Ester Flores, PhD, LMSW

Associate Professor of Social Work
Worden School Building, Room 13
210-431-3984
eflores@ollusa.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Expertise

With over 25 years of experience as a generalist social work practitioner, my area of expertise is organizational leadership. As a Program Director for Child Protective Services, I was responsible for a six-county area with over 120 personnel. Serving as an area supervisor for a private social service agency, I was successful in bringing over $2 million of state contracts to serve the under served of the Rio Grande Valley. With nine years of teaching at the Schools of Social Work at Baylor University, the University of Texas-RGV (formerly known as Pan American), and OLLU, I have extensive experience in the classroom as well as online. The students’ evaluations have continuously provided positive feedback with recommendations that I implement to improve my teaching skills. The pedagogical approach demonstrated in the classroom and online is that of the role of a teaching coach helping students to achieve success.  

Teaching Philosophy

A successful educator must have the “love of wisdom” (Power, 1982); a never-ending curious spirit for knowledge to impart to others for the betterment of humanity. The central goal of teaching is to equip students with professional core values and essential digital platforms to be successful in their careers. As a professor with over 20 years of organizational leadership, students learn real-life events that impact their vigorous learning. My vision is to see every single student that walks the stage with their diploma will walk straight into the stage of the career of their dreams. We must equip our students with professional readiness before they graduate. It will take every faculty and staff to engage in equipping our students with knowledge, wisdom, and skills that reflect the character of OLLU -- community, trust, and integrity. Through their discovery and purpose in life, they will make a worldwide difference for one sole purpose: the betterment of humanity. 

Outside Interests

The main area of interest is achieving optimal health through working with a health coach. Optimal health begins with establishing micro habits of health one day at a time. As a Latina, I face the high possibility of poor health. The risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure is too high to ignore. I have begun to write an auto-ethnography titled: “A Sample of One.” The intent is to conduct workshops in the Latino community. Taking myself through a health journey demonstrates the effectiveness of self-care through informed decisions. With the lack of knowledge, one can perish.