Dr. Luz Gonzalez, dean of the College of Social Sciences at Fresno State, is among 47 emerging college and university leaders in the U.S. selected for the 2015-16 class of the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program.
The program, established in 1965, focuses on identifying and preparing the next generation of senior leadership for the nation’s colleges and universities.
Each fellow will focus on an issue of concern to his or her home institution while spending the 2015-16 academic year working with a university president and other senior officers at a host institution.
Gonzalez, dean of the College of Social Sciences, is a Fresno State alumna with 30 years of experience in teaching, student success, community and regional engagement, development and strategic planning. She coordinates Fresno State’s Latino Commencement Celebration, the largest event of its kind in the country.
A former migrant farmworker, Gonzalez is passionate about helping students from traditionally underserved and underrepresented groups earn a college degree. As director of Fresno State’s Faculty Mentoring Program, she developed a freshmen orientation course that included faculty mentoring undergraduates with the goal of improving retention and graduate rates of freshmen and transfer students.
She joined the Fresno State faculty in the Department of Chicano and Latin American Studies in 1989 and was elected chair in 1992. She was named associate dean of the College of Social Sciences in 2001, interim dean in 2003 and dean in 2005.
Gonzalez earned a Ph.D. in Elementary Education with a minor in Educational Administration from the University of Arizona in 1991. She also holds a master’s in educational administration and supervision, a bachelor’s in liberal studies and a multiple subjects/bilingual emphasis teaching credential from Fresno State.
Related link:
