After a comprehensive review of nominations from nine Arizona colleges, CUES Distinguished Fellowships invited Prof. Aresta Tsosie-Paddock to join the fourth cohort at the University of Arizona. CUES Distinguished Fellowships aim to acknowledge and advance faculty scholarship and innovation in education together with a growing community of CUES Distinguished Fellows at the University of Arizona. The fellowship acknowledges Dr. Tsosie-Paddock's  commitment and dedication to university’s educational mission and includes three years of funding to carry out her proposed project, Shifting Pedagogies for Learning the Navajo Language: Applying a Mentor-Apprentice Paradigm through Technology, starting in Fall 2021.

Dr. Tsosie-Paddock is a citizen of the Navajo Nation from Sand Springs, Arizona, situated in western Navajo Nation, and affiliated with the Leupp Chapter located in Leupp, Arizona. She has dedicated her career to studying Navajo language, displacement and dispossession of cultural heritage, native gender, Navajo history and philosophy, native nation building, Indigenous urban studies, tribal government, and Federal Indian law and policy.