Biographical Sketches of CHOICES Research Team Members Walter R. Allen (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1975) Walter R. Allen is a Professor of Education and the holder of the Allan Murray Cartter Chair in Higher Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies in the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Professor of Sociology at UCLA and Co-Director of CHOICES, a longitudinal study of college attendance among African Americans and Latinos in California. He is cited for distinguished achievement in "100 Years of Change",; Special Issue of Black Issues in Higher Education (1999); Who's Who in the World (1996); Who's Who in American Education (1995); Who's Who in the Midwest (1988); Who's Who in America (1988-89); Men of Achievement (1987); Outstanding Young Men of America (1982); Who's Who Among Young Americans (1976); and Who's Who Among High School Students (1967). Dr. Allen has held teaching appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles (1989-present), the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Howard University, Duke University, University of Zimbabwe and Wayne State University. Dr. Allen's research and teaching focus on family patterns, socialization and personality development, race and ethnic relations, African American males, health inequality and higher education. He has also worked as a consultant to courts, communities, foundations, business and government. Dr. Allen's research has been the subject of media coverage in print (Le Nouvel Observateur-Paris, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Jet Magazine, USA Today), on radio (National Black Network News, WABC-NYC, WBZ-Boston) and on television (ITN-London, CBS News/Rather, CBS Sixty Minutes, NBC Evening News/Brokaw, MacNeil-Lehrer, GLOBO-Brazil, and BET/Black Entertainment Television). His more than eighty publications appear in the Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, Phylon, Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Negro Education, Signs, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Research in Higher Education. He has co-authored (with R. Farley) The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America; co-edited two books, Beginnings: The Social and Affective Development of Black Children (with G. Brookins and M. Spencer) and Black American Families, 1965-84 (with R. English and J. Hall); and co-authored (with E. Epps and N. Haniff) a third book, College in Black and White: African American Students in Predominantly White and Historically Black Public Universities. He is also guest co-editor (with A. James) of "Comparative Perspectives on Black Family Life", Journal of Comparative Family Studies and guest co-editor (with G. Carroll) of Affirmative Action in Higher Education," Journal of Negro Education. Since July 2004, Dr. Allen will hold the Allan Murray Cartter Chair in Higher Education at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Marguerite Bonous-Hammarth (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles) is Director of Admissions and Relations with Schools at the University of California, Irvine. In her current position, she oversees implementation of systemwide and campus policies related to undergraduate admissions. Dr. Bonous-Hammarth has worked in higher education research and administration for more than fifteen years, in such areas as fundraising, communications, continuing education, and implementing several grant projects that focused on student development and successful transition along the academic pipeline. Her current research and teaching interests focus on understanding factors that influence achievement and career success for ethnic minority students and for undergraduates in science and mathematics. Specifically, she examines the influence of fit between individual values and organizational norms on outcomes for students (i.e., persistence, satisfaction and degree completion) and for other members of the academic community (i.e., faculty productivity and satisfaction). Dr. Bonous-Hammarth also examines the factors that help to sustain change in organizations and the organizational transformation process in higher education. Her publications include Testing a New Approach to Admissions: The Irvine Experience (with Susan A. Wilbur), and Value Congruence and Organizational Climates for Undergraduate Persistence. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Los Angeles, in Education. Miguel Ceja (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001) is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). Miguel is also a faculty researcher at the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy (IHE). IHE is affiliated with the California State University, and is engaged in research on statewide accountability for higher education, financial aid, community college transfer, teacher preparation, and workforce development policy in community colleges. At CSUS, Miguel teaches courses on higher education policy and leadership, research methods, and serves as an advisor on numerous master-level theses. Before his appointment at CSUS, Miguel was a postdoctoral fellow for the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD). As a postdoctoral fellow, Miguel served as principal investigator for an ongoing study that examined the Ph.D. aspirations of Chicana students. Miguel Ceja holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science and a Masters and PhD in Higher Education & Organizational Change from UCLA. In his dissertation "Applying, Choosing, and Enrolling in Higher Education: Understanding the College Choice Process of First Generation Chicana Students," Dr. Ceja examined home and school factors influencing the college opportunities of Chicana students. Miguel’s research in higher education policy focuses on issues of access and equity in higher education, college choice, diversity and campus racial climate, and the retention and persistence of students of color in higher education. He has presented his work at several national conferences including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and the National Association for the Study of Chicano and Chicana Studies (NACCS). Gniesha Yvonne Dinwiddie (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2006) is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania and a research assistant at the Population Studies Center (PENN). Her research interests include the health disparities, social determinants of health, social epidemiology, social psychology, student persistence in higher education and the intersections between race, class, and gender. Her publications include: Pressure Cooker: The Minority Experience at Elite Colleges and Universities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (with C.Z. Charles, D. Massey, M.J. Fischer, and B.A. Cunningham), The Consequences of Segregation: Family Stress and College Academic Performance in Social Science Quarterly (with C. Charles & D. Massey), Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back: Access, Experiences and Achievement for African American College Students, 1980-2000 (with W. Allen) in Surmounting All Odds: Education, Opportunity and Society in the New Millennium, Knocking on Freedom’s Door: Race, Equity and Affirmative Action in U.S. Higher Education (with W. Allen, R. Teranishi, and G.González) in both the Journal of Public Health Policy and the Journal of Negro Education. Ms. Dinwiddie’s dissertation research examines the relationship between fundamental determinants for disease risk and behavioral influences on health outcomes which increase the prevalence of chronic disease in communities of color. Faustina DuCros (M.A., University of California, Los Angeles, 2003) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA and is a Research Assistant with the CHOICES project. Her areas of interest include sociology of race/ethnicity and sociology of education. Her current research examines issues related to racial and ethnic identity formation of Louisiana migrants, with a particular focus on Louisiana Creoles. Past research analyzed the experiences of Latino community college students. Edgar G. Epps (Ph.D., Washington State University, 1959) serves as co-chair of the National Advisory Panel. Dr. Epps is a widely renowned scholar of urban education and is Emeritus Marshal Field IV Professor of Urban Education, University of Chicago. Dr. Epps has established himself as one of the preeminent scholars in the field of education. His careful, incisive, creative research on race, inequality and education over the life span has won him national and international recognition. The books he has written or edited include: Black Students in White Schools; Race Relations; New Perspectives; Cultural Pluralism; Black Consciousness, Identity and Achievement; and College in Black and White: African American Students in Predominantly White and Historically Black Public Universities. His published research articles appear in Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Negro Education, Social Issues, and Law and Contemporary Society. Dr. Epps has also made significant contributions in public service. He was a member of the Chicago Board of Education from 1974 to 1980 and has continued to consult with the Chicago public schools in efforts to improve student performance and to negotiate successful transition to school-based management. He regularly serves on national advisory and review panels involving minority education (e.g., U.S. Department of Education, Southern Regional Education Board). His active service to the scholarly community has won him wide reputation and recognition. Most recently he was awarded the American Sociological Association's "Frazier, Du Bois and Johnson" Award for distinguished contributions to scholarship on race relations. Gigi Gomez (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005) received her doctorate from UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, specializing in Higher Education and Organizational Change. Her research interests include Asian American students, college choice, national higher education policy, affirmative action, and the sociology of race, gender, and class on higher education. Her dissertation examined the college opportunities and barriers of Mien American high school youths, a Southeast Asian ethnic group who arrived in the United States as refugees as a result of the Vietnam and Secret Wars in Laos. Gloria González (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2007) received her doctorate from the Department of Sociology at UCLA. Dr. González is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pomona College. Her areas of research and teaching include sociology of race/ethnicity, gender, the body, adolescents, and education. Her recent research examines Mexican American adolescent girls' body image. Past research analyzed the gendered division of labor of Latino couples. Kimberly Griffin (M.A., University of Maryland, 2001) is currently a doctoral student in the Higher Education and Organizational Change program in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Her research interests include understanding the experience of high achieving students of color, retention and outcomes for minority students at predominantly White institutions (especially in the sciences), exploring interactions between faculty and students of color, and maximizing the benefits of campus diversity. Uma M. Jayakumar is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Higher Education and Organizational Change department. She is currently working as a research analyst on Project CHOICES and at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). In her work at HERI has been involved in the development, administration of a 10 year follow-up survey of students who were surveyed when entering college in 1994 and were followed up after four years of college. Her research interests revolve around the question of how the system of higher education itself can change to better serve the needs of an increasingly diversifying democracy. As such, she is involved in research on access and retention for graduate students and faculty of color, campus climate for diversity, and service-learning and higher education for the public good. Erin Kimura-Walsh (M.S., San Francisco State University, 2000) is currently a doctoral student in the Higher Education and Organizational Change program in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Her research interests include access and retention of underrepresented students and first generation college students, college student racial identity development and the improvement of campus diversity climates. Maria C. Ledesma (Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1999) is a doctoral candidate at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies within the division of Social Sciences and Comparative Education. Her concentration is Race and Ethnic Studies. María’s research interests include race, equity, public selective colleges/universities, meritocracy, and the sociology of education. Her current research includes examining the public discourse used to frame college admissions and educational opportunity. María is a first-generation college student and the first Latina to serve as Student Regent for the University of California (2006-2007). Rowena Robles (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and her M.A. in Education Policy, both from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a Teaching Fellow in the American Cultures Program at Loyola Marymount University. Her research and teaching interests include the intersections of race, politics, and education policy. Her book titled, Asian Americans and the Shifting Politics of Race-The End of Affirmative Action at an Elite Public High School, was recently published by Routledge in July 2006. Dr. Robles is embarking on a new research project about the socialization and racialization of Asian American female high school students. Daniel G. Solórzano (Ph.D., The Claremont Graduate School, 1986) is a Professor in Social Science & Comparative Education and Chair of the Department of Education at UCLA. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Cesar Chavez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA. His teaching and research interests include critical race and gender studies on the educational access, persistence, and graduation of underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students in the United States. Among his other accomplishments before joining UCLA, Dr. Solórzano completed a Ford Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sociology, an Educational Testing Service Postdoctoral Fellowship in Educational Policy, and a Tomas Rivera Center Postdoctoral Fellowship in Educational and Family Policy. Dr. Solórzano's current work applies Critical Race Theory to examine the college admissions process and access to Advanced Placement courses for African American and Chicano/Latino high school students. His scholarly publications include: Critical Race Theory, Marginality, and the Experience of Minority Students in Higher Education (with Octavio Villalpando); Critical Race Theory, Racial and Gender Microaggressions, and the Experiences of Chicana and Chicano Scholars; Images and Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Racial Stereotyping and Teacher Education; The Chicano Educational Experience: A Proposed Framework For Effective Schools in Chicano Communities (with Ronald Solorzano); The Baccalaureate Origins of Chicana and Chicano Doctorates in the Social Sciences; Critical Race Theory: Counterstorytelling the Chicana and Chicano Graduate School Experience (with Tara Yosso); and Critical Race Theory, Transformational Resistance, and Social Justice: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context (with Dolores Delgado Bernal). Susan A. Suh (C. Phil., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. Her M.A. thesis, "Impacts of Gender, Racial Group, and Class in Perceptions of Workplace Discrimination," may be found in Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles (Melvin L. Oliver and Lawrence D. Bobo, editors, Russell Sage Press). Ms. Suh has collaborated with Lawrence Bobo, Ph.D., Walter R. Allen, Ph.D., and others on various articles and reports regarding racial attitudes and higher education experiences of African Americans and whites, respectively. Her research interests include race/ethnicity theory, sociology of higher education, workplace experiences, and race/class/gender perspectives. Ms. Suh is completing her dissertation work on the significance of race in the workplace experiences of Asian Pacific American academics in higher education. Prior to her interests in academia, she worked as an engineer after receiving a B.S. from Columbia University. She is the proud mother of Mina Min Delloro-Suh. Robert Teranishi (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001) is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at New York University. Teranishi earned his Bachelors degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz in Sociology and his Masters and Doctoral degrees at University of California Los Angeles in Higher Education and Organizational Change. Before joining the faculty at New York University, he was a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania at the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute. Currently, he is a Senior Research Associate with the Alliance for International Higher Education Policy Studies at New York University and a Research Associate with the Choices Project at University of California Los Angeles. His research program is focused on the study of racial and ethnic inequality and diversity in higher education. Teranishi pursues these interests by examining two separate, but overlapping lines of inquiry. First, he examines the ways in which student access and success in education are influenced by the intersection of race and ethnicity with class, gender, and nativity. Second, he studies how policy affects the educational opportunities and outcomes for various racial sub-populations. Teranishi’s publications can be grouped into three broad, but interrelated categories: 1) student representation, experiences, and outcomes, 2) the impact of institutional and neighborhood contexts for different racial and ethnic populations, and 3) state and federal policy related to equity. His articles include: Yellow and Brown: Residential segregation and emerging Asian American immigrant populations, ‘Raced’ perspectives on college opportunity: Examining Asian Americans through critical race theory, Opportunities at the crossroads: School segregation and disparate opportunities for higher education in California (with Walter Allen and Daniel Solorzano), The college-choice process for Asian Americans: Ethnicity and social class in context (with Miguel Ceja, Anthony Antonio, Walter Allen, and Patricia McDonough), and Knocking at freedom’s door: Race, equity, and affirmative action in U.S. higher education (with Walter Allen, Gniesha Dinwiddie and Gloria González). He also has a number of related book chapters and a forthcoming book titled, Higher Education in a Global Society: Achieving Diversity, Equity, and Excellence (with Walter Allen and Marguerite Bonous-Hammarth). Rican Vue Linda Barton White Maria Woodruff Kimberly A. White-Smith (Ed.D., University of Southern California) is Assistant Professor of Education at Chapman University. She received her Doctor of Education degree in Learning and Instruction from the University of Southern California.  Dr. White-Smith’s Master of Arts in Education degree in Curriculum and Instruction is from Teachers College, Columbia University; her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Psychology and minor in African American Studies was completed at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. White-Smith participates in a number of scholarly activities that serve to identify strategies that promote academic achievement for traditionally underserved students. As a Visiting Scholar in the CHOICES Project: Access, Equity, and Diversity in Higher Education, Dr. White-Smith’s focus is the impact of school tracking on minority college access. In addition, at Chapman University she is a Faculty Researcher for the Read-Write Cycle Project, a federally funded program which aims to raise student reading and writing achievement in the content areas using research-based strategies. As a member of the American Educational Research Association, Dr. White-Smith has served as Annual Conference Program Co-chair for Division K, Teaching and Teacher Education (2005-2006) and Program Reviewer for AERA (2004-present). As well, she reviews for the Journal of Teacher Education and Teachers College Record. Dr. White-Smith is also a member of California Council on Teacher Education, Association of Teacher Educators, and Phi Delta Kappa International. Dr. White-Smith has made more than 15 presentations at local, national, and international conferences including AERA, Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). She currently teaches and advises students in the multiple subject credential and graduate degree programs. In addition to pre-service methods courses, Dr. White-Smith also teaches courses in educational psychology and multicultural education. Joshua Yang (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005) Joshua Yang is a Research Associate with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. He is a public health evaluation specialist conducting research on organizational determinants of health and health care access. Dr. Yang also specializes in the race issues in health, immigrant health care, and public health history.