Biography

Cynthia Bejarano, a native of the southern New Mexico border, received her BA and MA from New Mexico State University and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 2001.  She joined the Department of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University, where she was a professor until 2014, and then joined the Interdisciplinary Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies Department as a Regents Professor.  She is the Stan Fulton College of Arts and Sciences Endowed Chair since 2010. 

Bejarano is an advocate for farmworker students and their families. Since 2002, she has served as the NMSU Principal Investigator of the U.S. Department of Education’s College Assistance Migrant Program, where the program has served 534 first-year students at NMSU. She has worked in advocacy for farmworkers since 1995. In 2015, the NMSU CAMP program was recognized through the White House Excellence in Education for Hispanics ‘Bright Spot’ Initiative. As children, her great-grandparents, grandparents and parents worked in agricultural fields in southern Doña Ana County, which serves as her inspiration for working with farmworking families.

For her dedication in and outside of the classroom she has received the Donald C. Roush Excellence in Teaching Award in 2008, the 2010 Annual Governors Award for Outstanding New Mexico Women, and the Critical Educators in Social Justice (CESJ) Special Interest Group's Community Advocacy Award in 2011 from the American Educational Research Association.    In 2014, she served as one of five tribunal judges specializing in international human rights and gender-based violence for the Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico.  In 2018, Bejarano received the Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation’s Outstanding Graduate Alumna Award, and in 2019, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Society of Leadership and Success (a student nominated award).