Eric R. Felix is the proud son of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants. Born and raised in Anaheim, California, I’m the product and beneficiary of public education from kindergarten to graduate school. I’m the first in my family to attend and graduate college. Now I get to be a faculty member at San Diego State University and do my best to fulfill our state’s promise of providing affordable, quality, and transformative education. I hold three principles dear to me —Partner, Parent, Professor— and do my best to be present and passionate for each. As an Associate Professor at SDSU, I lead the CCHALES Research Collective which focuses on examining the systems, structures, and practices within higher education that perpetuate racial inequity. Using Critical Policy Analysis, I explore the ways policymakers craft higher education reform and how institutional leaders implement them. Particularly, I focus on understanding how the implementation of lauded student success reforms may benefit, harm, or render invisible racially minoritized groups in the community college context. Ultimately, my work seeks to highlight the possibilities of policy reform and lift up the institutional stories of organizational change that improves racial equity in education.
