Faculty Bios and Research

Find your professor’s office hours or learn more about their background, teaching interests, research and more. Faculty are listed alphabetically by last name – visitors can click on the page navigation buttons to be taken to that part of the alphabet.

Professor and Department Chair of Chicana/o/x Studies

Adriana Pilar Nieto is Professor of Chicana/o/a/x Studies and currently serving as chair of the Department of Chicana/o/a/x Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Nieto has been faculty at MSU Denver for twenty years. She earned her PhD in Religious and Theological Studies from the Joint Doctoral Program and the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. Nieto’s teaching and research interests include Latina and indigenous women’s spiritualities and practices; post-partum and mental health among Chicanas in early 20th Century New Mexico; women of color feminisms; Chicana Protestants in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands; oral history; and acequia history, culture and politics in southern Colorado and New Mexico.

Office Hours: By appointment only | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 208

Lecturer

Karen teaches traditional and concurrent enrollment courses as a Lecturer II in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department. She serves as faculty lead for the department’s concurrent enrollment initiatives and co-lead of the Displaced Aurarian Scholarship Promise in partnership with Student Affairs. Karen is actively engaged in various committees and affinity groups on campus and is a doctoral candidate completing a degree in Leadership for Education Equity in Higher Education.

Office Hours: By appointment only | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 200

Professor

Chalane E. Lechuga, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies and the Director of Diverse Faculty Research and Development in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her research addresses issues of race/ethnicity and education, with an emphasis on Latina/o/x sociology. Her work has examined the relationship between the racial identities of Latina/o/x high school students and academic achievement.  Dr. Lechuga has also conducted research with a local public school district to examine school discipline and racial disparities in exclusionary practices. For the past fifteen years, she has conducted research on the recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty in higher education and developed and implemented programs and policies to support faculty retention and success. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Mexico, an M.S. in Sociology from the University of Denver and a B.A. in English and Ethnic Studies (Chicana/o Studies and Black Studies) from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  She is mother to a 5th grade student with whom she is actively working to reclaim the Spanish language. Dr. Lechuga is also a proud alumnus of Denver Public Schools.

Office Hours: By appointment only | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 211

Assistant Professor

Raúl Melgoza Jr. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies. His research focuses on relational racialization, Chicanx cultural politics, and coalitional activism since the mid-twentieth century. He is currently working on a book entitled, Chicanx Kinetics: The Forces and Motions of Settlerness in Chicanx Cultural Politics. A study of Chicanx expressive culture and social justice activism since the mid-twentieth century, Chicanx Kinetics explores how pilgrims, missions, and butterflies speak to how Mexican Americans navigate the ways racialization and settlerness intersect under U.S. settler colonialism in the Southwest.

Office Hours: In-person, Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:00-10:30 AM | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 109

Senior Lecturer

Jose Quintana is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chicana/o Studies.

Office Hours: By appointment only | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 203

Adjunct Faculty

Luis Torres, Ph.D., is a long-time educator and administrator, having taught in higher education since 1972, first as a Graduate student and then as English professor.  He attended the University of Colorado Boulder for his B.A. in English, and the University of Washington in Seattle for his M.A. and Ph.D. in English.

Dr. Torres taught English as a college professor in California and Colorado, and independently prepared to teach Chicana/o Studies.  He published about early Chicana/o poetry of the 1800s and about such issues as the English Only movement.  In 1995 he became Professor and Chair of Chicana/o Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.  In 2006 he became Associate Dean in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 Deputy Provost for Academic and Student Affairs.  He served as Co-PI for a Goals 2000 Grant from the U.S. Department of Education between Denver Public Schools and MSU Denver to develop Chicana/o and other Multicultural Studies curricula for ECE-12^th grade.

In 2012 Dr. Torres helped implement an affordable tuition rate at MSU Denver for undocumented students before Colorado approved the measure.  He served as Co-Chair, 2007-2016, of the HSI Initiative to achieve HSI designation from the U.S. Department of Education.  Among other education and community boards, Dr. Torres served on the Board of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) from1990-1998 and as General Coordinator from 1992-1994.   For his contributions to the discipline, he received the prestigious National NACCS Scholar of the Year award in 2016 and has received at least 20 other academic and community awards.  He is retired from MSU Denver but is very active in community educational efforts, recently completing, with others, a report for Denver Public Schools about the status of Latinos in DPS.

Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 205

Professor

I’d like to introduce myself. I hold a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Illinois at Chicago (an urban commuter institution like MSU Denver), and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, also in Spanish. I am a Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and I hold a courtesy appointment as an Associate Professor of Women’s Studies. I also have partial reassigned time from teaching to work with one of the University’s outreach programs as Director of the MSU Denver Family Literacy Program.

I suppose everyone their own ideas about what will save the world. Personally, I believe that education will, and that literacy is the key to educational success.  I further believe that literature helps us understand ourselves and the world around us. Not surprisingly, therefore, my primary areas of inquiry are literacy and Chicana/o/x_Latina/o/x literature.

Office Hours: Virtual, Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 AM-1:30 PM; Other Days/Times: By appointment only | Office Location: Rectory Offices, Room 100