Mario Torres

Mario Torres focuses on the realities of schooling and the complexities of providing education to children who deal with many personal challenges, and how leadership mixes with policy implementation. His research deals with students’ rights, the ethics of education reform and discipline policy, and organizational inclusion at the K-12 level. He found his niche as a researcher when he was working on his doctoral degree at Penn State and became part of a handful of researchers nationally that looked at the relationship between context and legal implementation and how the courts decided on cases dealing with student rights. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in educational administration and human resource development. Torres served as a program chair between 2010 and 2013 and led the effort to create the current fully online master’s degree program for school principal preparation. He recently received a grant as a co-principal investigator from the Kellogg Foundation for $286,668 to investigate demographic inclusion in two south Texas urban school districts. He has served as an associate editor for the top field journal. He has written 21 peer reviewed articles, one book, two edited books, and 15 chapters. Torres has chaired/co-chaired 24 doctoral students to completion. He received his Ph.D. in educational administration from the Pennsylvania State University in 2003. He joined the Educational Administration and Human Resource Development Department at Texas A&M University as an assistant professor in 2003 and earned promotion and tenure in 2010.