Office of Diversity and Community Engagement Fills Leadership Posts with Education Faculty - November 8, 2007

Two College of Education faculty have been appointed to vice president positions in The University of Texas at Austin’s Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement. Dr. Angela Valenzuela has been named associate vice president for school partnerships and Dr. Michele Guzmán has been named assistant vice president for diversity education. Guzman will be responsible for the implementation and management of diversity education for the university community, as well as supervision of the Multicultural Information Center, Gender and Sexuality Center and the Diversity Institute.

Dr. Gregory Vincent, Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement and a professor in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Administration, appointed Guzmán and Valenzuela as part of a larger restructuring and expansion of his office.

Valenzuela is a professor in the College of Education’s Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Administration, director of the Texas Center for Education Policy and a faculty member in the Center for Mexican American Studies. She is the author of “Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring” and winner of the 2000 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award and the 2001 Critics' Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. Valenzuela also is editor of “Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-style Accountability Fails Latino Youth.” She has served as co-editor of the Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education for two years, and she recently received a Haskew Centennial Professorship Faculty Fellowship.

Earlier this year, Valenzuela was chosen to be a member of the National Education Task Force, a Congressional advisory committee comprised of scholars who do policy work in the areas of education assessment and accountability. The national committee’s primary goal was to examine No Child Left Behind legislation and offer recommendations to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congressman George Miller regarding its reauthorization. She also received a Fulbright Fellowship this year which allowed her to go to Mexico and study how Mexican and U.S. institutions can work together to improve educational opportunities for Mexican immigrants in the U.S.

Guzmán is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Educational Administration. Her research interest and teaching focus is multicultural counseling, with an emphasis on ethnic identity and academic achievement among Mexican origin youth. She also is interested in broader identity-development issues and has examined how racial identity constructs are affected when the dialogue moves beyond “black and white” and encompasses Asian Americans and Latinos who are multiracial.

“These appointments place extraordinarily qualified people in leadership roles, and, combined with the recent restructuring and expansion of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, creates one of the most comprehensive units of its kind in higher education,” said Vincent. “It demonstrates the unwavering commitment of our president, William Powers Jr., to promote diversity and community engagement among faculty, staff and students on this campus.”

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910

Related Links:

• Department of Kinesiology
• McCraw Lecture Series