Cecilia Henríquez Fernández is Assistant Director of the Center for Engineering Excellence Through Equity.  Dr. Fernández has worked extensively within the education community to design and assess programs that support students' success in STEM fields. As an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Fernández developed and instituted an outreach program through the MIT Office of Engineering Outreach Programs to provide free mentoring and STEM enrichment opportunities to Boston and Cambridge public school students from under-resourced districts. Dr. Fernández also worked as a high school mathematics teacher in California public schools and taught a variety of mathematical topics from Algebra 1 to Calculus. 

Dr. Fernández earned her PhD in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work focused on examining teacher pedagogical practices that supported mathematical participation in elementary school classrooms. Dr. Fernández conducted her postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan's School of Information. Her research focused on developing inclusive pedagogical practices and curriculum that supported student computational thinking in informal learning environments.

Dr. Fernández’s current work uses evidence-based methods to develop programming, practices, and policies that support the success of faculty, staff, and students in the School of Engineering and Computing at Rice University.