UC Congress and Retreat: UC as an HSRI System — Presenter Profiles

Keynote Speakers

Antonio Flores
President and CEO
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU)

Antonio R. Flores is the president and chief executive officer of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities(HACU), which was founded in 1986 and serves as the leading voice for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Latino higher education.

Flores became HACU’s third president/CEO on February 26, 1996. Under his tenure HACU has tripled membership, budget and programs; advocated for HSI legislation and funding; and secured new private funding for HSIs and member institutions.

Flores has served as chair and member of various national higher education associations and coalitions. He has received numerous honors and recognition for his contributions to higher education, including honorary doctorates from universities across the country.

Flores earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, a master’s degree from Western Michigan University and bachelor’s degrees from Universidad de Guadalajara and Centro Normal Regional, Mexico.

Sylvia Hurtado
Distinguished Professor in the School of Education and Information Studies
UCLA

Sylvia Hurtado is the distinguished professor in the School of Education and Information Studies and directed the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA for over a decade. She has written extensively on equity and inclusion, institutional transformation and diverse students’ college experiences. Two of her co-edited books each won International Latino Book Awards: “Hispanic-Serving institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice” (Routledge Press) and “The Magic Key: The Educational Journey of Mexican Americans from K–12 to College and Beyond (University of Texas Press). Dr. Hurtado has also directed multimillion dollar NIH- and NSF-funded projects to study the long-term effects of undergraduate education and diversification of the scientific workforce. She currently serves a special advisor to the chancellor at UCLA on Latinx issues, and she co-chaired the Chancellor’s Task Force on Becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution.

Among her achievements, she was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2019 and received the 2018 Social Justice in Education Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The Association for Institutional Research presented her with their top career award, The Sidney Sudlow Scholar Award in 2022. She is a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. Her early engagement as a first-generation college student led to roles in college admissions, graduate admissions and student support and to her developing interest in higher education as a field of study. Dr. Hurtado obtained her Ph.D. from UCLA, M.Ed. from Harvard Graduate School of Education and A.B. in Sociology from Princeton University.

John A. Pérez
Regent
University of California

John A. Pérez was elected to the Assembly in November 2008, representing Downtown Los Angeles and communities of East Los Angeles. In January 2010, his colleagues elected him California's 68th Assembly Speaker. He was subsequently reelected in 2010 and 2012, making him one of the longest serving Speakers in the era of term limits.

He has made affordability and accessibility of higher education one of the most important statewide priorities through passage of the Middle Class Scholarship Act. This effort, which brought together thousands of California's students and parents, sought to reduce student fees by two-thirds for middle class families, and was later adopted in a modified capacity by the 2013 State Budget. The landmark Middle Class Scholarship Act, has provided tuition relief of up to 40 percent for nearly 100,000 California State University and University of California students.

Speaker Emeritus Pérez's victories and accomplishments have received prominent national attention. In 2012, he was the only state legislative leader in the United States to address the Democratic National Convention. In August of 2012, he was elected by fellow Speakers from across the nation to serve as President of the National Speakers Conference. He has previously been appointed by President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush to serve on the President's Commission on HIV/AIDS and is a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee.

Presenters

Pamela Brown
Vice President of Institutional Research and Academic Planning
UC Office of the President

 

Pamela Brown is vice president of Institutional Research and Academic Planning (IRAP) at the UC Office of the President (UCOP). Successfully leading her team for over a decade, IRAP is responsible for producing evidence-based analyses and reports for university leaders to advance strategic and academic planning, address legislative requests, support assessment and promote transparency efforts.

IRAP areas of expertise include accountability/performance outcome reporting, academic planning and policy, students (e.g., admissions, enrollment planning, financial support, student experience and outcomes), research, finance and workforce and compensation, and it is responsible for the production of the UC Annual Accountability Report, the UC Information Center and maps of UC in California that illustrate the impact of the University of California through data-driven narratives and visualizations.

The team administers numerous systemwide surveys, including the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), the UC Graduate Student Experience Survey (UCGSES), and undergraduate and graduate cost of attendance surveys. The IRAP website includes additional topic briefs and reports on university academic and administrative operations. 

Prior to joining UCOP in 2013, Pamela worked 16 years at UC Berkeley, where her last role was executive director of the Office of Planning and Analysis (OPA).

Pamela received her master's degree from the Graduate School of Public Policy and her bachelor of arts degree in Applied Mathematics, both from UC Berkeley.

Arlene Cano Matute
Assistant Director of Chicano Student Programs
Co-Chair of the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Committee
UC Riverside

Dr. Arlene Cano Matute (she, her, ella) is the assistant director of Chicano Student Programs and co-chair of the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Committee at the University of California, Riverside. Her research examines the historical and ongoing experiences of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x scholars in HSIs, with a focus on access, retention, persistence and empowerment of minoritized students. As a scholar and practitioner, she is interested in the ways that Chicana/o/x, Latina/o/x students and minoritized students thrive in HSIs. Currently, she is the principal investigator for the ESPARiTU research project, focusing on documenting the experiences and trajectories of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x students in Hispanic-Serving Research Institutions (HSRIs) at the University of California.

Andrés Castro Samayoa
Associate Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Higher Education Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development
and
Director for Assessment and Strategy (by courtesy)
Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions

Andrés Castro Samayoa is an associate professor and director of the Ph.D. program in higher education at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development and director for assessment and strategy (by courtesy) at the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

His empirical and conceptual research explores how students' approaches to navigating colleges and universities can help policymakers and institutional actors address organizational and systemic racism, sexism, and social differentiation in educational environments. He has co-authored multiple books on minority-serving institutions and contemporary issues in higher education, and his research has received support from The Spencer Foundation, AccessLex/AIR, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and others.

He is currently co-authoring a book based on a longitudinal qualitative study on Latine students' pursuit of graduate education in the United States with Princeton University Press.

Frances Contreras
Dean and Professor for the School of Education
UC Irvine

Frances Contreras is the dean and professor for the School of Education at UC Irvine. Previously, Dr. Frances Contreras was an associate vice chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and a professor in the Department of Education Studies at UC San Diego. Dr. Contreras has over 15 years of administrative leadership both at UC San Diego and at the University of Washington College of Education, where she directed their higher education program.  

Her research focuses on issues of equity and access for underrepresented students in the education pipeline and on the role of public policy in ensuring student equity across a P–20 continuum. Her work has been published in leading education journals and presses such as the American Education Research Journal, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Policy, The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Hispanics in Higher Education, Harvard University Press and Teachers College Press. Contreras’s books include: “Achieving Equity for Latino Students,” “Expanding the Pathway to Higher Education through Public Policy” and “The Latino Education Crisis” with P. Gandara and “High Achieving African American Students and the College Choice Process: Applications of Critical Race Theory” (2020, with T. Chapman, E. Comeaux, E. Martinez and G. Rodriguez). This most recent book was a result of a statewide examination she led as the principal investigator to examine African American college choice across UC.

Dr. Contreras is currently engaged at the system level and serves as the co-chair of the Chicano/Latino Advisory Council to the UC President which is working to increase the level of Chicano/Latino representation in academic and administrative leadership across the UC System. She also serves on the UC HSI Advisory Board, offering her expertise in this area as UC works to become Latinx responsive and serving. Related to these efforts, Dr. Contreras was recently awarded a grant to serve as a co-principal investigator (with M. Cuellar and J. Poblete) on the project “Reimagining UC to Serve Latinx/a/os Equitably: A Blueprint for UC to become an Hispanic-Serving Research Institution (HSRI) System.” Her research agenda on Latinx students and Hispanic-Serving Institutions provides an important contribution to UC Irvine, which is already classified as an Hispanic-Serving Institution and as an AANAPISI.  

As a result of her research agenda and institutional efforts to advance equity and justice, Dr. Contreras was previously honored as an “Emerging Scholar” and the “Top 25 to Watch” among academicians in the United States by Diverse Magazine. She was also selected by the Rockefeller Foundation as a Scholar in Residence at the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy to complete her first book with P. Gandara. Additionally, Contreras was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award by the Washington State Commission on Hispanic Affairs for her work to address Latino student equity. In spring 2021, Dr. Contreras was the recipient of the Cesar Chavez Faculty award, which recognizes faculty for their outstanding contributions to the campus community. Finally, on December 17, 2021, the City of San Diego honored her with Dr. Frances Contreras Day, in recognition of her leadership and service to the city and county of San Diego.  

Previously, Dr. Contreras served on the boards of the ACLU of Washington, the Harvard Journal for Hispanic Policy, the Journal of Advanced Academics, The Preuss School at UC San Diego and the Latino Education Achievement Project, and she was a gubernatorial appointee to the Achievement Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee in Washington State. She currently serves on the Puente board, the board of The Lupe Contreras Scholarship Fund in California and the WestEd board of directors.  

As a first-generation college student and professor, Dean Contreras is the first Chicana/Latina dean to lead a School of Education in the UC System. Her vision for the school is to lead the school by placing equity, diversity and racial justice at the center of the school’s priorities and to build on the impressive record the School of Education possesses on campus and with its community partners and schools. Dr. Contreras plans to position UC Irvine’s School of Education as a leader in HSI and AANAPISI efforts, critical methodologies, teacher diversity and educational innovation that benefits the Orange County region, state and nation.   

Dr. Contreras earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, master’s degree from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Administration and Education Policy from Stanford University.

Marcela G. Cuellar
Associate Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow
School of Education
UC Davis

Dr. Marcela G. Cuellar is an associate professor and chancellor’s fellow in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her research examines Latinx/a/o students’ experiences and outcomes at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and emerging HSIs, campus climate and community college baccalaureates. Her scholarship has been published in the American Journal of Education, Community College Review, Journal of Higher Education, and Review of Higher Education. In 2022, she received the American Education Research Association’s Postsecondary Award from the Latinx Research Issues special interest group, given her significant contributions to educational research.  

She is currently collaborating on several multicampus projects focused on educational equity and innovation, including Hispanic-Serving Research Institutions, California’s community college bachelor’s degree programs and the development of the HSI Research Colectiva, a multigenerational community of HSI researchers aiming to bridge, generate and mobilize research about HSIs to inform policy decisions and improvements in practice.  

Dr. Cuellar holds a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish from Stanford University, an M.A. in Higher Education Leadership from the University of San Diego and a Ph.D. in Education (Higher Education and Organizational Change) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally from Oxnard, California, she is the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Marla Franco
Vice President for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives
University of Arizona

Dr. Marla Franco serves as the Vice President for Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives at the University of Arizona (UA). She has worked in higher education for nearly 20 years at public universities in California and Arizona, having served in various roles within academic and student affairs to champion greater college access and degree attainment among underserved and minoritized students, which strongly informs her work today.

Dr. Franco led efforts that resulted in the UA becoming the first four-year public university in the state of Arizona to be federally recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education in April 2018. She is now working across the university to develop a centralized vision for maximizing this designation in a way that truly benefits students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members from diverse backgrounds. This federal distinction has widespread implications for the UA, the greater Tucson community, and the state of Arizona.

In 2017, Dr. Franco co-led efforts with faculty that resulted in UA becoming the first recipient of the National Science Foundation’s HSI conference grant, which supported the convening of over 100 thought leaders from five states within the southwest region of the United States aimed at transforming STEM education at HSIs. As a result, she became co-founder of the STEM in HSI Working Group, co- authored Transforming STEM Education at Hispanic Serving Institutions in the United States: A Consensus Report, engaged in a broader impacts road trip to present key insights and recommendations nationally, and co-facilitated an adaptive case study competition to incite transformation in STEM education at HSIs across the nation.

As a scholar-practitioner, she has co-authored publications to inform improved practice at HSIs, including Assessing the Readiness of Hispanic Serving Institutions to Serve Latinx Students: Moving Beyond Compositional Diversity and Engaging Community Partners to Improve STEM Education at HSIs. Dr. Franco’s contributions to the field of higher education and the community are well recognized. She has received the John Hernandez Leadership Award from the American College Personnel Association, the Edith Auslander Outstanding Support of Hispanic Issues in Higher Education Award from the Pete C. Garcia Victoria Foundation, the Exemplary Leadership Award from Valle Del Sol, and Hispanic Business Woman of the Year from the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In June 2019, Dr. Franco’s leadership also resulted in the UA receiving the inaugural Seal of Excelencia, aimed at recognizing institutions that demonstrate intentional impact and success in the three core areas of work that Excelencia has determined lead to Latino student success: data, practice, and leadership.

Dr. Franco is a first-generation college graduate, having earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree in counseling from California State University, Long Beach, and a doctoral degree in higher education leadership from Azusa Pacific University. Dr. Franco leads strategically, courageously, and with a fierce passion for what she does.

Carlos A. Galan
Assistant Professor
Counseling, College of Education
CSU San Bernardino

Carlos A. Galan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Counseling program in the College of Education at California State University, San Bernardino. As a first-generation college-goer and immigrant to the United States, Dr. Galan’s personal and professional experiences working in K–12, nonprofit and university settings inform his research and practice. Under the assertion that people closest to the problem are the people closest to the solutions, Dr. Galan’s research focuses on equity and access, emphasizing the lived experiences and expertise of communities of color to drive organizational change rooted in racial equity. 

Dr. Galan’s research explores how educational policies and practices affect the experiences and opportunities of students, faculty and staff from communities of color. His scholarship seeks to identify and address barriers to educational and professional success while fostering environments that enhance wellness and equity in both secondary and postsecondary education for communities of color and marginalized communities.

He earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and Policy from UC Riverside. Dr. Galan’s academic journey also includes a bachelor’s degree in History and Public Policy from UCLA and a master’s degree in School Counseling from the University of Southern California.

Gina Ann Garcia
Professor in the School of Education
UC Berkeley

Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on understanding how Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) embrace and enact an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She explores the experiences of administrators, faculty and staff at HSIs and the outcomes of students attending these institutions. As an equity-minded scholar, she tends to the ways that race and racism have shaped institutions of higher education. 

Dr. Garcia is the author of “Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities” and “Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice.” She is also the editor of the book “Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs” and she created and co-authored the workbook “Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice: A Practitioner’s Workbook.”

She has delivered over 250 public lectures and workshops across the country and consults directly with HSIs to work towards organizational transformation. She is also the host of the popular podcast ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?   

Dr. Garcia graduated from California State University, Northridge with a bachelor’s degree in marketing; the University of Maryland, College Park with a master’s degree in college student personnel and the University of California, Los Angeles with a Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change. She is a proud alumna of an HSI and was a Title V Coordinator at Cal State University, Fullerton, which drives and motivates her research and praxis.

Leslie D. Gonzales
Professor of Higher Education
Department Head of Educational Policy Studies and Practices
and
Director for the Study of Higher Education
University of Arizona

Leslie D. Gonzales, Ed.D. serves as professor of higher education, department head of Educational Policy Studies and Practices and director for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. As a working class, Latina, first-generation college student, Gonzales earned all three academic degrees from Hispanic-Serving Institutions and is committed to the advancement of inclusion and equity in higher education, generally, and in the context of the academic profession more specifically. Dr. Gonzales seeks to do so 1) through her research concerning the racialized nature of academic careers, contexts, and outcomes, 2) through her work in academic administration and 3) through meaningful praxis and partnerships.

Elizabeth Gonzalez
Director of the Hispanic-Serving Institution Initiatives, Office of the Chancellor
UCLA

Dr. Elizabeth Gonzalez is a prominent academic leader and scholar, currently serving as the Director of Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives at UCLA’s Office of the Chancellor. Since her appointment in 2022, Dr. Gonzalez has been instrumental in advancing UCLA’s efforts to achieve federal HSI designation by 2025, driving strategic planning efforts that engage senior leadership, faculty, students, and alumni in enhancing the university’s capacity to support its diverse student body.

Dr. Gonzalez is a seasoned administrator with a proven track record in securing significant funding for her initiatives, including a $3 million gift to expand infrastructure and affordability programs at UCLA. She has spearheaded the establishment of the Latinx Success Center and the Excelencia Scholars Program, a scholarship initiative for low-income students.

Before joining UCLA, Dr. Gonzalez held leadership roles at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and San José City College, where she managed multi-million dollar HSI grants and implemented programs that substantially improved student success outcomes. Her national work includes serving as the Vice President for the Alliance of HSI Educators (AHSIE), a role that allowed her to support the work of the nation’s nearly 600 designated HSIs and 400+ emerging HSIs.

Dr. Gonzalez earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her B.A. in Psychology, cum laude, from UCLA. A Ford Fellow, she is recognized for her research on Indigenous Mexican youth and her commitment to advancing educational equity, making significant contributions to the field through both her scholarship and leadership.

Yolanda Gorman
Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff to the Chancellor
UCLA

Dr. Gorman has more than 25 years of experience as a successful organizational consultant specializing in nonprofit management. She has assisted nonprofit organizations with infrastructure and resource development and has provided program and strategic planning, research and evaluation, board training and organizational development services.

Dr. Gorman has secured more than $100 million from state, federal and private sources to help her clients design and deliver programs that respond to critical human needs. She conducts seminars and training sessions for the boards of local and national organizations, foundations and academic institutions, and has provided technical assistance to a number of private foundations.

Dr. Gorman serves as the Chair of the Board for CalNonprofits Insurance Services a private for-profit insurance brokerage and is a governor’s appointee to the Board of the Baldwin Hills Conservancy.  Dr. Gorman also serves on the Board of Directors of the African American Board Leadership Institute, the California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits), and is a Los Angeles County Commissioner for Older Adults. She is a two-time Regent Emerita for the University of California, Board of Regents, a former member of the Board of the UCLA Foundation, and the first African American woman to chair the Board of the UCLA Alumni Association.

Dr. Gorman is a three-time graduate from UCLA with a B.A. in psychology, and M.B.A. in accounting and small business management, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology with a minor in clinical psychology and psychiatry.

Jody Greene
Associate Campus Provost
UC Santa Cruz

Jody Greene came to UC Santa Cruz in 1998 and now serves as the associate campus provost. In 2016, after nearly two decades on the faculty, Jody became the founding director of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning, now the Teaching and Learning Center. Starting in 2018, they served as associate vice provost for Teaching and Learning, before moving to the Office of the Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor (CP/EVC), first in 2022 as special advisor to the CP/EVC for Education Equity and Academic Success, and then in 2023 as associate provost, overseeing a portfolio balancing faculty and student success.

Jody's research interests in legal and literary studies include Early Modern intellectual property law; non-dualist Western philosophy, especially the work of Spivak, Derrida and Nancy; human rights and international law; queer studies; and the history of literary discourse and literary institutions. Their most recent co-edited collections include ”Human Rights after Corporate Personhood” (Toronto, 2020) and ”Teaching Environmental Justice” (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Jody frequently writes for and is regularly interviewed in the higher education press, including the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. Jody is the recipient of the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division John Dizikes Teaching Award (2008), the Disability Resource Center Champion of Change Award (2018), the UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate Distinguished Service award (2021) and, twice, the UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching Award (2001 and 2014). 

Alfred Herrera
Assistant Dean for Academic Partnerships and Director Emeritus
Center for Community College Partnerships
UCLA

As assistant dean for Academic Partnerships and the director of the UCLA Center for Community College Partnerships (CCCP), Alfred devoted 42 years at UCLA to helping transfer students achieve their educational goals. His work focuses on developing academic enrichment programs aimed at preparing underserved students to become competitively eligible for a research university. Alfred is nationally and internationally renowned for his strong advocacy on behalf of transfer and undocumented students in higher education and has conducted training and information sessions about supporting undocumented students across the country and improving access and success for transfer students.

Alfred founded the Center for Community College Partnerships (CCCP) at UCLA in 2001, which focuses on increasing access and success to four-year universities for first-generation, low-income, underrepresented or immigrant students. CCCP has been a local, state, national and international model. In October of 2019, Alfred and his CCCP team were selected by Excelencia in Education as the model program across the nation in serving Latino students to advance in higher education. His work is grounded in the foundations of critical race theory and community cultural wealth, which are important in the work CCCP does.

Mr. Herrera was appointed to serve on the inaugural UC Chicano/Latino Advisory Council to the UC President and was elected co-chair of this committee. He served as a member of the UC Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Advisory Board and was appointed by UCLA Chancellor Block to co-chair UCLA’S efforts to developing a strong support structure as UCLA prepares to become an HSI in the near future. He serves on the advisory board of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (NISTS) and is a faculty member and strong supporter of the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE) and all TRIO programs.

Alfred has co-authored several articles, including “Strategies to Support Undocumented Students” and the seminal piece "Critical Race Theory and the Transfer Function: Introducing a Transfer Receptive Culture," which was published in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. He has also co-authored a book titled “Power to the Transfer: Critical Race Theory and a Transfer Receptive Culture (Perspectives on Access, Equity, and Diversifying Pathways in P-20 Education),” published in February 2020. 

Alfred has received numerous awards and recognitions for his illustrious contributions in higher education, including his recent selection for the first ever Quintessential Transfer Advocate award by NISTS, the Student Advocacy Award (that was named after him) by the Chicano/Latino Advisory Counsil to the UC President and the Padrino Award by COLEGAS, a community college Latino organization. He was also selected for the Inaugural Unsung Hero Award from the Campaign for College Opportunity. He received the Inclusion, Access, and Success Award from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.

Mr. Herrera earned his Master of Public Administration at California State University, Dominguez Hills and his B.A. in Behavioral Science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He retired from UCLA in June 2023 after 42 years of service.

Kathleen L. Komar
Distinguished Professor
Comparative Literature and Germanic Languages
UCLA

Kathleen L. Komar earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and joined UCLA in 1977. She is currently a distinguished professor of Comparative Literature. She was awarded UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award as well as awards from the UC systemwide academic senate and the staff assembly. She served as both chair of Comparative Literature and as associate dean of the Graduate Division at UCLA, as well as chair of UCLA’s Academic Senate and as interim vice provost for Academic Personnel.

She has published over 120 research articles on a variety of comparative topics from Romanticism to the present, featuring American and German literature. Her books include: “Reclaiming Klytemnestra: Revenge or Reconciliation” (2003), a cross-cultural examination of late 20^th-century women authors who rewrite the ancient character of Klytemnestra;   “Transcending Angels: Rainer Maria Rilke's ‘Duino Elegies’” (l987) and “Pattern and Chaos: Multilinear Novels by Dos Passos, Faulkner, Döblin, and Koeppen” (1983).  She edited the volume “Father Figures and Gender Identities in Scandinavian and Comparative Literature” (2016) and co-edited the collection “Lyrical Symbols and Narrative Transformations” with Ross Shideler (1998).

Professor Komar served as president of the American Comparative Literature Association (2005–07) and was elected vice president of the International Comparative Literature Association (2016–19). She was a senior fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in 2012. Her current research interests and publications include the ways in which technology changes our literary paradigms and issues of the relationship of the humanities to society, as well as early 20^th-century literature and crime fiction. 

Cynthia Larive
Chancellor
UC Santa Cruz

As the 11th chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, Cynthia Larive leads an institution known worldwide for its high-impact research, for seeking interdisciplinary solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, and for its commitment to social and environmental justice. 

UC Santa Cruz is proud to share the distinction of being the youngest institution in the esteemed 71-member Association of American Universities (AAU) and one of only five members that is both a Hispanic-Serving Institution and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution. The university in 2022 joined with other leading universities to form the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU), which aims to increase opportunity for those historically underserved by higher education. Larive is a member of the governing boards of AAU, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, Internet2 and is on the executive board of the HSRU Alliance. She serves as chair of the board of directors of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership and is a board member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. 

Under Chancellor Larive’s leadership, UC Santa Cruz has cemented its place as preeminent research university, with research support now surpassing $210 million annually. She advanced regional economic development by establishing the Innovation and Business Engagement Hub to connect industry with the campus innovation ecosystem. Building additional student housing is a top priority,  with a plan underway to boost student housing by more than 40 percent by 2030. In 2021, Larive launched the Student Success Initiative to ensure all students have access to the full range of experiences fundamental to their education, and kicked off the most significant faculty hiring effort the campus has pursued since its founding more than 50 years ago. She gained approval for the campus Long Range Development Plan that will serve as a blueprint for development on campus over the next two decades and completed “Leading the Change: The UC Santa Cruz Strategic Plan,” which details the campus community’s collective vision for the university over the next decade.

An accomplished bioanalytical chemist, Larive served as the primary mentor to 30 doctoral and master’s students with whom she co-authored more than 160 scientific publications. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and has received campus and national awards for her teaching, research and leadership. 

A common thread throughout Larive’s career has been her commitment to student success, inclusion and equity. Her vision for UC Santa Cruz focuses on access and excellence, supporting students from all backgrounds to achieve success in their academic studies and in their careers as successful alumni. Larive has led programs for undergraduate research and curricular innovation and has written extensively on active and experiential learning and mentoring. She has been active throughout her career in encouraging the participation and success of women and other underrepresented groups in the STEM fields. Under her leadership, in 2022 UC Santa Cruz was ranked No. 1 in the nation among top research universities for racial and gender diversity in leadership. 

Larive came to UC Santa Cruz from UC Riverside, where she was provost and executive vice chancellor. As provost, she was responsible for the academic enterprise, managing large-scale initiatives as well as the academic operations of the Riverside campus. Over her career at UCR, she served in a variety of other leadership roles including Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Divisional Dean of Physical Sciences and Mathematics, and interim Dean of the College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences. She began her academic career at the University of Kansas, where she was professor of chemistry from 1992 to 2004.

Larive is a first-generation college graduate, earning her bachelor’s of science from South Dakota State University and her master’s from Purdue University, both in chemistry. She earned her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from UC Riverside while raising her daughters, Erin and Megan, with her husband, Jim.

Tiffany Ana López
Dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts
UC Irvine

Dr. Tiffany Ana López has dedicated her career to working collaboratively to advance inclusive excellence and develop DEI-centered leaders. She is currently the dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. López began her educational journey at a community college in Northern California, then transferred to California State University, Sacramento, where she completed a bachelor’s degree through fellowship and support programs. After a year post-graduation, participating in creative writing workshops with foundational figures Sandra Cisneros and Rudolfo Anaya, she earned a scholarship to complete her master’s degree and doctorate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was then the first César Chávez Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth College.

During her tenure at the University of California, Riverside, she founded and directed the Latina/o Play Project at the Culver Center for the Arts and helped to build a transdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum for the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences first-year success program. López served as director of Graduate Studies for the Department of English and mentored Latine students to graduate programs, complete their Ph.D. programs and move into faculty positions. She collaboratively led an interdisciplinary Latine cluster hire proposal across STEM, business, education, humanities and the arts. López is a nationally recognized voice in Latine theater and a leader in equity, diversity and inclusion in higher education.

Theresa A. Maldonado
Vice President for Research & Innovation
UC Office of the President

Theresa A. Maldonado is the systemwide vice president for Research & Innovation (R&I) at the University of California Office of the President (UCOP). In this role she leads large-scale efforts that draw upon the expertise and assets of the UC system’s 10 campuses, three UC-managed Department of Energy (DOE) national labs, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) and UC Health. Recent achievements include leading the $100 million California Climate Action Initiative, steering California’s $1.2 billion DOE Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES), and facilitating the UC and statewide response to the CHIPS Act opportunities. In addition, she is working to revitalize UC’s innovation transfer ecosystem. R&I also provides oversight of multicampus research centers and institutes. As the UC system’s chief research officer, VP Maldonado has championed team science, engaged key stakeholders, welcomed collaborators historically excluded from participation and harnessed the power of UC to produce transformative solutions via research, research translation, innovation and policy.  
 
In addition to her more than three decades of academic experience, Dr. Maldonado has extensive experience at the federal level, having served two terms at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a total of six years, including four years as division director in the Engineering Directorate. At NSF she was engaged in advancing engineering research centers, education and commercialization initiatives. She co-chaired the NSF-wide CAREER Coordinating Committee. She also served on the committee that established the ADVANCE program and on the NSF-wide National Nanotechnology Initiative committee. When at Texas A&M, Maldonado served on the NSF Math and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee as well as chaired the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), a congressionally mandated advisory committee to NSF. As a junior faculty, she was recognized with a NSF Presidential Young Investigator award. 
 
Before entering academia, Dr. Maldonado was a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories. She earned the B.E.E with Highest Honors, M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research background is in nonlinear optical devices and materials, electromagnetics and optical fiber technologies. Dr. Maldonado is a registered professional engineer in Texas.

Lina Méndez
Executive Director, Office of Diversity and Outreach
UCSF
Former Inaugural HSI Director
UC Davis

G. Cristina Mora
Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies
and
Co-director for the Institute of Governmental Studies
UC Berkeley

G. Cristina Mora is an award-winning author and associate professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Institute of Governmental Studies. Her research focuses mainly on immigration and racial and political attitudes in the United States and Europe. Her book, “Making Hispanics,”was published by the University of Chicago Press and provides the first historical account of the rise of the “Hispanic/Latino” category in the United States.

Professor Mora has received numerous accolades for her research, which has been the subject of many national media segments produced in venues like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio and Latino USA. She is currently writing a book, “California ColorLines,” on inequality, race and immigration in California.

Juan Sánchez Muñoz
Chancellor
UC Merced

A California native whose parents immigrated from Mexico and whose father worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz has deep roots in the UC System and the Central Valley region. He earned his B.A. in psychology from UC Santa Barbara. Prior to earning his M.A. in Mexican American studies from California State University, Los Angeles he was a secondary school teacher and instructor in the California Community College system. He earned his Ph.D. in education at UCLA, where he studied curriculum and instruction in the Division of Urban Schooling.  

Dr. Muñoz joined UC Merced as the school’s fourth chancellor from the University of Houston Downtown (UHD), where he served as president and, within his first year, launched the university’s largest capital campaign and led the institution’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey. Prior to UHD, Dr. Muñoz served as senior vice president and vice provost at Texas Tech University.  

He is the author of book chapters, academic articles, essays, refereed and invited conference presentations and is a professor in the Department of Sociology. He is a graduate of the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership offered jointly by Arizona State and Georgetown Universities, ACE’s Spectrum Executive Leadership Program, Harvard University’s Institute for Management and Leadership, UC Berkeley’s Executive Leadership Academy and the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Policy’s Governor’s Executive Development Program. 

Dr. Muñoz has served on the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ Commission on Access, Diversity and Excellence and is currently on the board of directors of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, Excelencia in Education and the American Council on Education. In 2020, he was appointed by Governor Newsom to the board of the California Strategic Growth Council. Additionally, he serves as a member of the Aspen Institute American Talent Initiative steering committee, the Mercy Medical Center community board and the Campaign For College Opportunity board of directors. In 2023, he was appointed to the Carnegie Postsecondary Commission. 

Katherine Newman
Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs
University of California

Katherine Newman became the Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs of the University of California in January of 2023.  She was simultaneously appointed as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Newman was previously the University of Massachusetts System Chancellor for Academic Programs, the Senior Vice President for Economic Development and the Torrey Little Professor of Sociology at UMass Amherst, and prior to that, the James B. Knapp Dean of the Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Newman is the author of fifteen books on topics ranging from technical education and apprenticeship, to the sociological study of the working poor in America’s urban centers, middle class economic insecurity under the brunt of recession, and school violence on a mass scale.  She has written extensively on the consequences of globalization for youth in Western Europe, Japan, South Africa and the US, on the impact of regressive taxation on the poor, and on the history of American political opinion on the role of government intervention.   

Dr. Newman has served as the Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and Director of the Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton, the founding Dean of Social Science at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study and the director of Harvard’s Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy, where she served as the Malcolm Weiner Professor of Urban Studies in the Kennedy School of Government.  She taught for 16 years in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University and for two years in the School of Law at the University of California Berkeley.  

Her forthcoming book, coauthored with Dr. Elisabeth Jacobs, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute, is entitled Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor, will be published in the Spring of 2023.  Newman’s 2019 book, Downhill From Here: Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality analyzes the impact of pension collapse, two tiered labor contracts, municipal bankruptcy, and the emergence of the “grey labor force” on the nation’s retirees. 

Anne-Marie Núñez
Executive Director
Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success
and
Distinguished Centennial Professor in Educational Leadership and Foundations University of Texas at El Paso

Anne-Marie Núñez, Ph.D. is the inaugural executive director of the Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success and the distinguished centennial professor in Educational Leadership and Foundations at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her work employs sociological approaches to examine how multiple social identities shape educational opportunities. She has published several studies on the higher education experiences and trajectories of Latine, first-generation, English-learner, working and migrant students. As a national expert on Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), her co-edited book “Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice,” the first ever to focus on HSIs as organizations, won an International Latino Book Award.

In her work to expand inclusive science approaches, she serves as principal investigator of the first-ever $7 million HSI Center for Evaluation and Research —funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) — which advances culturally responsive evaluation and research to support HSIs in creating STEM pathways for a diverse range of students. In over $15 million of funded projects, she has collaborated extensively with the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), an alliance of over 80 HSIs and other partners, to raise Hispanic attainment in computing fields. Dr. Núñez has served as a member of the NSF Advisory Subcommittee for STEM Education and on the national technical review panel of experts to advance the Carnegie Foundation’s new Social and Economic Mobility classification.

An American Educational Research Association Fellow, she has also been recognized in Education Week’s Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings as among the top 200 scholars in the U.S. influencing educational practice and policy. In addition, she was recently elected to the National Academy of Education for her outstanding scholarship and leadership related to education.

Pamela Padilla
Vice President for Research and Innovation
University of North Texas (UNT)

Dr. Padilla was appointed vice president for research and innovation in June 2022. She previously served as dean of the College of Science, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Science and associate vice president for research and innovation. Under Dr. Padilla’s leadership, UNT’s research expenditures have risen while faculty researchers garnered a record high total of sponsored project awards in funding from top national agencies.

Padilla is a researcher and has been continually supported by either the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, focusing on how environmental and dietary stress affects living organisms at the cellular, genetic and molecular levels to model human health issues such as ischemia and diabetes. Her lead in research training grants provides additional support for Ph.D. student training and demonstrates her commitment to students. She has earned numerous fellowships and grants, including an NSF CAREER award. In 2010, she earned the UNT Early Career Award for Research and Creativity and was a Faculty Leadership Fellow from 2015 to 2016. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute and SACNAS Advanced Leadership Institute Fellow in 2017, received a Science magazine Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction in 2012 and was a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow in 2008.

Notably, she volunteers and is dedicated to STEM diversity organizations and was previous president, treasurer, and board member for the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), the largest STEM diversity nonprofit in the nation. She serves on boards and panels led by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, Nature Springer and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and she represents UNT in the HSRU, an alliance of R1 HSI universities. Padilla received her Ph.D. in biology from the University of New Mexico and was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Juan Poblete
Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies
UC Santa Cruz

I am a Chilean-American professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am also a founding member and principal faculty of the Spanish Studies and the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies majors. Along with my research on Latin/o America and my Hispanic-Serving Institutions work, these programs represent my lifelong commitment to educational equality and social justice in the Americas. 

Author of “Hacia una historia de la lectura y la pedagogía literaria en América Latina” (Cuarto Propio, 2019), “La Escritura de Pedro Lemebel como proyecto cultural y político” (Cuarto Propio, 2019), and “Literatura chilena del siglo XIX: entre públicos lectores y figuras autoriales” (Cuarto Propio, 2003); editor of “New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power” (Routledge, 2018) and ”Critical Latin American and Latino Studies” (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); and co-editor of “Internet, Humor and Nation in Latin America” (University of Florida Press, 2024), “Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship” (Rutgers University Press, 2021), “Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America: Rethinking Creativity and the Common Good” (Routledge, 2020), “Sports and Nationalism in Latin America” (Palgrave, 2015), “Humor in Latin American Cinema” (Palgrave, 2015), “Desden al infortunio: Sujeto, communicación y público en la narrativa de Pedro Lemebel” (Cuarto Propio, 2010), “Andrés Bello” (IILI, 2009) and “Redrawing the Nation: National Identities in Latin/o American Comics” (Palgrave, 2009).

Pablo Reguerín
Vice Chancellor for the Division of Student Affairs
UC Davis

Dr. Pablo Reguerín serves as the vice chancellor for the Division of Student Affairs at UC Davis. Reguerín is passionate about serving the whole student and dedicated to cultivating partnerships on and off campus that advance this purpose. A career-long advocate for equity and diversity, Reguerín has prioritized equity initiatives designed to increase educational outcomes. During his tenure at UC Davis, Student Affairs has made significant investments in mental health, wellness and basic needs. He has also broken donor fundraising records and secured over $17 million in grant funding.  

Before joining UC Davis in 2020, Reguerín served as the associate vice chancellor in the Division of Student Success at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he led the UC Santa Cruz Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives and student retention initiatives.  

Reguerín earned his doctorate in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.) from the UC Davis School of Education CANDEL (Capitol Area North Doctorate in Educational Leadership) Program. He also holds degrees in Latino and Latin American Studies from UC Santa Cruz and in Educational Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Stephanie Reyes-Tuccio
Vice Provost for Educational and Community Partnerships
UC Irvine

Dr. Stephanie Reyes-Tuccio is the vice provost for Educational and Community Partnerships at UC Irvine. She leads campus efforts to bring first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students to and through higher education by connecting and advancing educational equity efforts across public education segments, the university and community stakeholders. In this new role, Vice Provost Reyes-Tuccio will enhance the longstanding Center for Educational Partnerships (CFEP) by spearheading new strategic initiatives aimed at fostering community engagement and creating academic pathways across the university through the newly formed Office of Educational and Community Partnerships. 

The Center for Educational Partnerships works with more than 30,000 students and hundreds of schools and organizations across Orange County and the surrounding region. Under her leadership, CFEP has added new programs and partnerships, expanded to the health sciences, established three UC Irvine student support centers and garnered over $75 million in external grants and contracts. In addition to this work, Vice Provost Reyes-Tuccio has established a binational partnership with Centro Fox in Mexico to create new experiential learning opportunities for UC Irvine students, and she serves as co-chair of the Chicano/Latino Advisory Council to UC President Michael V. Drake. Vice Provost Reyes-Tuccio has received two Woman of the Year awards — from U.S. Congressional Representative Lou Correa (CA-46) and the National Hispanic Business Women Association — highlighting her commitment and service to the community and the university.

Louie F. Rodriguez
Vice Provost and Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education
UC Riverside

Louie F. Rodriguez is the vice provost and dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a professor of education in the UC Riverside School of Education, where he held the Bank of America Endowed Chair in Education Leadership, Policy and Practice. Originally from the Inland Empire, he attended San Bernardino Valley College; CSU, San Bernardino where he became a McNair Scholar; and Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. His research focuses on issues of educational equity, Latina/o/x/ education and community engagement.

Over the last 19 years, Dr. Rodriguez has led several research and community initiatives and is the author of over 50 publications, including four books and several articles and book chapters, and he has received numerous honors, including the American Education Research Association (AERA) Hispanic Research Issues SIG Award for Research in Elementary, Secondary, or Postsecondary Education in 2019, recognition by the Harvard Latino Alumni Alliance in 2019, Outstanding Latino Faculty by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) in 2015, designation as an “Emerging Leader” in 2014 by Phi Delta Kappa International in Washington, DC in 2014. He has also been a Protégé as part of the Millennium Leadership Initiative at American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), an Aspiring Leader with the Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) program at Rutgers University and Fellow with the Executive Leadership Academy at UC Berkeley.

Between 2019–2022, he served as interim dean of the School of Education (SOE) at UC Riverside. He led the school through the global health pandemic, grew the school’s enrollment, and was responsible for over 100 faculty, staff and researchers. He hired 30 precent of the SOE faculty, resulting in the UC Riverside SOE becoming the most diverse education faculty in the entire UC system. Under his leadership, the SOE raised $3 million dollars, developed five endowed scholarships for students, and created 200 emergency scholarships to help students with basic needs. He also oversaw the acquisition of the SOE’s first named space in its 54-year history. He championed an

Ethnic Studies Pathway as part of the Teacher Education Program and developed two major pipeline programs to develop education professionals for the region and state: The FIERCE Scholar’s Program and the Black Community Education Promise (BCEP) Scholar’s Program. He also supported the development of nearly 20 community partnerships that broadened the development of future educators and he supported a new district partnership to fully fund future bilingual teachers. Prior to interim dean, he was associate dean for two years in the School of Education and helped launch a new education major for the SOE. Prior to UC Riverside, he was on the faculty at California State University, San Bernardino and Florida International University. 

As vice provost and dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at UC Riverside since 2023, he has led the division to acquire academic status, becoming the only DUE in the UC system with such status. He has also been a champion for data-informed goal setting, reducing equity gaps and promoting persistence and graduation by launching the Native Community Education Promise (NCEP) through a successful APLU grant (one of only two in the nation), launching a non-course-based writing support program to help students transition to the workforce and graduate/professional school, launching a centralized Peer Academic Advisor (PAA) program, co-leading the Reimagining Orientation for 2025 and Beyond with the vice chancellor of Student Affairs, co-creating a pre-matriculation inventory for first-year students, investing in campuswide first-generation student programming, and supporting the campus XCITE (teaching and learning center) to promote the R’MSI program, an initiative that engages faculty in inclusive teaching and servingness for the entire campus.

He currently co-chairs the UC Chicano/Latino Advisory Council. In addition to his scholarship, he has testified twice in front of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education on creating opportunities to develop ethnic studies teachers in California and has provided expert commentary in various publications including The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine, and others.

Guadalupe Ruiz
Director of Transfer Initiatives and Professional Development
Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering
UC Riverside

Guadalupe Ruiz is the director of Transfer Initiatives and Professional Development at UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering. She received her bachelor’s degree from UC Riverside in sociology and was shortly hired in the college of engineering to support community college transfer students. Since then, she has received her master’s of science in Higher Education Leadership and Student Development from California Baptist University. Additionally, her professional role has evolved into supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds in various settings such as summer research programs, transition support programs, peer mentoring, workshops and seminars, as well as establishing alumni and professional networking opportunities. Currently, Guadalupe is also a third-year doctoral student at UC Riverside in higher education administration and policy. Her research focuses on the experiences of engineering students of color and on equity and inclusion.  

• Guadalupe wrote and was awarded an Office of Naval Research $750,000 grant to support community college transfer students. She then went on to manage the grant through various student-focused initiatives and services. Efforts included establishing partnerships with community colleges, facilitating a course pathway for students and advising. 
• She currently leads college workforce development efforts through diversity and inclusion goals established in an National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center grant. 
• She has facilitated a $1.7 million Hispanic-Serving Institution grant from the Department of Education. The grant included establishing cross-institutional partnerships, supporting students transfer efforts and assisting students as they integrated into UC Riverside. Through these efforts, she has increased the number of incoming engineering transfer students by 17–20 percent yearly.
• She facilitated a memorandum agreement between the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering at the UC Riverside and Norco College. 
• She established, leads and coordinates the Transfer Transition Program to support engineering transfer students with integrating into the university in an effort to increase retention and graduation rates. Through her work with transfer students, she collected and evaluated transfer student data to establish the Engineering Transfer Student Center. 

Her support has also extended to student organizations as she provided leadership and support to 20 organizations and over 200 student leaders.

Delia Saenz
Vice Chancellor for Equity, Justice and Inclusive Excellence
UC Merced

Dr. Delia Saenz is a Texan by birth, a social psychologist by training and a Chicana by heritage. She is the inaugural vice chancellor for Equity, Justice and Inclusive Excellence (EJIE) at UC Merced. In that role, she oversees strategic initiatives that advance inclusion and equity for the benefit of students, faculty, staff and the broader community. EJIE promotes alignment of the university’s values with its research, teaching and service functions.

UC Merced has benefited readily from Dr. Saenz’ leadership, as evidenced by recent recognition for outstanding contributions to addressing equity and excellence from organizations such as Excelencia and Insight into Diversity. She has launched the Institute for Inclusive Excellence to build capacity among faculty and staff in promoting equity, justice and inclusive excellence in their respective areas. Dr. Saenz’s background, training and scholarship position her to advance innovative and inclusive organizational effectiveness that, in turn, ensures talent development among persons from all backgrounds and lived experiences.

She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Princeton University and has held leadership and faculty appointments at Arizona State University, Bennington College and Notre Dame University. Her scholarship focuses on organizational effectiveness, group processes, social identity and culture. Across her career, her research, teaching and service have advanced the understanding of difference as a social concept, and the optimization of learning and working in diverse, multilevel contexts.

Dr. Saenz has been recognized, further, for her contributions to the broadening of participation of underrepresented populations across educational and work domains, as well as for outstanding teaching and mentoring, and for significant contributions to the professional development of students of color. Dr. Saenz’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, Google and others.

Melissa L. Salazar
CEO
ESCALA Educational Services, Inc.

Ph.D. Education (UC Davis), M.S. Food Technology (UC Davis) and B.S. Chemistry/‌Chemical Engineering (UC Berkeley) 

Dr. Salazar is the founder and CEO of ESCALA Educational Services, Inc. but was an active researcher in nutritional anthropology before realizing that her true calling was in teaching and learning in higher education. She now has over 25 years of experience as a college instructor, curriculum developer and teacher trainer. In her journey she has logged over 500 hours observing and talking to teachers about their teaching as well as being instructor of record for 15 different math, science and education courses at four-year and two-year colleges in both California and New Mexico. 

Dr. Salazar formulated the idea for ESCALA in 2013, after realizing the need for her college colleagues to learn more about the impact of culture and power on teaching and learning outcomes for Latinx/e and Hispanic students. She built ESCALA from scratch into a thriving school of professional development that offers five different training programs on equity, culture and teaching to staff, faculty and administrators in Hispanic-Serving Institutions. To date, ESCALA has delivered programming to thousands of practitioners in more than 75 two- and four-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions and remains the only national organization that specializes in providing workshops for the unique context of Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

Dr. Salazar is the co-creator and still works as an instructor in ESCALA’s Certificate in College Teaching & Learning in HSIs, an innovative, 32-hour program that develops HSI faculty into equity leaders in the classroom through a comprehensive equity analysis and research study of their classroom teaching. More than 700 HSI professors, adjuncts and staff have completed the certificate program, and more than 100 ESCALA alumni have received additional training to serve as peer coaches to colleagues engaged in the program. 

ESCALA is a national organization based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Deborah A. Santiago
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Excelencia in Education

Deborah A. Santiago is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Excelencia in Education. For more than 20 years, she has led efforts from the community to national and federal levels to improve educational opportunities and success for all students. 

She co-founded Excelencia in Education to inform policy and practice, to compel action and to collaborate with those ready to increase student success. Deborah developed the Seal of Excelencia certification framework for institutions that go beyond merely enrolling to intentionally serving Latino students.

She has been cited in numerous publications for her work, including The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, AP and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Deborah serves on the advisory board of TheDream.US. and on the technical panel for the Carnegie Classification led by the American Council on Education.

Veronica Terriquez
Director
Chicano Studies Research Center
UCLA

Dr. Veronica Terriquez is the director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. She holds faculty appointments in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the Urban Planning Department. Trained as a sociologist, her research focuses on social inequality, civic engagement, immigrant integration, gender and youth transitions to adulthood. Her research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Gender & Society, Feminist Studies, Social Science & Medicine and other academic journals. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA, her Master of Education at UC Berkeley and her B.A. in Sociology at Harvard University. Informed by over two decades of connections to social justice movements in California, much of her research has implications for local and regional policies affecting Latina/o/x, immigrant and other low-income communities of color. Dr. Terriquez oversees the implementation of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) faculty hiring as part of the chancellor’s HSI Infrastructure Initiative.

Renetta Garrison Tull
Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
UC Davis

Renetta Garrison Tull is the University of California Davis' inaugural vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), which houses Academic Diversity; the Office of Campus Community Relations; four centers; and Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (DEI within the medical school, nursing school and health center). She formerly served as associate vice provost for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and as a director for the University System of Maryland. In past roles at UMBC, Tull served as either Co-PI or PI on AGEP, ADVANCE and LSAMP proposals. At Davis, she is PI of the PROMISE Engineering Institute.

Her degrees in electrical engineering and speech science are from Howard University and Northwestern University, and she has had faculty roles at UW-Madison, University of Maryland College Park and UMBC. Dr. Tull is on the Chief Diversity Officers Council for the University of California, and she is an adjunct professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis. An international speaker on global diversity in STEM, Dr. Tull was a Global Engineering Deans Council/Airbus Diversity Award Finalist and received the ABET Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity and the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development Global Mentoring Award. She was part of the consensus committee for the National Academies’ “Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic STEMM” and is part of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) community. Her research interests in Humanitarian Engineering continue through sharing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Zulema Valdez
Associate Vice Chancellor and Professor of Sociology
UC Merced

Zulema Valdez is associate vice chancellor and professor of sociology at UC Merced. Prior to this appointment she served as associate vice provost of Academic Personnel. In these roles she develops and implements sustainable initiatives focused on recruitment and retention, equity and inclusive excellence, for and across the campus community. Professor Valdez's research program centers on the emergence, persistence and reproduction of social inequality in the United States. She is an expert in the study of undocumented students in higher education, minoritized entrepreneurship and immigrant health disparities, a program of research that she approaches through an intersectional lens. She is the author of two books, another forthcoming, several edited volumes and dozens of articles. Professor Valdez grew up in the Central Valley. She is a proud first-generation college student, community college transfer student and graduate of UCLA.

Marialexia Zaragoza
Project Analyst for HSI
UCLA

Born and raised in the Inland Empire, Marialexia is the daughter of immigrant parents from Jalisco and Michoacán, Mexico. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a minor in Chicana/o studies from California State University, Fullerton, where she was also a McNair Scholar. Marialexia is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Higher Education program at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on understanding how Hispanic-Serving Institutions can better serve their students through implementation of high-impact learning practices, as well as analyzing the ways in which Latine students change, create and influence institutional policy. Marialexia currently serves as the Project Analyst for UCLA’s Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI).