Dr. Maria Canabal - Emeritus
Dr. Canabal has been serving as a professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Texas State University since August 2006. Previously she was a faculty member in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Illinois State University for almost 20 years and a full professor since 1997. At ISU she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on topics such as management for consumers; consumer materials; family economic resources; family resource management; family and consumer public policy; families and employment; and theory and contemporary issues in family and consumer sciences.
Dr. Canabal's research interests include topics related to work and family; female headed families; marital dissolution; minority issues in education and housing; women power and fertility decisions; college students' labor force participation; consumer decisions; poverty issues; consumers and technology; and the scholarship of teaching and learning. The results of the research on these topics have been presented in national and international conferences and published in peer reviewed journals such as Journal of Marriage and the Family; Journal of Family and Economic Issue;, Housing and Society; College Student Journal; Social Personality Research: An International Journal; Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences; and Journal of Student Centered Learning.
In 1995 Dr. Maria E. Canabal received a Fulbright assignment to teach and do research in south India at two different institutions, Avinashilingham Institute for Home Sciences and Higher Education for Women and Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University. During the almost six months she spent in India she taught graduate courses in family resources management, gave numerous presentations, and collected data for her research on consumer decision making and other topics. Her connections in India facilitated the development of a grant proposal for approximately $100,000 funded by the U.S. State Department to establish a faculty exchange program between Illinois State University and Avinashilingham University . From 1998 to 2000, she directed this three-year exchange program where 16 faculty members from the different colleges of the two institutions spent from one to three months at the guest institution attending classes and participating in collaborative research projects. This program led to curricular revisions, web page designs, collaborative outreach projects, and provided financial support to enhance the instructional technology facilities at Avinashilingham University . In 2003 she was accepted as a candidate for the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program, an international consultant competitive program that allows the possibility for worldwide consulting related to my research and teaching interests.