UNM Associate Professor Allison Borden is the 2019 recipient of the Jay D. Scribner Mentoring Award from the University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA).

The award “honors educational leadership faculty who have made a substantive contribution to the field by mentoring the next generation of students into roles as university research professors, while also recognizing the important roles mentors play in supporting and advising junior faculty.”

“Dr. Borden’s commitment and dedication to the success of her students is impressive,” Interim Dean Deborah Rifenbary said. “She works tirelessly to make sure her students are well prepared to assume their roles as educational leaders in various school settings throughout the state of New Mexico. Because of her skills and empathy, her impact on leadership-preparation in New Mexico and nationally has been enormous.”

Borden is an associate professor of educational leadership at UNM’s College of Education. She said she sees her efforts on behalf of doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty as “the right thing to do” and “a way to pay forward” the benefits she received from her mentors.

For 12 years Borden supervised the dissertation research of 24 graduates in Educational Leadership. She also serves on the dissertation committees of an additional 25 graduates from Educational Leadership and other programs in the College of Education. She said she was humbled and honored by UCEA’s description of her mentoring as reflecting “selflessness, integrity, service and professionalism” and that its “impact across a diverse array of mentees has been recognized as life-changing.”

Borden joined UNM in 2005 after three years as an associate professor at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. Prior to her doctoral studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, she spent 25 years in K-12 education as a teacher, principal, and bilingual program director. Her career began with two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and included 10 years at the American School in Tegucigalpa. She has also served as an education consultant in Paraguay, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

"Because of her skills and empathy, her impact on leadership-preparation in New Mexico and nationally has been enormous." - Interim Dean Deborah Rifenbary

Since 2011, Borden has been conducting a study of a democratic school in Guatemala and the dissemination of a model for citizenship education. She has made numerous research presentations at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, the Comparative and International Education Society, the National Network for Educational Renewal and UCEA.

Her research has been published in the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, the International Journal of Educational Reform, the Journal of Research on Leadership Education, and the International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice.