HSI promotes inclusive excellence with appointments of award-winning faculty

 

POSTED ON Apr 19, 2020

 

Early this spring, the UTSA College of Engineering welcomed engineering faculty. According to the announcement, Karina Vielma will spearhead an engineering education program and support the mentoring of female, Hispanic and first-generation engineering students.

With a record of research accomplishments in bioinformatics, and expertise in digital signal processing and artificial intelligence (AI), Mario Flores will teach students in both the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering,

“UTSA is recognized as a leader among U.S. universities in advancing high-quality education outcomes for Hispanic students, and as an HSI, the university has an outsized opportunity and particular responsibility to promote the success of faculty who identify as Hispanic/Latino,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “As faculty who are at the cutting edge of their fields and who identify as Hispanic/Latino, they will contribute to enhancing the inclusive support system for COE faculty and students, of whom 22% are female and 50% identify as Hispanic/Latino.”

UTSA said both hires were enabled through the Accelerating Faculty Diversity Hiring Program. The FDP facilitates the hiring of diverse faculty who will advance inclusive excellence at UTSA through enhancing student success, research and academic distinction outlined in the President’s Vision and Strategic Plan for UTSA. Since the FDP program was implemented in 2019, UTSA has successfully hired five additional diverse faculty to date.

Also joining the college is Sergio Alcocer, a fellow of the American Concrete Institute, and former president of the Academy of Engineering of Mexico. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017 for his work on enhancing seismic safety of buildings in developing countries through improved design standards and government policies.

Most recently, Vielma led the National Science Foundation National Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Network Coordination Office-Education and Community Outreach grant with JoAnn Browning, dean of the College of Engineering, to build inclusion within the natural hazards engineering community with a Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and a summer institute for early-career faculty and national hazards engineering community members.

Vielma joined the UTSA faculty as an assistant professor of engineering education, the first position of its kind. She is a joint hire between the College of Engineering and the College of Education and Human Development. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a master’s of education in technology degree in education from Harvard University, and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from UTSA.

She also has considerable experience mentoring students from groups underrepresented in higher education and cultivating programs to advance diversity and inclusion in higher education. She managed the Latina/o Cultural Center for MIT-Harvard University in its inaugural year (2002), was the assistant dean for academic programming in the Office of Minority Education at MIT (2006–2008) and won MIT’s Infinite Mile Award for Innovation & Creativity (2007).  She has also held positions in the McNair Scholars Program at St. Edward’s University (assistant director) and UTSA (program manager).

Flores earned his bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico, a master’s degree in applied mathematics from UTSA, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, also from UTSA.

Since completing his doctorate in 2015, he has served as a postdoctoral fellow at NIH in computational biology with a specific impact on identifying human genomic regulatory regions to infer their functionality. During his doctoral studies, he also worked in the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at UT Health San Antonio, where he contributed to the first published database of RNA methylation in the world.