Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Silvana Chambers, College of Business
Ask others what they think when they think of Dr. Silvana Chambers, and they’d say lots of words: professional, smart, meticulous, calm and full of integrity. If you ask Dr. Chambers to tell you a little about herself, she would use one word: Peruvian.
“I’m Peruvian, and that’s shaped my identity,” she said. “That’s my primary identity, and everything in my Peruvian culture has shaped who I am.”
Dr. Chambers was born and raised in Peru. The oldest of four children, she grew up with a focus to survive and protect her siblings. Graduating top of her class at the largest public school in Peru, she knew that education was her way out of poverty, so she learned English at an early age and learned how to program computers, two skills that got her good jobs in Peru and later in the United States.
“I grew up in the middle of a lot of hardship,” Dr. Chambers said. “During a time of significant internal conflict in the country, the school, which had the largest student population in the country, was caught in the crossfire, and tear gas canisters trapped the students inside. I saw everybody panicking around me, and I’ve always been calm. I don’t let things overwhelm me, and I can perform on command. It doesn’t matter if the world around me is falling apart. I can sit, and I can focus on my work.”
That focus on work drove her in Peru, and it drives her today defining her contribution to not just her own welfare, but the world.
“We (Peruvians) are collectivists,” she said. “We see ourselves in terms of we rather than I, and that’s what shaped who I am. Everything I do has to do in some way to contribute to not just myself, but to my extended family in Peru. Not just my nuclear family or my parents, my sisters, but to everybody in some way.”
At first, she thought that contribution would be in industry. Then after 15 years, Dr. Chambers made the transition to academia.
“I did not think that I was going to be in academia,” she said. “I always thought that I would be working in an organization, and from there, try to see what I could do to help the organization to employ more people. But that changed when I decided to go back to school to go get my Ph.D. Having those three letters after my name meant something, so I decided to go back to school so that I could contribute more.”
And her goal to contribute more led her into a doctoral program in Human Resource Development at the University of Texas at Tyler. As a doctoral student at UT Tyler, Dr. Chambers focused on her studies, fueling her natural curiosity to learn.
“I love learning,” she said. “I’m always learning since I was very little; always trying to find how I do this, and if I can teach something myself, I will learn it myself.”
Dr. Chambers entered into a fledgling Ph.D. program geared toward weekend students who were in industry, and while she fit the mold of the average doctoral student in her program, her focus set her apart.
“Silvana was kind of an exception to the rule because she was extremely serious and driven,” said Dr. Andrea D. Ellinger, professor emerita from UT Tyler. “She was very polished, and very professional, but unlike some students who just want to get through the program, Silvana didn’t just want to get through. She wanted to do an outstanding dissertation, and she was willing to put the effort into doing an outstanding dissertation. Silvana was very detail oriented, consistently committed to doing high-quality work. She has integrity and is a class act.
“She just went above and beyond,” Dr. Ellinger said. “She knew that doctoral education was serious, and she wanted to build an academic career. So she wanted to do everything to create a solid foundation for that.”
That seriousness was noticed by another professor at UT Tyler, Dr. Kim Nimon, professor and PhD coordinator in the Department of Human Resource Development at UT Tyler, who had just arrived on campus.
“What separated Silvana probably from every other student was she read all the readings,” Dr. Nimon said. “I mean everything. And then her dissertation was one of the longest dissertations I’ve ever supervised—over 500 pages—and the diligence that she put into that.”
Dr. Chambers’ dissertation used such complicated statistical analysis that an additional committee member was brought on board to sort out the statistics. That focus and seriousness garnered her the Esworthy Malcolm S. Knowles Dissertation of the Year Award for her dissertation in 2019, setting the stage for a successful academic career, which brought her to the University of Houston Clear Lake, where she understood the types of students.
“I did not have many professors who cared too much when I was doing my undergrad, and when you’re a first-generation student, that is difficult because it’s like you don’t know that there are things you don’t know,” she said. “I think that those experiences, being a first-generation graduate in my family, not having my parents who can tell me, ‘Oh, you should do this,’ and not having professors at the time who would do that, that has shaped what I do now and how I do things.”
From clarifying complicated concepts to programming AI bots to assist with her classes, her focus has been on creating content that all students can access by using open educational resources and illuminating concepts that might be challenging.
One of her colleagues, Dr. Cliff Mayfield, professor of management in the College of Business at UHCL, has seen that focus firsthand.
“When AI began emerging several years ago, many of us were still figuring out what it would mean for higher education and how we should respond,” Dr. Mayfield said. “Meanwhile, she was already out in front, exploring its possibilities and becoming a leader in the use of AI.”
That was when Dr. Chambers created a teaching assistant using Open AI.
“She has conducted a number of faculty training sessions within our department and through the Center for Faculty Development,” he said. “When you talk with her, you can always tell that she’s thinking deeply about the ideas being discussed and considering where they might lead.”
Dr. Chambers said it was important for her to share her knowledge with others, which is why she uses GitHub and other open tools to create and share.
“Everything I’m doing is trying to learn, and I learned so I can use those skills to help me in what I do, with my research or my teaching,” she said.
And ultimately, the learning is to help her students by providing them with a tool to give feedback and help any time by using her AI bots, which she shares not only with her students but with the world.
“I don’t see that my contributions should be limited to where I am right now, not just in society, but I’m a member of a bigger world,” Dr. Chambers said.
Now as an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at UHCL, Dr. Chambers is in the role that she found so inspiring when she met her major professor, Dr. Kim Nimon all of those years ago.
“Meeting her changed my life,” Dr. Chambers said. “She was everything I wanted to be. She’s just so good at what she does. She was one of those people who just cared about others' learning. I wanted to be her.”
That life changing meeting brought Dr. Chambers to UHCL and has led her down a pathway she never even thought about when she was a child in Peru. But all of her life experiences have set the stage for an innovative, first-generation college professor who cares about student learning and student access.
“I think that everything I have done has helped me,” she said. “I'm proud of being able to remove barriers for my students. To me, student success is important, and of course success is defined in whatever way students see success.”
And Dr. Silvana Chambers will be working, coding and focusing to help her students get there.
