Jesús (Frank) de la Teja, Regents Professor of History Emeritus

Jesús Francisco de la Teja was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1956. He came to the United States in 1963, when he and his family first lived in a Hoboken, New Jersey, walk-up tenement. Growing up in New Jersey, he attended Seton Hall University before enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 for doctoral work in Latin American history. While at the University of Texas, de la Teja was a research assistant to Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A. Michener. He went on to work at the Texas General Land Office, before joining the history department at what is now Texas State University in 1991, where he served as department chair and director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest. 

After retirement, he served as executive director of the Texas State Historical Association, which he had previously led as president of the board of directors and of which he is a lifetime fellow. In addition to an extensive publication record, de la Teja has served in advisory capacity with museums, including as part of the content development team for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. He has consulted on and written Texas and U.S. textbooks and served as a reviewer of Texas curriculum standards. 

In 2007, Governor Rick Perry appointed him the inaugural State Historian. De la Teja has been honored by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the San Jacinto Conservancy. He is an honorary member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas and is a member by election of the Philosophical Society of Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters. He previously served on the board of Humanities Texas and the Texas affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he is currently a scholar director of the Texas Historical Foundation and serves on the board of the Alliance for Texas History.