The College of Arts & Media (CAM) at CU Denver is proud to announce Dr. Christina H. Paguyo as the Assistant Dean for Student Success & Creativity Sciences. Paguyo’s role reimagines the learning ecology of CAM by exploring how humanizing pedagogies will bolster the CAM curricula and support faculty and staff––strengthening equity and inclusion mindsets, practices, and policies as it relates to recruitment, retention, and well-being. The Assistant Dean for Student Success & Creativity Sciences amplifies support for students who come to CAM with a passion for art, research, making, and creating. Dr. Paguyo will assure fulfillment of a primary goal: to send CAM graduates out into the world confident with purpose, and ready to succeed.

"Dr. Paguyo has an exceptional track record of studying analytics that facilitate student success and writing impactful education research grants focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion,” says Dean Laurence Kaptain. “We will be asking her how these factors, written into policies and enacted in practices, will influence recruitment, retention, and the well-being of students, faculty, and staff.”

Christina H. Paguyo, Ph.D., comes to CAM from her current role as Director of Academic Assessment with the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. Before that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow in the College of Engineering at Colorado State University. Trained in critical theories, learning sciences, and policy analysis, the ballast of her professional trajectory is composed from a long-standing passion to help people thrive and learn with their head, heart, and hands. Paguyo’s research has been featured in the Journal of Higher Education, Journal of the Professoriate, Journal of College Student Retention, Higher Learning Commission, and Inside Higher Ed. She has over $2 million dollars obtained in grant-funded proposals to finance research projects and educational programs, including a current grant from the National Science Foundation for which she serves as Principal Investigator.

One of the primary responsibilities she will undertake is collaborating with faculty and staff to design, assess, and continually improve student experiences in the new City Heights Residence Hall. CAM is the only college to have a floor of students and in this case, it will be 70 students in the Living, Learning, and Creating Community. Paguyo will studying and reporting on budget allocations guided by the mission and strategic plans related to equity, diversity and inclusion and how the cost of CAM makes the institution more accessible to students.

Paguyo received her doctorate in Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice from CU Boulder, where she received the Ofelia Miramontes Doctoral Fellowship and a dissertation fellowship from the American Educational Research Association. At Colorado State University she received an M.Ed. in Counseling & Career Development and was awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowship.

"The model of the 21st Century creative has shifted from the autonomous specialist to someone who can work with others across several areas and have the transferable skills of professional practice, as the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) found in a survey of CAM alumni,” says Kaptain. “Many commented they desire skills of professional practice needed in careers, as well as the current students who indicated desiring training in business and finance, communication, entrepreneurship, and other areas that 21st Century creatives are expected to have­­––this role will be catalyze that data to meet these needs"

Paguyo will start in early August of 2021 to join a seasoned team of faculty who envision a world made smaller and more fully human by the artist's interpretation of the human experience and effect change by preparing students to pursue their passions successfully.