Lurie College is excited to welcome its newest faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership, Dr. María C. Ledesma, to join our community beginning in the Fall 2020 semester to lead the establishment of our Higher Education Leadership program!

Dr. María C. Ledesma grew up in Oakland, California. As a first-generation college student, María earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley, a master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in education from UCLA. She has previous experience as an undergraduate admissions reader for her undergraduate alma mater, UC Berkeley, and sat as the graduate student representative for the University of California’s faculty senate committee on undergraduate admissions—The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools. As a doctoral student María was selected to sit as the 32^nd Student Regent for the University of California, the first Latina to hold this post. Her research interests include equity oriented critical policy analysis, including contextualizing and historicizing the history and application of race-conscious social policy in higher education and the examination of leadership for social justice. She is also interested in exploring the experiences of faculty of color who identify as first-generation. Her work has appeared in the Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, Equity and Excellence in Education, Review of Higher Education, and Qualitative Inquiry.