Leanna Lucero is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Health, Education and Social Transformation who specializes in teacher education and queer theory in education.
Lucero is the interim director of the School of Teacher Preparation, Administration and Leadership and the previous clinical director of the Elementary Teacher Education Program.
Lucero has a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the University of Texas at El Paso, a master’s degree in educational leadership and foundations and a Ph.D. from the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at UTEP. Her coursework focused on mathematics, science, technology education and queer issues in education. Her dissertation research forged new ground in scholarly knowledge about the ways in which marginalized LGBTQ+ youth use social media to create safe-identity spaces.
Lucero has held various roles in education along the Paso del Norte border region. Some of those roles include teaching in K-12 school systems, K-12 curriculum instructional facilitator, K-12 school administrator, university instructor, teacher education researcher, and working with pre-service and in-service teachers in the borderland.
Earlier this year, under Lucero’s leadership, the NMSU Elementary Teacher Education Program was recognized as the 2024 Billy G. Dixon Distinguished Program in Teacher Education. The award is given by the Association of Teacher Educators – the only national organization devoted to improvement of teacher education for both school and campus-based educators – to a program that exemplifies collaboration between local education agencies and institutions of higher education in program development and administration. Elementary Teacher Education faculty traveled with Lucero to Anaheim, California, to attend the annual Association of Teacher Education Conference and receive the award.
The Elementary Teacher Education Program provides teaching candidates with more than 900 hours of field-based experiences with elementary children and families.
“The collaborative development of our program helps us to achieve our program goals, align with state and national standards, and prepare socially just educators to work successfully in grades K-8 with children and families from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds,” Lucero said. “I am honored to have served as the director of elementary education and to work with amazing faculty, staff and students who share a vision of serving children and families in the borderland. I look forward to continuing to support all our programs, students, faculty and staff in the School of Teacher Preparation, Administration and Leadership in my new role as the interim director of TPAL.”