Andrea-Teresa "Tess" Arenas

Director of Service Learning, UW
Faculty Affiliate, Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program

Education

• Ph.D. from UW Madison, Educational Administration in Higher Education with minor in Communication Arts

Biography:
Andrea-Teresa “Tess” Arenas came to UW Madison in summer of 2005 after an illustrious career working for then, President Lyall, as Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs and Senior Advisor to the President on Academic Diversity at UW System Administration. For 18 years, she defended, created and managed policy and budgets and practice as it related to faculty, staff, student and institutional race/ethnic diversity. She carried Design for Diversity through for the second five years and was the primary author of UW System’s Plan 2008: Educational Excellence through Race/Ethnic Diversity. She comes to CLSP with extensive experience working with communities of color across Wisconsin, Wisconsin legislature, Governor’s office, Chancellors, faculty, staff and students of the 26 UW campuses. As an award winning policymaker and consultant to universities across the country, she has created deep institutional change to advance higher education diversity. Arenas is also won awards for curriculum design and administrative leadership across the state of Wisconsin. She is currently the lead instructor for the Crossing Borders service learning course and faculty director of the College of Letters and Science, Office of Service Learning and Community Based Research. Active in Chicana Studies during her graduate program, Arenas is glad to come home to Chicana Studies.

Publications and Contributions

• Incorporating transnational social work into the curriculum. Co-authored with S. K. Webster & S. Magaña. In N. Negi & R. Furman (Eds.) Transnational Social Work Practice, Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
• Created award winning class, Crossing Borders: Environmental justice at the US-Mexico border; current goal is to develop a series of environmental justice service learning courses modeled after Crossing Borders in South Africa, China, India and indigenous areas of the US. A strength of these programs is to include students of color in study abroad opportunities.

Contact Tess Arenas

College of Letters and Science
Room 4211, Mosse Humanities Building
455 N. Park St. Madison, WI 53706
608- 890-0876 office