Dra. Aurora Chang, PhD, Director of and Associate Professor of the Higher Education Program and NCFDD liason

Once an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala and raised in Richmond, California in a family of eight, Dra. (Doctora) Aurora Chang is now the Director of and Associate Professor of the Higher Education Program and National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development (NCFDD) liaison for Loyola University Chicago. She teaches transdisciplinary courses on social justice education, curriculum and pedagogy. Her professional experiences as a high school teacher, outreach program coordinator, academic enrichment services director, and student affairs administrator have greatly influenced the trajectory of her research which focuses on the intersection of education, identity, and agency within traditionally marginalized communities. Currently, she focuses on undocumented students' paths of educational survival, resistance and persistence, how these experiences affect the "American" sociopolitical landscape and what educators can do to support them.  Her first book, The Struggles of Identity, Education, and Agency in the Lives of Undocumented Students: The Burden of Hyperdocumentation, weaves together two distinct and powerfully related sources of knowledge: (1) her journey/transition from a once undocumented immigrant from Guatemala to a hyperdocumented academic, and (2) five years of ongoing national research on the identity, education and agency of undocumented college students.  She identifies as an activist-scholar-educator and is passionate about using her roles as platforms for teaching and learning about those who are silenced in the process of schooling.