Dr. Felix Almaraz

Felix D. Almaraz, Jr., the Peter T. Flawn Distinguished University Professor of Borderlands History at UTSA and a former president of the Texas State Historical Association, received his B.A. and an M.A. from St. Mary 's University and Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. Dr. Almaraz 's teaching and research reflects an engagement with processes within Hispanic communities. His main teaching expertise lies in the Spanish borderlands, Texas, colonial Latin America, and Imperial and Modern Spain. In recent publications such as Knight Without Armor: Carlos E. Castañeda, A Biography of a Mexican-American Historian, 1896-1958 (Texas A&M University Press and Madero in Texas. Corona Publishing Co., 2001), Dr. Almaraz examines the lives and contributions of transnational historical figures. His most recent and significant grants include a 1994 President 's Distinguished Achievement Award, an Excellence in Research award in 1988, and a Senior Fulbright Lectureship in the Republic of Argentina.

Dr. Almaraz's research initiatives focus on the evolution of border culture, spanning from Spanish colonial times to the present. His essays have been published extensively in scholarly journals, including Southwestern Historical Review; The Americas, New Mexico Historical Review; Colonial Latin American Historical Review; Red River Valley Historical Review; Journal of South Texas; Great Plains Quarterly; Journal of Library History; Provincias Internas; Revista Coahuilense de Historia; and Revista Complutense de Historia de América. Dr. Almaraz has been internationally recognized through numerous awards and citations for his scholarship in borderlands history, including El Aguila de Tlaltelolco (Mexico), Encomienda Medalla de Mérito Civil (Spain), the Spur Award in Biography (Western Writers of America); Award of Merit (American Associateion for State and Local History); and the Luciano Guajardo Historical Awareness Award and Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History (Webb County Heritage Foundation).

Dr. Robert Ferrer

Robert Ferrer, MD, MPH is Associate Professor and Deputy Chair for Research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.  He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the Hahnemann University School of Medicine.  He completed his Family Medicine residency at Duke University and a National Research Service Award Fellowship and MPH at the University of Washington.  His research interests include the relationship between social class and health outcomes, as well as the effect of primary care on population health.  His work has been published in JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, and the American Journal of Public Health.  In 2002, he was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar. Dr. Ferrer practices and teaches at an outpatient clinic in downtown San Antonio that serves disadvantaged inner city residents.

His current collaboration with the Culture and Policy Institute involves examining how physician-patient communication influences the outcomes of diabetes care.

Dr. Norma Guerra received her M.A. in Education with an emphasis on curriculum and instruction at UTSA and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with a School Psychology Concentration at Texas A&M University. She has worked at UTSA in various capacities for a number of years and is currently assistant professor and Counseling Clinic Director in UTSA’s Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Adult Higher Education. Dr. Guerra was selected as a recipient of the 2006 South Texas Initiative for Mental Health Research (STIMHR) Summer Faculty Research Award. The research awards program helps faculty members develop competitive grant proposals to enrich mental-health research.

Her proposed project, "Assessing Engagement Styles: LIBRE Model Development," focuses on ameliorating counselor-client communication. Her proposed study examines cross cultural sensitivity in dyadic counseling sessions and according implications for access among Hispanics while providing an opportunity to further develop a LIBRE Model, an emerging, cognitively based approach consisting of problem-solving training, practice and dialogue to efficiently resolve client complaints. She is interested in the development and examination of a problem-solving framework which she calls the “LIBRE Model”. This systematic procedure relies on modeling and self-regulation to both address a client’s complaint as well as to provide a framework for future independent problem solving. As a result of her work in a variety of settings including counseling, teaching, and higher education she has determined that the approach can provide useful insight into the nature and level of usual engagement. Defined as various identifiable points along a continuum of attention ranging from initial to sustained, she is interested in exploring the potential contributions and applications of the LIBRE.