Message from Chair, Department of Education
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar
Welcome to the Department of Education
August 2025
Welcome to the Department of Education at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies. As Chair, I am honored to invite you into a scholarly and professional community dedicated to transforming education and transforming lives.
Our Department stands on a remarkable foundation—UCLA began as a teacher’s college, and a degree in Education was the first awarded at this institution. With over a century of experience in championing bold new viewpoints in education, we have evolved into a comprehensive department that serves learners at every stage of their educational journey, from undergraduate exploration to advanced doctoral research to professional leadership development.
Our Mission: Learning Happens Everywhere
We believe that transformative education begins with rigorous preparation and an unwavering commitment to equity. Through scholarship, teaching, research, and community engagement, our Department prepares tomorrow’s leaders to fearlessly pursue the incredible potential of an educational system that embraces and adapts to difference. We train educators and researchers to cultivate equity and confront systemic inequity, to reshape how classrooms and communities function and who they serve, to frame intellect as a treasure and access to resources as an inherent right.
A Comprehensive Educational Ecosystem
Our Department offers an unparalleled range of programs designed to meet diverse educational goals and career aspirations:
For Undergraduates, we provide pathways to analyze educational issues through social justice lenses. Our Education and Social Transformation Major prepares effective advocates for positive change, while our specialized minors—including Education Studies, Science Education, and Visual and Performing Arts Education—allow students to integrate educational perspectives into their broader studies. Our Information and Media Literacy Minor addresses critical 21st-century skills essential for navigating today’s complex information landscape.
For Graduate Students seeking advanced scholarship, our M.A. in Education offers a one-year intensive experience for educators and practitioners ready to deepen their understanding of teaching, learning, and educational systems. Our Ph.D. in Education provides a rigorous, research-intensive pathway for scholars committed to advancing the field through original research and critical inquiry. We also offer a unique Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education with Cal State LA, preparing leaders for university faculty positions and research roles.
For Educational Professionals, our comprehensive suite of M.Ed. and Ed.D. programs addresses every aspect of educational leadership and practice. Our Teacher Education Program prepares social justice educators for urban settings, while our Principal Leadership Institute develops outstanding educators into school leaders. The Educational Leadership Program (Ed.D.) focuses on creating equitable PreK-16 opportunities through student-centered teaching and learning. We also serve specialized professional communities through our Student Affairs program, Transformative Coaching and Leadership program, and our innovative M.D./M.A. articulated degree for medical educators.
For Continuing Professional Development, we offer targeted academies and institutes that serve working professionals. Our Academy for Excellence in Medical Education promotes research and community building among medical educators. The UCLA Professional Leadership and Coaching Academy refines leadership identities to provide equitable support in educational systems. Our Women’s Leadership Academies serve K-12, community college, and university professionals seeking to expand their leadership impact.
Our Distinctive Approach
What unites all our programs is a collective vision grounded in six core domains of educational inquiry that guide our scholarly community. These domains—Purpose, Participation, Knowledge, Place, Context, and Change—provide a shared foundation from which our community of scholars explores diverse areas of expertise that reflect the outstanding faculty we have assembled.
Starting with these core domains, our faculty and students investigate fundamental questions: What should education be for, and who should it serve? How do people and communities participate in learning systems? What do we know, and how do we know it through rigorous assessment and methodology? How do place, land, and water shape educational experiences? How do interrelated environments and policies influence learning? And how do we foster meaningful change in educational contexts?
From this shared conceptual foundation, our community branches into remarkable areas of specialization that represent the breadth and depth of our faculty expertise. We are internationally renowned for our groundbreaking work in urban education and environmental justice, pioneering approaches to student testing and assessment, state-of-the-art research in international and comparative education, rigorous program evaluation methodologies, cutting-edge neuroscience and disability studies, critical race and ethnic studies, indigenous education, teaching, learning and pedagogies, and transformative research in early childhood development. Our faculty lead scholarship that spans the full spectrum of educational inquiry—from language, literacy, and learning sciences to educational policy analysis and community-based learning initiatives, from special education innovation to higher education change and leadership development. This rich tapestry of expertise ensures that our students engage with faculty who are not only leaders in their fields but also committed to the collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that defines excellence in contemporary educational research and practice.
This approach ensures that whether our undergraduate students are exploring education through social transformation lenses, our master’s students are developing practical leadership skills, or our doctoral students are conducting original research, they are all grounded in the same foundational understanding of educational complexity while pursuing specialized expertise alongside faculty who are leaders in their respective fields. Our research centers translate this groundbreaking scholarship into actionable plans for educational transformation, creating learning experiences that prepare graduates to make meaningful contributions across all educational contexts.
Join Our Community
Whether you’re an undergraduate student discovering your passion for educational equity, a practicing educator ready to advance your expertise, a scholar-practitioner seeking to conduct meaningful research, or a leader committed to systemic change, we have a place for you in our community. Our graduates go on to become teachers and administrators, professors and researchers, policy makers and advocates, coaches and consultants—all united by their commitment to educational justice and excellence.
As you explore our programs, know that you’re not just choosing courses of study—you’re choosing to become part of a movement toward more just and inclusive education systems. We’re looking for students and professionals who share our commitment to rigorous inquiry in service of transformative change, who bring diverse perspectives to complex challenges, and who are ready to contribute to educational transformation in meaningful ways.
I invite you to explore what our Department has to offer and to imagine the contributions you might make to the field of education. The future of equitable education depends on educators, researchers, and leaders who can think deeply, act courageously, and lead with purpose. You may be one of them.
With warm regards,
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar
Chair, Department of Education
UCLA School of Education and Information Studies