Sylvia Hurtado

Sylvia Hurtado is a Distinguished 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 students’ college experiences, the campus climate, STEM pathways, and institutional transformation in higher education. She teaches intergroup dialogue to build skills to engage across cultural differences. In addition to many publications in these areas, she co-edited books that 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 was elected as President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for 2027-28, and also was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2019. In 2022, she received the Sidney Suslow Scholar (Career) Award, from the Association for Institutional Research. She is past President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She directed multi-year NIH-funded projects to study the long term effects of undergraduate education and diversification of the scientific workforce. She now writes in collaboration with teams of researchers to study the organizational impact of faculty mentor training in the biomedical sciences, studies on student-centered interventions at universities, and efforts to advance student success in college.

Her early engagement as a first-generation college student led to roles in college admissions, graduate admissions and student support, and her interest in higher education as a field of study.