Cabinet Members - Heidi L. Barajas
Heidi L. Barajas is an associate professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarly work focuses on institutional issues surrounding access and equity. Her most recent work “Racialized Space: Framing Latino and Latina Experience in Public Schools” will be published next fall in Teachers College Record. In this article, Dr. Barajas examines challenges students of color face in the public school. Her findings suggest an underlying assumption on the part of public school personnel that public schools are race neutral, or color-blind spaces and that most students respond to them as such. However, her data collected on Latino and Latina school experiences indicated that although race neutrality was the assumption, race neutrality might not be what occurred. Instead, Dr. Barajas found that organizational spaces were racialized; that is, taken-for-granted notions of race mediated the relationship between the school and the actors that comprised it. She also considered how racialization determined power in the relationships and ultimately how policy was practiced in a school space.
Dr Barajas’ is currently integrating research into her teaching practice and community engagement. Her classes participate in civic engagement through service learning, which provides students with the opportunity to learn about their social world by serving in the larger community surrounding the University. She is also on the Board of Hope Community, Inc., and recently created a partnership with the Hope for research on this unique organizational model. Dr. Barajas is also the co-chair of the Emily Grey School Accelerated Learning Charter School Advisory Board.
All of Dr. Barajas research, teaching, and community involvement is a reflection of her life as a mother of 4 outstanding children and 2 equally outstanding grandchildren.