Rosana Rodríguez, Ph.D.
Director of Development

Rosana G. Rodríguez, Ph.D., is director of development at IDRA. She has more than four decades of experience in the field of education and community engagement. In her work she designs and leads projects to strengthen school-family-community partnerships and build cross-sector and multicultural alliances that can improve equity, access and excellence in education from preschool through higher education. She provides leadership for IDRA’s Pathways to Education project and Brown and Mendez projects to build cross race alliances, and cultivate joint African American and Latino leadership and action in education. She also leads IDRA’s Semillitas Early Childhood Education Project, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that responds to the need for educational equity and culturally and linguistically relevant early childhood materials and resources through partnerships, educational materials, training and support for vulnerable children and families and those who serve them. She directs Caminos, an accelerated teacher preparation program that prepares bilingual and bilingual special education teachers for high need schools in Texas through partnerships with universities and school districts. She also designed and developed IDRA’s Ohtli project, an intergenerational and multicultural leadership project for Latino, Native American and African American women.

She holds memberships with the American Association of Higher Education, Hispanics in Philanthropy and the American Evaluation Association. She has numerous articles and publications including IDRA’s seven-part Community Engagement Series for Educators; bilingual Helping Your Child Discover Science; Creating Your Education Blueprint for Action, Creating Your Education Blueprint for Action – Mendez and Brown Community Dialogues – A Launch Kit; Achieve College: Hacia Adelante!; and Creating Centers of Learning at Home and at School; and contributes to IDRA’s Semillitas de aprendizaje series of early childhood materials. Dr. Rodríguez has special expertise with migrant and vulnerable populations.

Dr. Rodríguez also has been instrumental in designing and establishing IDRA’s federally-funded parent information and resource center: Texas PIRC. For more than a decade, the center brought together parents, schools, universities, community organizations and businesses to support under-served student populations.

Prior to her work at IDRA, Dr. Rodríguez assisted in guiding the developmental process for the national ENLACE (Engaging Latino Communities for Education) initiative funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to strengthen the educational pipeline (pre-kindergarten through higher education) that is serving to increase opportunities for Latino students to enter and complete college through partnerships among K-12, higher education, business and community.

In her role at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, for 10 years she served as program director in the area of youth development and education, where she held dual assignments, including grant making activities in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, working primarily with youth and education projects, and took part in domestic and international planning and development. Her grant making activities included programs for vulnerable and displaced youth, indigenous populations, literacy and community development, and migrant populations. She also directed the department of human resources for the foundation, where she managed the recruitment, selection and professional development programs for the foundation’s employees.

Dr. Rodríguez was the assistant superintendent of personnel and chief negotiator for the Grand Rapids Public School system. At this large, urban multicultural district serving grades kindergarten through 16, she was instrumental in developing programs to address a diverse urban school population. She also served as community relations commissioner for that city, a mayoral appointment.

Dr. Rodríguez has expertise in the areas of program design and development, strategic planning and evaluation. She is a clinical psychologist and licensed psychological examiner. She began her career in the United States as a teacher and writer of curriculum in bilingual education, and has teaching experience in elementary through higher education.

IDRA is an independent, private non-profit organization, directed by María Robledo Montecel, Ph.D., dedicated to strengthening public schools to work for all children. As a vanguard leadership development and research team for more than three decades, IDRA has worked with people to create self-renewing schools that value and empower all children, families and communities. IDRA conducts research and development activities, creates, implements and administers innovative education programs and provides teacher, administrator, and parent training and technical assistance.

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