Bilingual Review Press, 1997).

Andrea Romero is an associate professor at the MASRC. She also has appointments in Psychology and Family Studies & Human Development. Born in Visalia, California, she grew up in the Southwest United States, including Vallejo, California; Oxnard, California; El Paso, Texas; and Farmington, New Mexico. She has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology with emphasis in quantitative methodology, Latino/a psychology, and adolescent health. Her research interests include studying cultural factors that may prevent ethnic and racial health disparities. She has published several articles that focus on sources of resiliency found in ethnic identity, families, and low-income neighborhoods. One of her research projects is a hip-hop based curriculum to prevent substance use and increase physical activity by empowering youth through their ethnic identity and neighborhood resources. She is currently collaborating with the City of South Tucson Drug Free Community to prevent youth substance use. She teaches MAS 280: Social Perspectives in Mexican American Studies; MAS 365: Latinos/as: Emerging Social Issues; and MAS 587: Chicana Gender Perspectives. To visit Prof. Romero's web page, go to http://fp.arizona.edu/profromero/

Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, MASRC adjunct lecturer, specializes in research and teaching on Mexican-American women's history, human rights, and immigration issues. A native of Douglas, Arizona, Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Law and Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has taught at Pima Community College since 1969 and, since 1983, at the University of Arizona, where her primary focus has been the history of Mexicanas and Chicanas. She has taught courses on Mexican and Latin American history as well as developed curricula on Afro-American, Yaqui and Tohono O'odham histories. Rubio-Goldsmith has won numerous awards for teaching excellence. She has presented papers on Mexican women on the U.S.-Mexico border, a subject she has studied for many years, before national and international conferences, and published the results of her research in several scholarly articles. Rubio-Goldsmith is currently researching for a book on women who fled the Mexican Revolution to take refuge in Southeastern Arizona. Students and colleagues know her as a community activist devoted to immigration rights, women's rights, and civil rights in general. As a member of several community boards and as a public speaker she constantly presents a Chicana perspective. Since 1994 she has been active in providing information on the Zapatista Revolution in Mexico through Pueblo Por La Paz in Tucson, and the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico.

Tom Gelsinon is the managing editor of the Center's books, journals and research reports. Areas of expertise include writing, copy editing, typesetting, and library research. Education: M.A., Journalism, 1989, The University of Arizona; B.A., Psychology, 1977, Kean College (New Jersey). Publications include: Introduction to Perspectives in Mexican American Studies, Vol. 7 (2000); Book Review, Hecho a Mano: The Traditional Arts of Tucson's Mexican American Community in the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies (2001); and “An Exploratory Study of Bi-National News in Mexican and American Border-Area Newspapers, 1977-1988." MASRC Working Paper Series No. 15.

Kelley Merriam Castro originally comes from western Washington State. She has a BS in Biology and a BA in Spanish from Washington State University, and a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona. She has lived in Guadalajara, Mexico, studied at the University of Guadalajara, and performed her thesis research on the Cuban education system in Havana, Cuba. She has lived in Tucson for nearly six years. She is on the board of Fundación México, a non-profit organization with the mission of Educación, Servicio, Tradición for Mexican and Mexican-Americans living in the United States. She is also on the board of Los Descendientes del Presidio de Tucsón, a non profit organization dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Tucson’s Spanish and Mexican heritage. She has three years of full-time experience at the University of Arizona, with experience working in Latin American Studies, projects in bilingual Public Health, and improving K-12 education in multilingual, multicultural school districts in Tucson.

Veronica Peralta has been working for the University of Arizona since 1994. She worked her way through her bachelor's degree as a student employee in Geography and Regional Development. Upon graduation, she began working full time at the Center for Latin American Studies, climbing steadily from Receptionist to Business Manager during her eight years with CLAS. She joined the MASRC in May 2006, providing the Center with extensive experience in office management and small department administration.

Adela Sanders joined the MASRC in August of 2002. Previously, she was employed for 10 years at Pima Community College, where she worked as a Senior Registration Technician in the International Admissions Office. She also has worked in an accounting office for several years. She earned an Associate degree in Business and Education (with honors) from Pima Community College. While at Pima she was the recipient of the College's Staff Recognition Award. For three years, she was secretary of the Ballet Folklorico Tapatio in Tucson. Sanders says, "I enjoy working for the University of Arizona, and especially with the MASRC, because it gives me the opportunity to help students, the public, faculty and staff. To work with students is very rewarding work."