Mario Torres, PhD
Dean, College of Education and Human Development
Bio
Mario Torres has served as Dean of the College of Education and Human Development since 2021.
A San Antonio native and UT San Antonio alumnus, Torres earned both a bachelor’s degree in music studies and a master’s degree in educational leadership from UT San Antonio. He earned his PhD in Educational Administration from Penn State.
Torres’ research focuses on students’ rights, the ethics of education reform and discipline policy, and organizational inclusion. He has received grants from the Kellogg Foundation totaling nearly $1.8 million to study organizational justice in urban school districts in South Texas and served as a co-principal investigator of a $13.6 million federal grant to examine leadership preparation for underserved school settings.
He has published nearly 30 peer-reviewed articles in premier journals including the Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration, and the Peabody Journal of Education.
In 2020, Torres was selected by The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities as a fellow for the second cohort of its Leadership Academy/La Academia de Liderazgo, which seeks to increase the number of individuals who aspire to leadership positions at the executive and senior levels of Hispanic Serving Institutions. He is also a past research fellow with the Mexican American and U.S. Latino Research Center and a former faculty member of the Teachers College Summer Principals Academy at Columbia University.
Prior to joining UT San Antonio, Torres was a professor of educational administration and human resource development at Texas A&M University, where he held the Sydney & J.L. Huffines ’44 Endowed Chair in the College of Education and Human Development. He also served as Head of the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M.
