Panelist and Moderator Biographies

Walter Allen

Walter R. Allen is a Professor in Higher Education, at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California , Los Angeles . He is also co-director of the CHOICES Project: Access, Equity and Diversity, a longitudinal study of college attendance among African-Americans and Latinos in California . Dr. Allen's research and teaching focus on educational equity, higher education, social inequality, family patterns, socialization and personality development, race/ethnic relations, and higher education desegregation. His work has appeared in more than eighty publications. He has also co-edited the special issue “Comparative Perspectives on Black Family Life” in the Journal of Comparative Family Studies .

Adriana D. Barrera

Adriana D. Barrera was appointed to serve as the Los Angeles Community College District’s Senior Vice Chancellor in December 2005. From 2000 to 2005, she had served as president of Los Angeles Mission College ; she had earlier served as president of El Paso Community College from 1994. As Senior Vice Chancellor, Dr. Barrera has administrative oversight for educational support, business operations, accounting, budget development and management, and information technology for LACCD. She has worked with community college faculty and staff in the development of shared governance models of decision-making, on accreditation issues, and on resource development.

Miguel Ceja

Miguel Ceja received his Ph.D. in the Higher Education and Organizational Change (HEOC) program in the Department of Education at UCLA. He is currently Associate Professor in the department of Public Policy and Administration at California State University , Sacramento (CSUS). Dr. Ceja is also a Faculty Researcher for the Institute of Higher Education Leadership and Policy (IHELP) at CSUS. Dr Ceja’s research focuses on high school to college transition for students of color, the college-choice process for Latina/o students, equity and access to higher education and educational pipeline analysis for students of color.

Dolores Delgado Bernal

Dolores Delgado Bernal has researched and taught issues relating to Chicana/o education and schooling, critical race theory and Latina/o critical theory in education, and the examination of race, class, and gender in the sociology of education. Professor Delgado Bernal has written “Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research.” She is currently an Associate Professor and a Central Committee member in the Department of Education, Culture, & Society and the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Utah .

Aimee Dorr

Aimee Dorr is a Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Dean Dorr is a member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Society, International Communication Association, and Society for Research in Child Development; she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dean Dorr is a distinguished teacher and scholar who is recognized internationally for her work on the roles of electronic media in children's informal and formal education. She is currently involved in efforts to assist teachers in integrating new technology intelligently into their classrooms. Dean Dorr's research interests include processes by which electronic media are used by and affect children and adolescents; roles of television and parents in socialization of emotions; the design of effective and beneficial electronic media products; and media literacy. Her work has appeared in Ethnicity and Diversity: Minorities No More and Media Competency as a Challenge to School and Education.

Patricia Gandara

Patricia Gandara serves as the Co-Director of PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education), is the Associate Director of the U.C. Linguistic Minority Research Institute (LMRI), and is a professor of Education at the University of California , Davis . Dr. Gandara is author of “Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos,” and co-author of “Paving the Way to Post-Secondary Education: K-12 Intervention Programs for Underrepresented Youth.” Dr. Gandara has authored and co-authored books and articles on peer group influence and college-attendance behavior of low-income Latino and other ethnic minority students; immigrant students, bilingual education policy, and the public schools; high academic achievement of low-income Mexican-Americans; Mexican-American and education mobility; and mathematics instruction in multicultural classrooms. Currently, she is researching the effectiveness of college access and early intervention programs for underrepresented students, as well as strengthening the academic pipeline for Latino, African-American, and Native-American students. 

Linda Hagedorn

Linda Hagedorn was appointed as the Chair of the Educational Administration and Policy department in 2005 at the University of Florida 's College of Education . Professor Hagedorn's main research focus has been the identification of policies regarding the factors that promote community college student retention, and transfer and degree acquisition. She is also the Vice President of the Postsecondary Education Division of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), an organization that promotes the scholarly inquiry in education with the goal of improving the educational process. Professor Hagedorn has written and edited numerous books and journals on community college student success, equity issues, and college retention of underrepresented student groups. Some of her works included chapters in books such as: College Student Retention: Formula for Student Success and Serving Minority Populations: New Directions for Community Colleges.

Alfred Herrera

Alfred R. Herrera holds the position of Acting Director of the UCLA Academic Advancement Program (AAP) as well as founding director of the UCLA Center for Community College Partnerships (CCCP). He has worked to create educational access for all students. Recently, Mr. Herrera was one of five professionals selected nationwide by the Social Science Research Center to be a member of a Practitioner Advisory Group for the “Transitions to College” project, funded by the Lumina Foundation, which examines the extent to which conditions for opportunity and success are available to all American adolescents as they attempt to navigate through secondary school to college. Mr. Herrera has also received recognition in the U.S. Congressional Record by Congresswoman Hilda Solis for his work in higher education and on AB540, a bill to assist undocumented students in obtaining a college degree.

Jose Huizar

Jose Huizar was elected to represent the 14th Council District of the City of Los Angeles on November 8, 2005. Previous to the City Government election, he had represented the Second District of the Los Angeles Board of Education, beginning in 2001, and served two terms as Board President from July 2003 through June 2005. Under his leadership, LAUSD undertook the largest public works program in the country with a plan to build 160 new schools in the next eight years. His interest in bringing additional accountability to the School District led him to work with the City of Los Angeles and surrounding cities to establish the Presidents' Joint Commission on LAUSD Governance; the first comprehensive evaluation of the District in its over 150 year history.  José Huizar was profiled in the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of 25 figures in the Los Angeles area that “stand out for their potential to shape lives,” and was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees for Princeton University . He is a native of Zacatecas , Mexico and was raised in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights . José is a product of the local school system. He went on to earn his Bachelor of Arts degree from U.C. Berkeley, a Master's in Public Affairs and Urban and Regional Planning from Princeton University , and his Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law. José Huizar began his career as a land use attorney. He became a Deputy Los Angeles City Attorney and was appointed to serve on the East Los Angeles Planning Commission.

Sylvia Hurtado

Sylvia Hurtado is a Professor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies department and also serves as the Director of the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). She has published articles and research reports related to her interests in student educational outcomes, student transition to college, access, campus climates for learning among diverse peers, college impact on student development, and student diversity in higher education. She was named among the top 15 influential faculty whose work has had an impact in the academy by Black Issues In Higher Education . She has also published numerous articles and books.

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan

As Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Los Angeles, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan serves as the campus-wide advocate for the advancement of graduate education and works to insure that standards of excellence, fairness and equity are maintained across all graduate programs. Concurrent with her administrative responsibilities, she is a professor in the Departments of Anthropology, Psychiatry, and Biobehavioral Sciences. Throughout her career she has maintained an active record of service for federal agencies that sponsor research. She currently serves on the Board of Higher Education and Workforce of the National Research Council; the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools, and chairs it's Advisory Committee on Minorities in Graduate Education; and the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Social Science Associations. In her 30 year career at UCLA, she has been extensively involved in campus governance and has served on a wide variety of departmental, campus and university-wide committees.

Jeannie Oakes

Jeannie Oakes is a Presidential Professor in Educational Equity at the University of California at Los Angeles . She is also Director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education & Access (IDEA) and UC's All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (ACCORD). Dr. Oakes' research examines inequalities in U.S. schools and follows the progress of equity-minded reform. Her research has delved into the tracking and ability grouping of children in the educational system, the unequal distribution of educational resources in California , and educators' attempts to eliminate schooling inequalities and build democratic school communities. She is the author of 17 scholarly books and monographs and more than 100 published research reports, chapters, and articles.

Armida Ornelas

Armida Ornelas is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the department of Social Science at East Los Angeles College . Prof. Ornelas' research and teaching revolves around the transfer process of community college students, the transfer culture, educational outcome and conditions for Chicana/o and Latina/o students, the critical race theory, institutional case study analysis, postsecondary education and community colleges, and race, gender, and class relations. She has published articles on these subjects and is currently working on a chapter for the book “An Equal Opportunity Analysis of Advance Placement Courses and University Admissions: A Case of Educational Identity.”

Daniel Solorzano

Daniel G. Solórzano is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and past chair of the Department of Education. He also holds the position of Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Solórzano's current work applies Critical Race Theory to examine the college admissions process and access to Advanced Placement courses for African-American and Chicano/Latino high school students, gender studies on educational access, and the persistence and graduation of underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students in the United States . His scholarly publications include numerous journals and books. Some of his published works are: Critical Race Theory, Marginality, and the Experience of Minority Students in Higher Education (with Octavio Villalpando) and Critical Race Theory, Racial and Gender Microaggressions, and the Experiences of Chicana and Chicano Scholars .

Edward Velasquez

Edward Velasquez holds the office of Superintendent of Schools at the Montebello Unified School District. He has worked to increase student achievement within his district. Mr. Velasquez has a long history working with economically disadvantaged children and has taught within the MUSD for a number of years before transitioning to an administrative position. He has also taught within the Education Department as an Adjunct Professor at the California State University, Los Angeles. Mr. Velasquez is involved and dedicated to the community and to the education of children.

Concepcion Valadez

Concepcion Valadez is an Associate Professor at UCLA's School of Education and Information Science (GSE&IS). Her research and teaching interests include: language education, bilingualism, literacy, curriculum design, testing and linguistic minorities. She was editor of Advances in Language Education and had her article “Language-minority students and educational reform: An incomplete agenda” published in From the Campus: Perspectives on the School Reform Movement .

Tara Yosso

Tara J. Yosso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California , Santa Barbara . She received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California , Los Angeles . Her research and teaching draw on the frameworks of critical race theory and critical media literacy to examine issues of educational access and equity. As a 2005-06 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Diversity Fellow and a Visiting Scholar with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center , Dr. Yosso is completing a manuscript that explores Hollywood representations of Latinas/os in schools. She has authored numerous chapters and articles, some of which appear in the Review of Research in Education , International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education , Journal of Negro Education , and Journal of Popular Film and Television . Her book Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline (Routledge, 2006) analyzes Chicana/o experiences navigating through structures, practices, and discourses of racism from elementary through graduate school.