AAHHE Community College Award

The AAHHE Community College Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated excellence in advocacy, teaching, or leadership and has provided significant contributions to the community college enterprise.

2023 Community College Award Recipient

Lydia CdeBaca-Cruz is committed to closing persistent equity gaps in higher education through decolonial curricular reform and engaging faculty development. She is currently a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin, adjunct faculty member at Austin Community College, and a Teaching and Learning Coach and Equity consultant with Achieving the Dream. At ACC, she served as Program Coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Studies: Mexican American Studies Program in addition to teaching courses in Composition and Literary Studies, Humanities, and Mexican American Studies and serving as the facilitator for the faculty development course, “Becoming an Equity Minded Instructor,” from fall 2020 through summer 2022.

CdeBaca-Cruz received her doctorate and master’s degrees in English, with graduate certificates in Mexican American Studies and Native American/Indigenous Studies, at the University of Texas at Austin. Her bachelor’s degree in English is from the University of Texas at Arlington, where, as a working-class Chicana and first-generation college graduate, the McNair Scholars Program set her on a course to fulfill her goals of activist scholarship. Lydia’s career has always been supported by her familia, including her mother, three sons, and partner, Eusebio, with whom she plays bass in a Latin reggae band.

List of past recipients of the AAHHE Community College Award: