Fernie Rodriguez

Dr. Fernie Rodriguez (they/them) hails from the borderland region of El Paso, Texas and Chijuaja Juarez. They are a first-generation, Mexican American, transfeminine Chicanx scholar-practitioner with a breadth of experience working within institutional settings supporting access, inclusion, and retention-to-graduation initiatives for historically underrepresented student communities.

Fernie currently serves as associate vice chancellor for student affairs. Fernie was born and raised in a working-class background and is the first in their family to pursue a college education. Fernie left their home in El Paso, Texas, in 2001 after graduating high school to pursue an undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin in Sociology and with a minor in Educational Psychology, which they completed in 2005. Fernie later went on to pursue a graduate degree at New York University in New York City. In 2018, Fernie completed their dissertation work, “Borderland Masculinities in Higher Education,” in which they chronicled the lives of six first-generation Mexican American gay undergraduate men located along the U.S. Borderlands.