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A Lasting Legacy
by Libby Castillo
– EMERITA, BERTHA PEREZ, PH.D. Professor Emerita, Bertha Perez, Ph.D., is known for her lifelong personal and professional commitment to improving literacy. Through the Bertha Perez Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Biliteracy Research she is continuing her life’s mission. Her contribution to the College of Education and Human Development (COEHD) was matched by H-E-B and used to create a professorship in support of biliteracy research.
On September 1, 2020, Lucila Ek, Ph.D., was selected as the recipient of the Dr. Bertha Perez Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Biliteracy Research. Born in Yucatan, Mexico, Ek immigrated to the U.S. at the age of four. She attended public schools in Los Angeles where she became aware of disparity in the quality of education between working-class immigrant and other children. This fueled her concern for issues of equity and access in education.
“I first started reading Dr. Perez’s research when I was a grad student,” she said. “One of the first book reviews I did was actually on one of her books, Becoming Biliterate and I remember being star struck when I came to UTSA and I saw her in the elevator. So now to have the Dr. Bertha Perez Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Biliteracy Research is really a great honor and it really just shows how things come full circle.”
In 2019, Ek became the Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) of the Sarah King Elementary-UTSA’s Turnaround through a Research Partnership Project (SKE-UTSA), and was able to add a biliteracy focus.
Ek joined fellow COEHD faculty and students from two departments including: Sam DeJulio, Ph.D., Co-PI; Sarah Aguire, project manager; Iliana Alanis, Ph.D.; María G. Leija, Ph.D.; Gilberto P. Lara, Ph.D., and Kenya Vargas, Graduate Research Assistant.
“Our goals for the research were to support in-service bilingual teachers in dual language classrooms and foster children’s biliteracy development,” she said “Our service goals were to support the teachers in lesson planning using multi-cultural children’s literature and to work with the children on their oral language, reading and writing skills to develop their biliteracy.”
Legacy is a theme for Ek. Her father was one of her very first literacy teachers who taught her to read and write in Spanish, Ek said, “Part of the endowment will allow me, in a way, to honor his legacy because education was so important to him.”
In 2020 the team carried on, working on what they could. They shifted from data collection at Sarah King Elementary, to focus on data analysis and dissemination of their research. In February of 2020 the team presented their work to the annual conferences of the San Antonio Area Association of Bilingual Education (SAAABE) and the Literacy Research Association (LRA).
With the roll out of COVID-19 vaccinations, and as the world begins to return to a degree of normalcy, Ek and the team already have their eyes set on furthering their research through a partnership with UTSA and San Antonio Independent School District.
“It is just a dream to be an endowed professor and carry on the legacy of an amazing scholar,” Ek said. “There are so few of us Latina Ph.D.s, Latina full professors and Latina Endowed Professors, so it is such an important goal to keep opening and furthering that pipeline.”
