Miguel Estrada, PhD

Student Success
Director of TRIO Student Support Services

Education

  • PhD in Spanish and Portuguese, The University of New Mexico
  • MA in Spanish, The University of New Mexico
  • MEd in Education Administration, Houston Christian University
  • BA in Spanish, The University of Texas at El Paso

Courses Taught

  • All levels of Beginners and Intermediate Spanish
  • Spanish 3305 Conversational Spanish
  • Spanish 3308 Business Spanish
  • Spanish 3372 Spanish Film Studies
  • Spanish 3376 Hispanic Women Writers
  • Spanish 3378 Fantastic Literature
  • Spanish 3374 Hispanic Popular Music
  • Spanish 3380 Contemporary Hispanic Drama
  • Spanish 3324 Introduction to Hispanic Literature
  • Masterworks 4305 Mexican Literature
  • Masterworks 4306 Latin-American Literature
  • Masterworks 4307 Literature from Spain
  • Spanish 4324 Contemporary Spanish-American Literature
  • Senior Seminar on Peninsular Literature
  • Senior Seminar on Contemporary Latin-American Literature
  • Senior Seminar on Mexican short stories
  • Senior Seminar on Latin-American short stories
  • Freshman Year Seminar 1100
  • Freshman Year Seminar 1300
  • Senior Honor Thesis 4399
  • EDBI 3335 Spanish Writing Workshop
  • EDBI 5335 Spanish Writing Workshop
  • EDBI 5305 Second Language Acquisition
  • EDBI 6305 Foundations of Bilingual Education
  • EDBI 6307 Teaching: Math, Science, Social Studies in the Bilingual Classroom
  • EDBI 5350 Developing Literacy in the Bilingual Classroom
  • EDBI 5343 Hispanic Cultural Perspectives

Teaching Focus

Dr. Estrada’s teaching focus is on Spanish Contemporary Latin-American Literature and Culture and Bilingual Education undergraduate and graduate courses. 

Awards and Honors

Dr. Estrada was honored with the Opal Goolsby Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008 at Houston Christian University. He served as HCU’s nominee for the Piper Professor Award in 2012. The Piper Professor Award is an annual Texas statewide competition in which each university chooses one professor to represent the school. Dr. Estrada was the Texas Foreign Language Association University Spanish Teacher of the Year 2012.  He was appointed President of the HCU Faculty Assembly in the academic year of 2016/2017.

Additional Information

His academic interests include: attending and presenting papers in conferences that deal with topics of contemporary Latin-American Literature and Culture. He is certified in Secondary Education Spanish in Texas and in New Mexico. In addition, he is a certified principal for the state of Texas. He has taught at the High School level and has been Department Chair of Languages. Dr. Estrada’s teaching philosophy is to integrate pedagogical applications to the language experience of the students learning Spanish. He has taken students to Central Mexico and the north of Spain.

Dr. Estrada has received a Fellowship for Minorities from the State of New Mexico in 2000, the Conexiones Teaching Abroad Excellence in 2003, and the Service to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Award in 2005 from the University of New Mexico.

In 2008, he was selected to become a member of a commission composed of six teachers from different states of the United States. The commission established the grading rubric for the current Spanish Literature Placement Exam given by the College Board in numerous high schools across the nation. Dr. Estrada is currently the regional vice-president of Alpha Mu Gamma a national honors college society in Arkansas, New Mexico and Texas.