Staff Report
UNM law Professor Margaret Montoya was the first Hispanic woman ever to be accepted to Harvard Law School.
That distinction, along with her research at UNM in issues of race, ethnicity, gender and language, and her more than 11 years as a professor of law at the University recently earned her the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 7th annual National Latina/o Law Student Conference at UCLA.
The award, which is the first of its kind to be presented by the newly formed association, credits Montoya for "passionate support, dedication and contributions to Latino law students."
Montoya said it is nice to be rewarded for her efforts, but the true measure of her success is in the lives of the students she has met during her time at UNM.
Montoya, who also studies the cross-cultural discourse among different populations in the Southwest, was the associate university counsel for employment issues at UNM before joining the law faculty in 1992.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Earlier this year she and a team of current and former law students filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger challenging affirmative action in college admissions.
Montoya is the interim director of the UNM Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, established in 1980.
