Sylvia Hurtado, PhD

Sylvia Hurtado is a Professor of Education 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 diverse students’ college experiences, the campus racial climate, and higher education equity and inclusion.  In addition to many publications in these areas, she is co-editor of two books that 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). She currently serves a Special Advisor to the Chancellor at UCLA on Latinx issues.

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). She is past President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She directed multimillion dollar, NIH-funded projects to study the long term effects of undergraduate education and diversification of the scientific workforce. She now engages in collaborative evaluations of STEM intervention programs, including research on culturally aware mentor training for graduate faculty in the biomedical sciences, and on how STEM student-centered interventions result in diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

Her early engagement as a first generation college student led to roles in college admissions, graduate admissions and student support, and 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.