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Mildred Garcia, Ed.D., president of California State University, Fullerton

Dr. Mildred García is president of California State University, Fullerton, the fourth largest university in the state, serving over 38,000 students. The institution is first in California and 10th in the nation in awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics, as well as 4th in the nation in graduating students of color.

President García previously served as president of CSU Dominguez Hills, where she was the first Latina president in the CSU, and Berkeley College, where she was the first system-wide chief executive for all six campuses.

An educator foremost, President García began her career as a faculty member at a variety of institutions—from Arizona State University to Teachers College, Columbia University—where she built the foundation for her now internationally recognized student-centered, collaborative, and transparent leadership style aimed at academic success for an ever-evolving nation of diverse citizens.

Named to Diverse Issues in Higher Education’s Top 25 Women in Higher Education in 2013, García was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. She presently sits on the Board of the Orange County United Way, the Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

A first-generation college student, President García earned a Doctorate of Education and a M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Columbia University, Teachers College; a M.A. in Business Education/Higher Education from New York University; a B.S. in Business Education from Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY); and an A.A.S. from New York City Community College.

Armando Bengochea, Ph.D., program officer and director of the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program

Armando Bengochea is a Program Officer of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and serves as Director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), one of the nation’s most comprehensive “pipeline to the professoriate” programs. This program selects students of color and others committed to diversity, beginning in their sophomore year of college, and promotes their progress through doctoral work and professional appointments as early-career scholars. In addition to directing MMUF, Mr. Bengochea makes dissertation and post-doctoral grants to many institutions around the U.S., including 15 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU).

Mr. Bengochea graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his MA and Ph.D. from Princeton University. A political philosopher by training, Mr. Bengochea came to the Mellon Foundation after twenty years as an undergraduate academic dean at Brown University where he also formally monitored the academic and social well-being of Latino undergraduates across all four classes. Later, he served six years as Dean of the College and Senior Diversity Officer at Connecticut College. There, he planned and executed, with the chief academic officer, a successful and rapid diversification of the faculty.

Ruth Enid Zambrana, Ph.D., professor, Department of Women's Studies and director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at University of Maryland

Ruth Enid Zambrana, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Women’s Studies, Director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and adjunct Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She has published extensively, including Latinos in American Society: Families and Communities in Transition (Cornell University Press, 2011) and an edited anthology with Bonnie T. Dill entitled Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice (Rutgers Press, 2009), and serves on many social science and public health journal editorial boards. She was Principal Investigator of a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on Understanding the Relationship between Work Stress and U.S. Research Institutions’ Failure to Retain Underrepresented Minority (URM) Faculty and is currently completing a book on these data.

Recent awards include the 2013 University of Maryland Outstanding Woman of Color Award for her lifetime achievements, and the 2011 Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award by the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Latinos/as Section for her contributions to the sociology of Latinos and immigrant studies, teaching and mentoring. The most recent award from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Expanding the Bench program initiative, aims to translate these new findings on URM faculty barriers and challenges into higher education policies to enhance retention and promotion.

Caroline Turner, Ph.D., professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento

Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner is Professor and Graduate Coordinator for the Doctorate in Educational Leadership Program at California State University, Sacramento. Previously, she served as Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Education at Arizona State University (ASU) where she founded and directed graduate programs in Higher & Postsecondary Education. She co-founded the national Keeping our Faculties of Color Symposium which continues to this day. Turner currently serves as Immediate Past President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the leading scholarly society for research on higher education.

Turner’s research focuses on access, equity, leadership, and qualitative approaches to policy research in higher education. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. She has also served on numerous peer-reviewed journal editorial boards and is one of the founding editorial advisory board members for the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Her publications, particularly Faculty of Color in Academe: Bittersweet Success (with Myers, Jr.) and Diversifying the Faculty: A Guidebook for Search Committees (widely adopted selling over 17,000 copies), advanced the dialogue on faculty gender and racial/ethnic diversity among scholars and practitioners. Her recent book, Modeling Mentoring Across Race/Ethnicity and Gender: Practices to Cultivate the Next Generation of Diverse Faculty (with González), addresses the preparation of the next generation of higher education professionals. Her upcoming special New Directions in Higher Education issue is titled, Mentoring as Transformative Practice: Supporting Student and Faculty Diversity. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Scholars of Color in Education Standing Committee Career Contribution Award and the AERA Dr. Carlos J. Vallejo Memorial Award for Lifetime Scholarship. Turner received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of California, Davis and her Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Roland B. Smith, Jr., Ed.D., associate provost, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and adjunct professor of sociology at Rice University

Dr. Roland Smith is associate provost and adjunct professor of sociology at Rice University. He oversees the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and chairs the Rice Council on Diversity and Inclusion. He teaches ethnographic research methods while serving on the Graduate Council and Institutional Review Board. He came to Rice from the University of Notre Dame, where he served as executive assistant to the president, concurrent associate professor of sociology, and founding director of the Center for Educational Opportunity, which included TRIO programs. He also served as a research intern in the US Senate.

Dr. Smith served as chair of the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education and as the charter president of the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from Bowie State University, a M.P.A. from Indiana University, and an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Edmund Bertschinger, Ph.D., Institute Community and Equity officer at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Ed Bertschinger is Institute Community and Equity Officer, a position reporting to the provost whose mission is to advance a respectful and caring community that embraces diversity and empowers everyone to learn and do their best at MIT. Ed is a professor of physics and was the MIT physics department head for almost 6 years before undertaking his new role. He is a theoretical astrophysicist whose research and teaching focus on black holes and curved spacetime who is equally passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion in all their aspects. In addition to Guggenheim and Sloan fellowships, Ed has received the Luis Walter Alvarez Award for the Advancement of Latinos in Science from the SACNAS-SHPE-MAES STEM Consortium, the Outstanding MAEStro Award, and MIT’s Outstanding Freshman Advisor and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Awards.