Dr. Ann Lutterman-Aguilar,

Mexico Site Director and Global Faculty, lutterma@augsburg.edu

Ann (she/her/hers) earned her doctorate in international feminist theologies from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, which is part of the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California-Berkeley. She previously earned a Masters in Divinity (M.Div.), with a focus on Latin American Liberation Theologies from Yale University and her B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College after also having studied at Oberlin College& Music Conservatory.

Ann extended her study of religious diversity to other forms of cultural diversity, completing a certificate program in Intercultural Communication in 2000. In 2014 she was certified as a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory. In 2019 she became a Qualified Facilitator of the Global Competence Certificate. Most recently, she completed a Diploma in Media Studies.

Prior to joining the CGEE-Mexico staff in 1993, Ann worked as a campus minister at Penn State University and in a refugee camp in El Salvador during the revolution there. Her experience also includes anti-war activism and volunteer work with HIV/AIDS patients, in homeless shelters, battered women’s shelters, and a rape crisis center.

Ann's primary academic interests are in the areas of religion and social change, gender studies, intercultural communication, and experiential education. She enjoys hiking, reading, singing, playing with her black lab, and participating in community organizations that empower women. Ann is proudly a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S.A.

Ann is involved in the overall administration and curriculum development for the CGEE-Mexico site. She also teaches courses in Intercultural Communication, Religion, and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. In the spring she teaches "Intercultural Communication," "Social Welfare: U.S.-Mexico Relations," and “Undocumented, Ecofeminist, and Queer: Contemporary Latin American Liberation Theologies."

Antonio Ortega,

Global Faculty and Program Coordinator, ortega@augsburg.edu

Antonio (he/him/his) is currently completing his doctorate in History at the Colegio de Morelos. He earned his Masters degree in History at the Colegio de Morelos and his Licenciatura in Accounting at La Salle University in Mexico City. Antonio is a Certified Public Accountant who worked for several years in the Mexican stock market. However, he wasn’t happy wearing a suit and tie or living in Mexico City. He then went to Oxford, England, where he studied English, but after a year he felt homesick, so he moved to Cuernavaca, where he has lived happily ever after since 1990.

Prior to joining CGEE in January of 2003, Antonio spent several years teaching English and working at CETLALIC Alternative Spanish School, where he promoted the school and coordinated the Gay and Lesbian Studies Program. In 1999, Antonio received a Teaching Certificate from the Anglo American School.

Antonio is also a founder and active member of Grupo CD4, a non-profit organization devoted to fighting AIDS through sexual education. His primary academic interests are LGBT issues, literature, and history. He enjoys traveling, movies, reading, and writing.

He is happy to report that after 22 years with his partner Eduardo, they were married in Mexico City in the summer of 2014, as new laws providing social security for same-sex couples were passed earlier the same year.

Antonio teaches the HIS/WST course "Queer Histories in Latin America" and the POL/WST course "(Im)Migration, Gender, & Social Change. He also works with short-term faculty-led courses to Chiapas and Oaxaca.

Susan Carlin,

Social Work Instructor

carlins@augsburg.edu

Susan Carlin, MS, MSSW, LICSW will be the visiting Social Work Professor for the Spring of 2022 at the CGEE Mexico site. Susan completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Minnesota, a Master's degree in Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master's degree in Family Therapy at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. In addition, Susan completed a certificate in Chemical Dependency Counseling at the University of Minnesota.

Susan is currently a full time non-tenure track faculty member in the Social Work Department at Augsburg University and has a small private mental health therapy practice in St. Paul, MN. Courses that Susan regularly teaches include topics related to Family and Group Therapy, Internship Seminar, Diversity and Equality, and Supervision. In addition, Susan provides supervision for undergraduate social work students who are in a field placement, and graduates of Augsburg's MSW program who are working towards full clinical licensure.

Susan's focus clinically is working with clients experiencing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, members of the LGBTQI+ community, and individuals/couples/families. Susan uses a relational approach to her work with both clients and students; seeing people as able to create much more through connection with others than alone.

Personally Susan is married to her wife, Julie, and together they have one daughter as well as dogs, cats, and goats on their hobby farm in Wisconsin. Susan is thrilled with this opportunity to teach Social Work courses to undergraduate students at the Mexico CGEE site this Spring!

Susan will be teaching "Comparative Social Policies: U.S. & Mexico," "Working with Families and Groups: Theory & Practice," and the "Fieldwork Seminar" during the Spring 2022 program in Mexico.

Dr. Raziel Valino,

Part-Time Instructor

valinor@augsburg.edu

Raziel (she/her/hers) earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and Socio-Medical Sciences at Columbia University in New York City. Her dissertation focused on unaccompanied Mexican migrant youth that form part of a Minnesota-Morelos transnational circuit. Raziel also completed her MA/MPhil in Socio-medical Sciences at Columbia U after earning her Licenciatura in Social Anthropology at the UAEM (Autonomous University of the State of Morelos) .

Prior to her graduate studies in the USA, Raziel worked in Morelos on issues related to youth, gender, sexuality, identity, sexual and reproductive health, violence, and U.S.-Mexico migration. From 2004 to 2006, Raziel was a Research Assistant and Mexican Mentor for a summer program “Feeding the Family in Troubled Times,” which involved a bio-cultural study of patterns of work, consumption and nutrition at the household level in two communities of Morelos.

In 2009, while in New York, Raziel became involved with the Latino community, researching access to medical care and breast cancer screening, as well as the impact of mobility on HIV care and treatment.

Raziel has worked with Augsburg's CGEE programs in Mexico periodically for many years, serving primarily as an adjunct professor. She is currently a full-time faculty member at Augsburg University, where she is teaching hybrid/online courses.

In Spring 2022, Raziel will co-teach the Social Work course on Comparative Social Policies with Susan Carlin, as well as give interdisciplinary guest lectures on diverse topics. She will also be teaching full-time hybrid/online Sociology classes at Augsburg in Minneapolis.

Karla Vargas,

Adjunct Professor of Latin Dance

In 2009, Karla completed her degree in Physical Education at the Universidad Americana de Morelos (UAM). She then began teaching P.E. in public schools as well as private settings. She has been teaching Latin Dance for Augsburg University in Mexico since 2010. Karla has been spending time with CGEE students since she was a small child because her extended family hosted CGEE students.

Natividad (“Naty”) Rosas,

Office Manager

Naty was born in Mexico City and has worked at CGEE since 1991. Presently, she does administrative work and oversees payroll and daily, weekly and monthly budgets. She has two daughters and three granddaughters. Naty would love to practice her English with participants. She has lived in Puebla, Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Los Angeles, California. Naty likes to dance, sing karaoke, and get to know people.

Laura Castro,

Cook

Laura started working at CGEE in 2018. She enjoys cooking meals for the students and accommodating students with any diets they may have! She lives in the Nahua indigenous village of Amatlan de Quetzalcoatl and has previously cooked in hotels.

Moisés (“Moi”) Aguilar Vargas,

Grounds and Maintenance Manager

Moisés started working at CGEE in June of 2007, just a week before he and his wife Monica had their first child, Jatniel. He enjoys learning new things,

dancing, and music

Javier Resendiz,

Night Watchman and Driver

Javier started working for CGEE as a driver in 2010 and is currently one of our night watchmen. He is from Cuernavaca but has also lived in the U.S. Javier has two sons. He enjoys driving and practicing his English with students.

Adriana Montoya,

Cook and Driver

Adriana has been working at Casa Augsburg in the kitchen for almost nine years, cooking and organizing the menus pertaining to student ́s diet restrictions and allergies. She has substantial experience preparing meals for vegans, vegetarians and any other food diets students may have.

She has recently started driving for Casa Augsburg and has been enjoying her time transporting the students to their excursions or any other activities they have.

Previously, Adriana received students at her house for almost 17 years before she started working as a cook at Casa Augsburg. She creates a warm, comfortable environment for students.

Ariana ("Ari") Nicholson, nichols2@augsburg.edu

International Residence Assistant/Fellow

Ari Nicholson (they/them/theirs) is an organizer, farmer, educator, and community-builder excited to join the CGEE Mexico team for Spring 2022! They recently graduated Clark University with a Master's in Geography Information Science and a B.A. in Social & Environmental Justice. Most recently, they have been working on an organic farm and community organizing in Worcester, Massachusetts. They are a graduate of CGEE's Central America program, and are so excited to share in experiential education with students. They also love to cook, eat, rock climb, and be outside.

Fatima Mendoza, mendoza@augsburg.edu

Program Coordinator & Global Faculty

Fatima Mendoza (she/her/hers) is the newest member of Augsburg's CGEE-Mexico team. She will be coordinating your urban homestays, setting up the internships and fieldwork placements, teaching BIO 118 (Environmental Biology), and assisting with a variety of other tasks.

Fátima was born in Mexico City. When she was ten, she moved to Cuernavaca, where she grew up surrounded by beautiful green spaces with lots of ecological diversity.

She attended a Montessori school, where aside from the usual school subjects, she was introduced to a very conscious education, developing vegetable gardens, learning how to compost, developing habits such as waste separation, cultivating interest in these subjects, that endure until now.

She decided to study a degree in Environmental Science because this career had a social and interdisciplinary approach. She studied an Environmental Science Bachelor and then got a Master’s degree in Teaching of Science (biology) both at UNAM Campus Morelia.

In 2016, she had a great opportunity to do an internship with Dr. Peter Mclaren at Chapman University in Orange, California, where she included the Critical Pedagogy perspective in the Ecopedagogy framework of her master’s thesis Project.

She has focused on developing projects related to Education for Sustainability and the divulgation of science. She has also worked at a children’s museum in Guadalajara where she was in charge of the science divulgation and content development area. In 2018 she won a fellowship to do an intensive internship at Pavilhão do Conhecimento Science Museum in Lisbon Portugal.

She is also the mother of an 8-year-old very active child, and she’s very passionate about exploring landscapes and new places with him. She recently came back to Cuernavaca and joined the CGEE team. She is very excited to join the place where she can do what she enjoys the most and collaborate towards building transformative and significant education processes.

MA Mayarí Hernández Tamayo, Adjunct Professor of ART/SPA 231

Mayarí (she/her/hers) earned her MA in Art Analysis and Management at the University of Barcelona (Spain). Her thesis focused on the esthetic and sociological impacts of State strategies for artistic-educational administration with regard to identity and citizenship construction in Mexico from 1878 to 1994. She holds a BA (Licenciatura) in Art History from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, and a BA (Licenciatura) in Cultural Sciences from the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (University of the Cloister of Sor Juana / UCSJ).

Mayarí worked as the Educational Services and Academic Mediation Curator and Manager for the Culture Secretariat for the State of Morelos from 2016 to 2018, and was the Academic Advisor for the Morelos State English Program (Basic Education Institute of Morelos State / IEBEM) from 2016 to 2019. Prior to 2016 her work was mainly related to administration and academic management processes and curriculum planning processes for visual arts and introduction to the arts undergraduate programs.

Mayarí’s work as an independent cultural analyst and artistic-educational manager and researcher focuses on creating art-based pedagogical strategies favourable to community empowerment within high-risk environments. She has developed and conducted several workshops on art education critical pedagogies for community promoters, public school teachers and contemporary artists. She currently directs and curates Espacio Liminal (Liminal Space), an independent space whose main interest is in discussing, creating and producing transdisciplinary contemporary art projects.