Dr. Nadia Alvarez Mexia was born and raised in Mexico. Nadia serves as an Assistant Professor of Practice and Director of Transborder Education Initiatives in the W.A. Franke Honors College and College of Education. She is an award-winning educator that has devoted her professional and teaching career to creating safe learning spaces and remarkable academic experiences that have brought recognition from the University of Arizona, as well as from NAFSA in the U.S. and institutions of higher education in Mexico. Nadia has an interdisciplinary background, with Information Systems bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM). She also has her Ph.D. in Teaching & Teacher Education with a minor in Language, Reading & Culture in the UArizona from which she received the Erasmus Circle Award 2006.
In 2018, Nadia was recognized with the Edith Sayre Auslander Established Visionary Award and the Human Relations Commission of the City of Tucson Recognition. She has different publications including co-author of the chapter book “Climbing Uphill” in Amplified Voices, Intersectional Identities: Volume 2. Recently, Nadia led a four-member grant recipient team and obtained the IDEAS (Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students) grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Capacity Building Program for U.S. Study Abroad. This grant will expand the institution’s Navigating Education in Borderlands Program (NEBP), a program through which UArizona students will build cultural competencies and learn about the history, people, and culture from the intersecting borderlands area where UArizona resides. She is one of the UArizona Hispanic Serving Institution Fellows 2018-2019 and Academic Leadership Institute Fellows 2020-2021.
Before joining the UA, Nadia worked for a decade in Mexico’s higher education system as a professor, mentor, and administrator within the ITESM Campus Monterrey and Mazatlán and other higher education institutions.
