With over 30 years of experience in higher education, Luzelma Canales has been appointed senior associate vice president for Student Success.
Canales worked as an internal auditor for 10 years at legacy institution University of Texas-Pan American. Then, for 15 years, she was an administrator for South Texas College and after that, she worked at Lone Star College in The Woodlands, north of Houston.
Recently, she served as the founding executive director for RGV Focus, a large-scale collective impact initiative to improve educational outcomes throughout the Valley, Canales explained.
Patricia McHatton, UTRGV executive vice president for Academic Affairs, said Canales’ experience in student success made her stand out.
“She has a very strong résumé around change and change initiative and how do you engage groups in the change process in a way that you bring everybody on board,” McHatton said.
Canales earned her master’s degree in business administration from UTPA and her doctorate in educational human resource development from Texas A&M University.
The position entails working around the idea of student success, making sure the students receive the resources and support they need during their college experience, ensuring timely progress and completion into graduation, along with the student transition into the workforce, McHatton said.
“She’ll be working very closely with [Associate Vice President for Student Academic Success] Dr. [Jonikka] Charlton with the advising, the folks that handle advising and also with [Rebecca] Gadson, the dean of students,” she said.
Asked what challenges the university faces and how she will address them, Canales replied that the job of any new supervisor is to listen and learn.
“I need to be able to spend a couple of months really learning what’s in place,” said Canales, who began her duties Oct. 29.
One of the common complaints students at UTRGV voice is not enough classes being offered, especially on the Brownsville campus.
Canales said part of her job is to educate the university community on other common practices across the state and nation.
“I do want it to be clearly understood that this is not just a UTRGV issue,” Canales said. “This is a university issue in general. It’s really difficult, many times, to replicate the exact same things on every campus.”
However, Canales said it is also important to understand the needs of the students and figure out how to better distribute them.
Some of her short-term goals are to establish a baseline, learn UTRGV retention numbers and understand barriers that students are facing.
In three to five years, Canales’ goal is to increase fall-to-fall retention and graduation rates.
“I just believe that education is the most important thing,” she said. “Education is the pathway to the middle class and in the region like ours, in the [Rio Grande] Valley, that’s really important.”
