Susan R. Katz

Susan Roberta Katz officially retired from teaching at USF in 2022 after 25+ years, but still stays actively involved by supporting students in their academic writing. In 2008, she co-founded the first graduate program in Human Rights Education in the U.S. and in 2014 received the USF Sarlo Prize for exemplary teaching. She has received two Fulbright fellowships: 2003 in Hungary at the University of Pécs and 2010 in Ecuador where she researched bilingual/intercultural education of the Shuar indigenous nationality in the Amazon. Dr. Katz has written articles on the language, literacy, and sociocultural dimensions of the education of youth from marginalized communities, which have been published in such journals as Teachers College Record, Urban Education, Intercultural Education, and Social Justice. Her co-edited book, Bringing Human Rights Education to U.S. Classrooms: Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades through University, was published by Palgrave McMillan in Spring 2015. 

• Human rights education
• Oral history
• Decolonizing education

• Human rights education
• Indigenous bilingual intercultural education
• Academic writing

• Co-chair, University-wide Tenure & Promotion Committee
• Chair, SOE Tenure & Promotion Committee
• Member, USFFA Negotiations Team
• Member, USF Honorary Degree Committee
• Member, SOE MA/Doctoral Policy Committee

• UC Berkeley, PhD in Education in Language & Literacy, 1994
• UC Berkeley, MA in Education in Language & Literacy, 1989
• Connecticut College, BA in Psychology & Asian Studies, 1971

• Assistant Professor in Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies, University of New Mexico
• Visiting Professor in Education, UC Berkeley
• Bilingual resource & classroom teacher, middle schools, San Francisco Unified School District

• O’Brien Award for Individual Achievement in Human Rights Education, December 2022
• University of San Francisco Mentor of the Year, 2022
• University of San Francisco Sarlo Prize for Exemplary Teaching, 2014
• Fulbright Senior Scholar, Ecuador 2010 & Hungary 2003

• Katz, S.R. (2022). Foreword. In W. Liang, Human rights education in China: Perspectives, policies and practices. Springer.
• Katz, S.R., Tombé, M.R., & Tunubalá, G. (2021). To recover the land is to recover everything!”: The decolonizing model of indigenous intercultural bilingual education of the Misak of Colombia. In J. MacDonald & J. Markides (Eds.), Brave work in indigenous education (pp. 41-66). DIO Press.
• Bajaj, M.I., Katz, S.R. & Jones, L-T (2021). Editorial introduction: Human rights education and Black liberation. International Journal of Human Rights Education, 5.
• Tibbitts, F., & Katz, S.R. (2018). Dilemmas and hopes for human rights education: Curriculum and learning in international contexts. PROSPECTS: Comparative Journal of Curriculum, Learning and Assessment, 47 (1-2). 31-40.
• Madrid, D. & Katz. S.R. (2018). Do gitano students feel discriminated against in their social and academic surroundings? A survey of schools in Granada, Spain. Intercultural Education. 363-378.
• Katz, S.R., & Spero, A.M. (Eds.) (2015). Bringing human rights education to U.S. classrooms: Exemplary models from elementary grades through university. New York: Palgrave McMillan.