Eliana Rojas, assistant professor-in-residence of curriculum and instruction in the Neag School of Education, has been selected as the Latina Citizen of the Year by the Connecticut Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission. She was honored during a ceremony on Oct. 24 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Hartford.

Rojas has been a mathematics teacher in Iowa and Chile and in bilingual schools in Connecticut.

Her research and work focus on building bridges through collaborations and partnerships between University faculty, educational institutions, communities, parents, and students in the United States and Latin America. In the past five years, she has secured two major grants for capacity building among teachers, parents, and students in environments with high populations of Latino English language learners.

She has been an advisor for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and an advisory board member of the UConn Puerto Rican & Latin American Cultural Center, with the goal of opening avenues for higher education in science, mathematics, and engineering, and improving the lives of Latino/a adolescents.