Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos, Ph.D., has been appointed chair of the Department of Education and Murchison Endowed Professor of Education at Trinity University. He will also serve as executive director of the Center for Educational Leadership. Previously, Jiménez-Castellanos was associate professor and director of educational leadership as well as founding director of the Latinx education research center at Santa Clara University. He also served as a visiting scholar in 2016-17 at University of California, Berkeley and affiliated with the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) at Stanford University. He began his academic career at Arizona State University where he served as assistant professor and associate professor.
Jiménez-Castellanos is a distinguished scholar, having published more than 50 research articles or book chapters in leading journals such as Teachers College Record, Journal of Educational Finance, and Review of Educational Research. His areas of scholarly expertise include k-12 school funding, parent engagement and its impact on opportunity, equity and outcomes in low-income and linguistically diverse communities.
Since 2018, he has been a Diversity Scholar Network Fellow at the University of Michigan, a group whose members engage in interdisciplinary and multi-institutional scholarship about diversity, equity, and inclusion in education and society. In 2017, he received the Early Career Award from the Hispanic Research SIG of the American Education Research Association (AERA), the leading research association in the discipline, and a 2012 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Throughout his career, his research has been supported by grants from the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation, the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), the Ford Foundation, and the Morrison Institute of Public Policy. Twenty-five years ago, he began his professional career as a tutor and classroom teacher in Sacramento and Chula Vista, Calif.
As chair, Jiménez-Castellanos will provide leadership, as well as budgetary, program, and administrative oversight to the Department of Education. He is charged with continuing to uphold the high standards of the department after taking over as chair from interim chair Norvella Carter, Ph.D., who led the department for one year as the department conducted a national search. Jiménez-Castellanos will also oversee the professional development of the faculty, the administration of the department’s graduate degree programs in teaching, school leadership, and school psychology, and partner with area schools and school leaders throughout Bexar County.
Additionally, he will oversee the grant-funded Trio program, Upward Bound, which provides opportunities for participants to succeed in their pre-college coursework in high school and ultimately in their college pursuits. He will also assist in the management of another grant-funded program, the College Advising Corps, which places exceptional recent graduates on high school campuses as near-peer college advisors to lead low income, first generation and underrepresented students to college. Lastly, he will oversee the Center for Educational Leadership including the $5-million Walton Family Foundation grant to develop leaders with the capacity to lead and develop innovative schools in diverse communities.
“The Department of Education at Trinity has continued to be an anchor program for our University, and Dr. Jiménez-Castellanos will be a committed advocate, creative problem-solver, and competent representative for the high standards of inclusive excellence that we strive to uphold on campus and in our community,” says Deneese L. Jones, Ph.D., vice president for Academic Affairs. “His scholarly record, vision for the future, and practical insights will be a keen addition to an already stellar department.”
Jiménez-Castellanos earned his doctoral degree at Claremont Graduate University jointly with San Diego State University. He received his master’s degree in policy studies in education and his bachelor’s degree in liberal studies and multicultural education from California State University, Sacramento.
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