Argelia Lara, Ph.D. Dr. Argelia Lara is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Leadership Program at Santa Clara University. She comes to SCU from Mills College, where she served as an associate professor, earned tenure, and was awarded the Mary S. Metz Chair for Excellence and Creativity in Teaching Award. She received her PhD from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Systems, in the Social Science and Comparative Education division, with a specialization in race and ethnic studies. As the daughter of Mexican (im)migrants, she is part of the first generation in her family to attend and graduate from college. Dr. Lara’s lived experience of growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley informs her teaching, research and community work. Dr. Lara’s research and teaching interests lie in the overlapping areas of urban education, educational leadership, immigration, and immigrant education, where she draws from testimonios to understand the marginalization of underrepresented students in the K-PhD pipeline. She focuses on equity issues through Critical race and Latino Critical Theory frameworks highlighting critical issues in education, including the variability in educational attainment of first-generation (documented and undocumented) immigrant students and the role of educational leaders in assisting students in navigating the educational pipeline. Her scholarship highlights explicitly how the familial supports of immigrant students impact and informs students’ educational and occupational aspirations. Dr. Lara’s courses include Social Inquiry Methods, Moral and Ethical Basis of Leadership, Chicanx/Latinx Issues in education, and Issues of race and Ethnicity in Leadership decision Making, among others. She is excited to help prepare critically reflexive educational leaders.