Adriana Tamez, HCC trustee, 'accepts responsibility' after board finds she plagiarized parts of 2011 dissertation

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Houston Community College trustee Adriana Tamez says she accepts responsibility for her 2011 dissertation that an academic board found contained several pages of plagiarized material.

Tamez serves as the District 3 trustee and went to the University of Texas for her doctorate degree, according to the HCC website. She's also the superintendent for the Raul Yzaguirre Schools for Success.

"I accept responsibility for an unintentional mistake I made regarding the lack of proper attribution of sources that I used with permission, and their omission from the reference section of my dissertation, which I completed more than 7 years ago," Tamez said Thursday night in a statement to ABC13.

The board found the "scientific misconduct" happened when portions of her dissertation included very similar pieces to other published material.

Tamez added she appreciated the "opportunity to make this correction."

Attempts to view Tamez's dissertation on UT's website yield a "file restricted" error.

A cached version shows the dissertation was titled: "Latina Superintendents: A phenomenological study of superintendent-board relations."

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