Robert Teranishi

Robert Teranishi is Professor of Social Science and Comparative Education, the Morgan and Helen Chu Endowed Chair in Asian American Studies, and director for the Institute for Immigration, Globalization, and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research examines the causes and consequences of the stratification of college opportunities, with a particular interest on the impact of higher education practice and policy on the mobility of marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Teranishi’s research has been influential to federal, state, and institution policy related to college access and completion. He has testified before Congress on the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, the College Cost Reduction and Affordability Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. His research has been referenced in U.S. Supreme Court cases on school desegregation and affirmative action in college admissions. In 2011, he was appointed by Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. In 2015, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as a member of the National Board for the Institute for Education Sciences. He has also served as a strategic planning and restructuring consultant for the Ford Foundation.

Teranishi has received national awards from the National Institute for the Study of Transfers, the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals, and the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He has received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award and the Daniel E. Griffiths Award at NYU and the Robert M. Stevenson Award, Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Don T. Nakanishi Award for Outstanding Engaged Scholarship at UCLA. Teranishi has also been ranked among the most influential academics in the field of education by Education Weekly and was named one of the nation’s top “up-and-coming” leaders by Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

Teranishi was formally a National Institute for Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in Sociology and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in Higher Education and Organizational Change.