Project Directors

Adam Sawyer is Associate Professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Bakersfield where he also directs the Liberal Studies and  Bilingual Authorization programs.  His research explores the nexus of migration and education with a focus on Latinx children, youth, and families. He is also a specialist in the design and study of bilingual education programs and models for place-based and culturally sustaining pedagogies for English Learners and other historically minoritized populations, especially in rural California. His recent work has been published by International Multilingual Research Journal,  Journal of Latinos and Education, and Teacher Education Quarterly, and he is co-editor of the 2013 Teachers College Press Volume Regarding Educación: Mexican American Schooling, Immigration, and Binational Solutions. Previous to his academic career, Adam served as a Spanish bilingual elementary school teacher in California and as an academic consultant to the Mexican National Ministry of Education. He holds an Ed.M and Ed.D from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Oliver A. Rosales, Professor of History and former Faculty Coordinator of the Social Justice Institute at Bakersfield College, earned a B.A. in History at the University of California, Berkeley, M.A. in History at California State University, Bakersfield, and a Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a former Visiting Faculty at the Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Program and Visiting Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is contributor to The Chicano Movement: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century; Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth Century United States; and The Journal of the West. He served on the Nominating Board of the Organization of American Historians and is Board Chair with California Humanities.