In 2018-19 she will be the David J. Weber Fellow at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and begin an appointment as Assistant Professor of History and Latinx Studies at Penn State University. Mendoza received her B.A. from Middlebury College in 2006, an M.A. in U.S. History from American University in 2010, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2012 and 2015. Her work focuses on the intersections of environmental and borderlands history and she teaches courses on modern U.S. history, race in the American West, environmental history, Chicano history, and borderlands history.