Dr. Mendoza’s scholarly activity has significantly impacted internationalization efforts and the development of higher education in Latin America. She has been recognized with the 2018 MU International Engagement Award and the 2019-2020 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. Her international work has attracted around $1,356,781 in internal and external grants from USAID, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright program, the U.S. State Department, and UNIMINUTO, the largest university system in Colombia serving marginalized students throughout the country.

She is the founder and director of the International Research Center for the Development of Education (CIIDE per its acronym in Spanish), a unique partnership between the MU College of Education and Human Development and UNIMINUTO. CIIDE is the result of a lengthy broader impact initiative that started in 2013 involving faculty, students, and administrators from multiple universities in the U.S. and Colombia. In 2019, CIIDE was recognized among the Best Practices in Internationalization in the Americas by the College of the Americas of the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education, the biggest higher education organization in the continent.

A productive author, Dr. Mendoza has published book chapters, monographs, an edited book, and numerous journal articles, some in Spanish, and in the top journals in the field. Her international reputation has resulted in several invitations as a keynote speaker with hundreds of attendees from Latin American universities at high-profile events hosted by international organizations, such as UNESCO’s IELSAC (Venezuela), MUFRAMEX (France), and BINARIO (Ecuador). In 2019, she was elected co-chair of the Higher Education Interest Group of the International and Comparative Society with over 250 members from around the world.

Areas of Expertise

• International and comparative higher education
• Decoloniality, neoliberalism, globalization, and academic capitalism
• College student retention and success; college affordability; the professoriate