For this two-part session TOI traveled 6 hours north of Los Angeles – to the California state capital of Sacramento and the campus of Sacramento State University. Doctors Lorena Camargo Gonzalez and Alma Itzé Flores are tenure track faculty in Sacramento State’s School of Education. In this first part the esteemed professors offer us rich and dynamic storytelling about their journey that has led them to their current level of success.In part two, Lorena and Alma help us begin to grasp the broader impact of Professor Solórzano’s UCLA Research Apprenticeship Course, commonly referred to as Danny’s RAC. Lorena and Alma help us understand the lineage and depth of community within Danny’s RAC by sharing how they have grown as people and developed as scholars with assistance from their femtors and mentors who were also nurtured in the RAC community. This episode was recorded on Tuesday June 11, 2024 a few days after the RAC30 reconvening.x`

Art Title: Pillars and Dreams of Our Generational Knowledge                                                                                   By: Luis-Genaro Garcia, PhD

Daniel Solórzano is a Professor in the University of California Los Angeles Department of Education as well as Chicana/o and Central American Studies. He is also the Director of the Center for Critical Race Studies in Education at UCLA.Danny is an interdisciplinary scholar with research and teaching interests in critical race theory, racial microaggressions and micro affirmations, and critical race spatial analysis. In 2017, Professor Solórzano was honored with the inaugrural Revolutionary Mentor Award by the Social Justice Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

“I see my mentoring as an extension of my teaching. To that end, I have been blessed with extraordinary students throughout my entire career at UCLA. Our students are the ones who carry forward the work for social and racial justice.”

Lorena Camargo Gonzalez [she/her/ella] is an Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Studies in Education and Gender Equity at Sacramento State University. Dr. Camargo Gonzalez earned her Ph.D. from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies with a specialization in Race and Ethnic Studies. She also holds a master’s degree in education from Long Beach State University and a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies with a concentration on Chicana/o Studies from Sacramento State University. Her educational experiences as an immigrant and first-generation college student inform her interdisciplinary approach in drawing from Critical Race theories, Chicana/Latina Feminist theories, and historical methods such as oral histories and archival research to address the following areas: 1) the activism of Latina/o/x librarians; 2) racial justice within library services, and 3) the history of Latina/o/x children’s literature.

Alma Itzé Flores  (she/her(s)/ella) is an Associate Professor in the Undergraduate Studies in Education Department at California State University, Sacramento (SacState). Dr. Flores was born in Jalisco, Mexico and raised in Santa Barbara, CA.She is an immigrant, first-generation college student, and mother to Xoaquín and Luna. She earned her B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Education Studies at UCLA,her M.A. in Bilingual and Bicultural Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, and her Ph.D. in Race and Ethnic Studies in Education at UCLA. As a Chicana feminist teacher-scholar, her research examines the educational pathways of Chicana/o/x/Latina/o/x first-generation college students, Chicana/Latina mothers, and the development and analysis of Chicana/Latina feminist pedagogies and research methodologies.