Jesús F. “Frank” de la Teja is Regents’ Professor Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University in San Marcos, where he taught from 1991 to 2017. He was born in Cuba, came to the U.S. in 1963, and grew up in New Jersey, where he attended Seton Hall University for his BA and MA degrees. He came to Texas in 1981 to study for a Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of Texas at Austin, and between 1985 and 1991 he worked in the Archives and Records Division of the Texas General Land Office.
Dr. Frank has published extensively on Spanish, Mexican, and Republic-era Texas. He served as book review editor for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly from 1997 to 2014 and as managing editor of Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture from 1991 to 2005. He has served on the board of directors, as president, and as executive director of the Texas State Historical Association. Among his service activities in history education, he was part of the content development team for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum from 1998 to 2001, served as an expert reviewer of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Social Studies standards for the State Board of Education in 2009–2010, and has been a textbook reviewer and author at both the K–12 and college levels since 1992. He was the inaugural State Historian of Texas (2007–2009), is a Fellow and Honorary Life Board Member of the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Catholic Historical Society, and is a member by election of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Philosophical Society of Texas. Frank was a member of the Humanities Texas board of directors from 2011 to 2016 and currently serves as a scholar director on the boards of the Texas Historical Foundation and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. He is both an honorary admiral in the Texas Navy and an honorary member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas. Among his honors, in 2009 he was awarded the Captain Alonso de León Medal for Merit in History from the Historical, Geographical, and Statistical Society of Nuevo León. In 2017 the San Jacinto Battleground Conservancy named him a Hero of San Jacinto.
