Rate My Professor Patricia Perez

Dr. Patricia A. Pérez serves as Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs at California State University, Long Beach, a role she assumed on July 1, 2023. Prior to this appointment, she was Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) since 2021, where she oversaw faculty support, recruitment, retention, professional development, and lecturer evaluations. She implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in retention and promotion standards, revamped faculty hiring processes, and developed tenure-track faculty programs focused on cross-disciplinary networking and community-building. Pérez also held the position of Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at CSUF since 2016, following roles as Associate Professor (2012–2016) and Assistant Professor (2007–2012). She chaired the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department from 2016–2017 and 2018–2019, managing curriculum, budget, advising, and addressing inequities in departmental structures.

Pérez earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California, Los Angeles, an Ed.M. in Education with a concentration in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies from UCLA. Her scholarly work focuses on Chicanx/a/o education, college choice processes, and the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and immigrant status in college access, equity, persistence, retention, and faculty of color retention, utilizing qualitative research methods. Notable publications include editing The Tenure-Track Process for Chicana and Latina Faculty: Experiences of Resisting and Persisting in the Academy (Routledge, 2019) and Facilitating Educational Success for Migrant Farmworker Students in the U.S. (Routledge, 2017). She has secured grants such as a $1.2 million Mellon Foundation award in 2022 for the Latinx Lab for Storytelling and Social Justice. Awards include the CSUF College of Humanities and Social Sciences Outstanding Service Award (2021), Diversity in Research Award (2017), and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Kurt M. Landgraf Outstanding Dissertation Award (2008). Pérez co-founded the CSUF Collective for Justice, Equity and Transformation and participated in numerous leadership institutes on equity and inclusion.