Education, Diversity and Democracy

Working together, stakeholders in higher education can create equitable, vibrant and engaging institutions that prepare citizens for an increasingly diverse democracy.

At a Chancellor’s Community Breakfast hosted by UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang and the UCSB Affiliates, Jeffrey Milem, dean of the campus’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, will build on three decades of scholarship regarding race relations and education, the outcome of diversity in higher education and the essential components of diverse and equitable learning environments.

Milem’s talk, “Education, Diversity and Democracy: Realizing Higher Education’s Promise to Prepare Citizens for an Increasingly Diverse Democracy,” will begin at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, April. 19, at El Paseo Restaurant, 813 Anacapa St., #10 in Santa Barbara. The cost is $25. Admission is free for UCSB Affiliates; Gold Circle, Legacy Circle, Chancellor’s Council and Lancaster Society members; UC Santa Barbara Foundation Trustees; and UCSB alumni. Reservations may be made by calling Percy Sales at (805) 893-8260, via email to percy.sales@ucsb.edu. or by sending a check made payable to the UC Regents to the UCSB Affiliates, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106.

As an educator and scholar, Milem focuses on the ways in which colleges and universities can be organized to enhance equity, access and success; the racial context within higher education; and the relationship between how colleges and universities organize themselves and student outcomes and faculty role performance.

With his colleagues Mitchell Chang of UCLA and Anthony Antonio of Stanford University, Milem co-authored “Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research-Based Perspective” (Association of Colleges and Universities, 2005)), which translates research demonstrating the educational benefits of diversity to develop a roadmap for college leaders of the conditions that must be in place in order to maximize the opportunities for teaching and learning that racial diversity provides.

Prior to joining the faculty at UCSB, Milem was University of Arizona’s Ernest W. McFarland Distinguished Professor in Leadership for Educational Policy and Reform in the College of Education. He is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association and has received the Contributions to Higher Education Award from the American College Personnel Association. Milem was a professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona and had an appointment in the university’s Department of Medicine. He was founding director of the Arizona Medical Education Research Institute, a collaborative venture between the colleges of education and of medicine at the University of Arizona, which investigates topics pertaining to medical education, diversity, climate and access to medical school.

Milem also served as a senior faculty fellow at the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity and is a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He has been on the faculty at the University of Maryland and at Vanderbilt University.

Questions about the Chancellor’s Community Breakfast can be directed to Percy Sales at percy.sales@ucsb.edu.