The Texas Experiment: Politics, Power, and Social Transformation, Edition 2

William V. Flores, PhD is a professor of political science at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) and teaches courses in the MA in Nonprofit Management Program. He served as president of UHD from 2009–2016. He previously served as deputy secretary in the New Mexico Department of Higher Education, and prior to that as executive vice president and provost at New Mexico State University, where he also served as interim president. While UHD president, he regularly attended and testified before various Texas legislative committees and has served on various boards and commissions, including the El Paso branch of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board of Directors and the Board of Directors of Central Houston. He served as co-chair of the Higher Education Track for Points of Light and currently sits on the Higher Education Council of the Kettering Foundation. Flores served as the chair of the Governing Board of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and the President’s Trust of AAC&U. Dr. Flores earned his BA at UCLA in political science. He earned his MA in political science and his PhD in social theory and public policy from Stanford University. Dr. Flores co-edited Democracy, Civic Engagement, and Citizenship in Higher Education (Lexington Press, 2019). He co-edited Latino Citizenship: Claiming Space, Identity, and Rights (Beacon Press, 1997). He regularly writes on voting rights and on public policy issues, particularly immigration, health care, environmental issues, nonprofit management, and higher education. Flores is currently completing a book on Nonprofit Management.

Christina Hughes, PhD is assistant professor of political science at UHD. She earned her PhD in political science and her BA in history from the University of Houston. She has more than 20 years of teaching experience and has taught more than 20 different courses in political science. In addition, she has served as a research associate for the Hobby Center of Public Policy (2000–2006), working on evaluating school programs. She also served as the principal investigator on an evaluation of Learning Signature for Cy Fair Community College and has served as assistant managing editor for two academic journals, Social Sciences Quarterly and Law and Society. While at UHD she has been instrumental in creating the Model UN and Model Arab League programs and assisting in the development of a certificate program in Diplomatic Simulation Studies.

Anita Chadha, PhD is an associate professor at UHD. She received her PhD in public policy and public administration from Auburn University. Prior to UHD, Dr. Chadha taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in both their graduate and undergraduate programs. Her teaching interests are courses on American government, political participation and democracy, public policy, public administration, and organizational theory. Her research interests are in civic engagement, political participation, and electoral reform. She has dozens of publications in both areas of research. She is working on a book on electoral reform, Rethinking American Elections: Local Experiments With Electoral Reform, for which she received an excellence award from UHD.

Gene Preuss, PhD is an associate professor of history at UHD. He holds a PhD in history from Texas Tech University. Dr. Preuss is an active member of the Texas State Historical Association, past president of the East Texas Historical Association, and past president of the H-Net Council. He is author of “To Get a Better School System”: One Hundred Years of School Reform in Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2009), and he co-authored with former U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos A Kineño’s Journey: On Family, Learning, and Public Service (Texas Tech University Press, 2016).