Dr. Michelle Cantu-Wilson is the Director of Teaching and Learning Initiatives and Special Projects at San Jacinto College in southeast Houston. In her current role in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, she works as the liaison to Frontier Set and the Aspen Institute, Texas Pathways, Achieving the Dream, and AVID-Higher Education. Michelle helps support faculty through large scale and small-scale teaching and learning projects and helps coordinate discipline enrichment events each year. Michelle is also involved in helping to onboard all new faculty through CETL’s year-long New Faculty Academy.

Over the past year, Michelle has worked closely with the Equity, Education, and Excellence Department at the college and has been involved in district-wide equity work that has seen the creation of college-wide Equity Chats for employees. These chats aim to create a safe space where colleagues can discuss equity issues such as racial injustice. Some of the equity work included hosting speakers such as Dr. Estala Bensimon, Dr. Sara Goldrick Rab, Dr. Luis Ponjuan, and Dr. Tia McNair.

Michelle proudly serves on the San Jacinto College Chautauqua Series committee. The San Jac Chautauqua Lecture Series features monthly or bi-monthly presentations to discuss relevant and timely topics open to employees. Often these will be national topics of interest such as the current topic of racial equity, yet they will also relate to the strategic mission of San Jacinto College and community-based action and learning.

Prior to her current role, Michelle was a faculty member at SJC in the developmental education department on Central campus. There she taught integrated reading and writing and the college’s student success course. It was during her time as a professor that Michelle created the San Jac 1^st Gen student club and mentoring program aimed at supporting first generation college students through mentoring relationships with faculty and staff who were once first gen students themselves. Together with other faculty, Michelle also created the first athlete mentoring program for basketball and volleyball players at Central campus. Michelle also worked Office of Judicial Affairs and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to create and lead district-wide trainings on supporting students with autism.

In her previous career, Michelle was a junior high assistant principal in Pasadena ISD for six years. Prior to this, she taught 7^th and 8^th grade English, was a department chair, cheerleading sponsor, soccer coach, and for one proud moment, Teacher of the Year at Jackson Intermediate. Michelle also taught 4^th and 5^th grade bilingual and 3^rd grade in the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District in Baytown, Texas.

Michelle was a first-generation college student who attended Ranger College on a dance scholarship and earned an associate degree before transferring to the University of Houston where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and psychology.  She earned her Master of Education degree in Public School Leadership at UH Main Campus before earning her Doctor of Education degree in Higher Education Leadership from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Michelle is a member of the Texas Community College Teachers Association (TCCTA) and a former Faculty Fellow. She is a member of the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE) and is the co-host of Latinx Learners along with Daniel Villanueva, Vice President of Enrollment at the University of Houston-Downtown. She is also a member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

Michelle was raised by her grandmother and is from Brownsville, Texas. She resides in Houston, Texas with her husband, Brock, her three children, Emma, Ava, and Easton, and her dogs Sonny and Bella. She is an avid reader and writer, and her go-to motto is “Nothing bad is going to happen if you care about your students too much.”