SF State Asian American Studies professor receives prestigious CSU Wang Family Excellence Award

Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales earns accolade for excellence in teaching, scholarship and service

San Francisco State University Asian American Studies Professor Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales has been honored with one of the most prestigious awards faculty can receive in the California State University (CSU) system.

Earlier today at the CSU Board of Trustees meeting, Tintiangco-Cubales was recognized as one of five winners of the Wang Family Excellence Award. Each year, the CSU recognizes four faculty and one staff member with this award for their unwavering commitment to student achievement and advancing the CSU mission through excellence in teaching, scholarship and service.

“Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales is an exemplar of student-centered pedagogy, including creative and innovative curriculum and teaching methods,” San Francisco State President Lynn Mahoney said. “Colleagues across the College of Ethnic Studies look to her teaching as a model for how to engage and innovate in the classroom — from elementary to high school students and doctoral students.”

Tintiangco-Cubales has been an SF State faculty member for over two decades, serving as a teacher-leader both on campus and off. While she has many teaching philosophies, she says her most important one is to humanize learning by seeing students as their authentic selves.

“I truly try to see each one of my students as humans. I try to see what they come in with and try to be as understanding as possible,” Tintiangco-Cubales said. “They come along with experiences, and that oftentimes means the exchange of education is back and forth. I’m not the only one with the knowledge to give them.”

That philosophy has proven to be impactful for many students, including Asian American Studies graduate student Jeanelle Daus.

“As an educator, ate Allyson allows for her students to narrate, analyze and connect their own experiences with each other and to the larger field of Asian American studies,” Daus said. (Ate means “big sister” in Tagalog.) “Through this connection, she helps me remember that I am whole and that everything I have learned is real and rooted in this reality, thus supporting me in my endeavors to create the change I wish to see within my world and my community.”

Beyond her unique teaching philosophies, Tintiangco-Cubales has achieved many other accomplishments at SF State. She developed and taught nine different undergraduate and graduate courses in Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies. She also teaches seminars in the Educational Doctoral Program and supports teaching ethnic studies each semester to more than 150 students in Step to College, a program focused on increasing the number of first-generation and historically underrepresented students who attend college.

Outside of SF State, Tintiangco-Cubales has used her expertise to transform the K – 12 ethnic studies curriculum at local, state and national levels. She has worked with districts and schools across the country to advocate for the institutionalization and implementation of ethnic studies, and to provide pedagogical and curricular development and support. 

Tintiangco-Cubales received her bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley, and her doctorate in Education at University of California, Los Angeles.

Learn more about Asian American Studies at SF State.