2020-2021 New Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty Profiles
We are delighted to welcome each of our new tenured and tenure-track faculty members to the UTEP community. Many of our new colleagues have moved to El Paso from places across the globe—from California to Connecticut and Israel—while some have already been here at UTEP and are settling into new roles. We are grateful for their presence and look forward to the many contributions they will make as teachers, scholars, and leaders on campus and in the community. Welcome to UTEP!
Sandra Butvilofsky
Associate Professor, Department of Teacher Education
Dr. Butvilofsky joins UTEP from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), with a research focus in bilingualism and biliteracy development in bilingual learners, particularly Latino Spanish-English speaking children. She is especially interested in children’s biliterate writing development situated within a sociocultural and sociolinguistic framework. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, her research has examined bilingual children’s early conceptualizations of writing in both Spanish and English, and bilingual learner’s biliterate reading development via a biliterate reading trajectory. Dr. Butvilofsky’s work contributes to the field of bilingual education by demonstrating that bilingual learners draw upon multiple linguistic and semiotic resources to understand and participate in literacy tasks and activities. Dr. Butvilofsky earned her doctoral degree and master’s degree in bilingualism and biliteracy from CU, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Santa Clara University. While at CU, Dr. Butvilofsky served as the secretary on the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education for three years. She is currently a member of the Congress of Hispanic Educators, the American Educational Researcher Association, the American Association of Applied Linguistics, the Colorado Association for Bilingual Educators, and she regularly reviews manuscripts for scholarly journals including the Bilingual Research Journal, Urban Education, and conference proposals for the American Education Research Association. Most recently, Dr. Butvilofsky’s work received support from the National Professional Development (NPD) Program. She is the principal investigator for the English Language Acquisition Grant, Teachers Improving Learning in Dual Education. During her downtime, she enjoys hiking, traveling, and enjoying the arts.
Edna Martinez
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations
Dr. Martinez returns to her alma mater after having served as an associate professor of educational leadership and co-director of the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership program at California State University-San Bernardino (CSUSB). Her research agenda engages questions of policy and practice that influence the ways in which historically, underrepresented students experience and access higher education. Her most recent work is centered on the impact of the community-college baccalaureate, how faculty working conditions influence the learning conditions of students, and graduate student socialization and development. Her work has been published in The Journal of Higher Education, Community College Review, Studies in Higher Education, New Directions for Community Colleges, and the Community College Journal of Research and Practice, among several others. In 2017, Dr. Martinez co-authored a monograph for the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Higher Education Report Series. ASHE is the leading organization focused on the study of higher education. Since 1983, the ASHE Higher Education Report Series (formerly ASHE-ERIC) has been providing researchers, scholars, and practitioners with timely and substantive information on the critical issues facing higher education. Dr. Martinez served on the 2016 Division J American Educational Research Association (AERA) Program Committee as a section co-chair for Section 4: Faculty, Curriculum, and Teaching. She was recognized as a Dissertation Fellow by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and was awarded the 2018 Faculty Member of the Year by the Undocumented Student Success Center at CSUSB. Dr. Martinez is also a recipient of the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) research grant which supports research within the academic advising field. Dr. Martinez earned her doctoral degree in educational leadership from Clemson University, a master’s degree in educational administration from UTEP, and a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from UTEP. During her downtime, Dr. Martinez enjoys kickboxing, mountain biking, hiking, and all things music.
Johana Rocha
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Special Services
Dr. Rocha joins UTEP from Old Dominion University (ODU) with a research background in clinical supervision. Her research focuses on supervisee and supervisor preparation, and supervisee best practices in clinical supervision. She earned her doctoral degree in Education with a concentration in counselor education and supervision from ODU, her master’s in clinical mental health counseling from ODU, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia (UNAD) in Colombia. During the last year of her doctoral studies, Dr. Rocha was the associate director of behavioral health at Chesapeake Regional Healthcare in Chesapeake, Virginia. As a graduate student in 2016, she launched a free cost program at Chesapeake Regional Healthcare’s cardiopulmonary rehabilitation center, which offered patients experiencing congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mental health counseling services by mental health counseling interns. Her undergraduate studies provided her with the opportunity to complete her undergraduate internship with the program of domestic violence with the U.S. Department of Defense at the Fleet and Family Support Center in the U.S. military base in Atsugi, Japan. Dr. Rocha is the recipient of the Darden College of Education and Professional Studies Doctoral Fellowship Award (2018), the Association for Assessment and Research Counseling Donald Hood Student Research Grant Award (2019), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Research Grant Award (2019), and the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Research and Best Practice Grant Award (2019). In 2019, she and her research colleagues from her doctoral program received the Outstanding Research Award from Chi Sigma Iota -Omega Delta Chapter for the study titled, Structured Peer Feedback Exchange in Group Supervision of Beginning Supervisors, for which she was the second of five authors. Dr. Rocha is a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), and the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling (AARC). Dr. Rocha is from Colombia and is bilingual in English and Spanish. She shared she is looking forward to collaborating with her colleagues at UTEP on a variety of research on the border.
Wei-Ling Sun
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations
Dr. Sun comes to UTEP from the Texas Center for Educational Policy at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). Her research focuses on the sociopolitical contexts of equity-based reforms including issues related to school-to-prison pipeline in grades K-12, social justice leadership, and federal education policy implementation. She earned her doctoral degree in educational policy and planning from UT Austin, a master’s in cooperative superintendency program from UT Austin, a master’s in curriculum studies from UT Austin, and a bachelor’s in English literature from the College of Liberal Arts Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan. Dr. Sun is a 2019-2020 American Educational Research Association Congressional Fellow, which provided her the opportunity to serve as a legislative fellow at Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office. In 2016, she was competitively selected to participate in the University of Texas System Archer Center Graduate Program in Public Policy, and served as a program operations executive in the Cooperative Superintendency Program – a top-ranked educational leadership program at UT Austin. Dr. Sun is the 2015 recipient of the Activist Research Grant Award and Barbara L. Jackson Scholar Award. Dr. Sun worked as a curriculum coordinator and as an ELA teacher in bilingual schools, and worked as a policy expert and a data analyst in several civil rights organizations. She is a member of the American Educational Research Association, and University Council for Educational Administration. During her leisure time, Dr. Sun enjoys watching documentaries and swimming. She shared she is very excited about joining the UTEP family.
Justice Walker
Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education
Dr. Walker is a learning scientist with a research background in emerging technologies in biology and computer sciences and their use in K-12 education. His work focuses on examining how learners construct knowledge, engage in argumentation, and use design in scientific inquiry. Dr. Walker uses synthetic biology to explore how cells, much like programmable units, can be genetically modified or designed to behave usefully. He recently taught undergraduate-level cellular biology and genetics at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, and graduate-level courses in games, virtual worlds, and science education methods at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Dr. Walker is the co-organizer of the University of Pennsylvania Learn.Design.Bio, a collaborative of scientists, designers and educators who work on novel learning platforms and activities to advance biological design, synthetic biology, and computation education for K-12 students. He also helps organize the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Global Community Bio Summit, an annual gathering for scholars to cultivate an accessible commons of knowledge and resources, launch community labs and projects, and enable educators. Dr. Walker earned a doctoral degree from the UPenn Graduate School of Education, a master’s degree from the UPenn School of Engineering and Applied Science, and a bachelor’s in molecular biology and English Literature from the University of Miami. Dr. Walker has more than a decade of high school and university science teaching experience. His most recent work on an NSF grant involved the development of an open source low-cost portable wet lab device, called a bioMAKERlab, to promote synthetic biology in high school classes. Dr. Walker is a member of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, American Education Research Association, and National Science Teachers Association. During his leisure time, he enjoys bicycling, traveling, and hiking with his two dogs, Taffy and Langston.
