UTEP Researcher Earns Grant to Study State Education Policies

Amy Bach, Ph.D., assistant professor of literacy at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), has received a Greater Texas Foundation research grant aimed at supporting postsecondary education among Lone Star students who live along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bach, from the Department of Teacher Education, focuses her research on education and literacy in the service of historically marginalized students. The three-year, $90,000 grant will allow her to continue research into the effect of the state’s accountability policies on the educational experiences of English Language Learners.

Amy Bach, Ph.D., received a Greater Texas Foundation research grant to support postsecondary education among Lone Star students who live along the U.S.-Mexico border. File photo.
Amy Bach, Ph.D., received a Greater Texas Foundation research grant to support postsecondary education among Lone Star students who live along the U.S.-Mexico border. File photo.

“Through this fellowship, I hope to discover ways to bring my academic work to bear on local, state and federal education policy,” said Bach, who added that she also will use her findings to further enhance UTEP’s teacher education program.

Foundation President and CEO Wynn Rosser, Ph.D., said the program was created to help Texas researchers identify the barriers keeping many Texas students from earning their college degrees within six years of their high school graduation. Bach’s proposed research was vetted and approved by a national review committee.

Bach has a long history of working with people from disadvantaged communities. She was a former bilingual and English language instructor in New York City public schools, and taught in community-based adult education programs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She used a past grant to develop and implement the nation’s first noncommercial youth-dedicated cable TV channel in New York City, and designed an integrated media arts and literacy program for Philadelphia public school dropouts as a visiting scholar at Temple University.

She earned her doctoral degree in literacy studies in 2010 from the University of Pennsylvania, her master’s in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in 1998 from Teachers College, Columbia University and her bachelor’s in Spanish in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

This is the third year that the foundation has awarded these fellowships.