Laura I. Rendón is Professor Emerita at the University of Texas-San Antonio. She is also an educational consultant and featured speaker at over 100 higher education institutions and conferences throughout the nation. Her presentations focus on topics such as student success, Latinx STEM students, and sensing/thinking deep learning experiences, as well as self-care and healing. Laura is a nationally-recognized student advocate, activist scholar and contemplative educator. She grew up in a low-income, single-parent household along the U.S. Mexico Border in Laredo, Texas where she learned to speak English in the first grade. Rendón is a passionate advocate for low-income, first-generation students who she feels have hopes and dreams but often do not know how to realize them especially without resources. She has held faculty and administrative appointments at a wide range of universities including the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University, Arizona State University, California State University-Long Beach, and Iowa State University and the University of Texas-San Antonio.
Challenging, inspiring, beautifully written, and unusual, this book calls readers to find ways to link mind and heart -- thinking and feeling -- to transform teaching and learning in higher education. Laura Rendon has illustrated how one can unite one's deep beliefs, values, and feelings, with one's keen analytical and intellectual abilities...an important, thought-provoking, and unique addition to the literature on teaching, learning, and the academic life. -The Review of Higher Education on the first edition