UCLA DIVERSITY RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Friday, June 22, 2012
Scott Page, University of Michigan
Professor of Complex Systems Political Science and Economics
I am the Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems Political Science, and
Economics at the University of Michigan, where I also direct the Center for the Study of Complex
Systems. In 2011, I was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
My research focuses on the myriad roles that diversity plays in complex systems. For example,
how does diversity arise? Does diversity make a system more productive? How does diversity
impact robustness? Does it make a system prone to large events?
I have written three books: The Difference, which demonstrates the benefits and costs of
diversity in social contexts, Complex Adaptive Social Systems (with John Miller), which provides
an introduction to complexity theory, and, most recently, Diversity and Complexity, which
explores the contributions of diversity within complex systems. I have also published papers in a
variety of disciplines including economics, political science, computer science, management,
physics, public health, geography, urban planning, engineering, and history.
In my research, I have been fortunate to work with a collection of brilliant people -- Lu Hong,
John Miller, PJ Lamberson, Russell Golman, Kate Anderson, Ken Kollman, Evan Economo, Michael
Wellman, and Jenna Bednar -- as I try to make sense of these questions.
In addition to writing papers and books, I have also filmed a video course on complexity called
Understanding Complexity. My research on diversity provides me with many opportunities to
talk with community groups, high schools, corporations, government agencies, NGOs, and
university audiences.
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James Economou
Vice Chancellor for Research
James S. Economou, M.D., Ph.D. is Vice Chancellor for Research at UCLA.
He received all of his education from the Johns Hopkins University,
completed his general surgical training at the University of California, San
Francisco and joined the UCLA faculty in 1986. He is the Beaumont
Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology. He has
joint appointments in the Departments of Microbiology, Immunology and
Molecular Genetics, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology. A tumor immunologist, Dr.
Economou has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since joining
the faculty and has chaired two NIH study sections. He undertook the first gene therapy trial on
the West Coast; founded and led for 15 years the UCLA Human Gene Medicine Program; and has
served as Deputy Director of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2002. Dr.
Economou is President-Elect of the Society of Surgical Oncology and the recipient of its James
Ewing Medal. Dr. Economou's research interests include DNA and dendritic cell-based cancer
vaccines, T-cell receptor engineering of lymphocytes and hematopoietic stem cells, and
molecular mechanisms of resistance to apoptosis. As Vice Chancellor for Research, Dr. Economou
maintains a referral-based clinical practice in surgical oncology and translational cancer gene
therapy research.
Christine Littleton, Vice Provost Diversity
A professor of law and women's studies, Christine Littleton has taught at
UCLA since 1983. Her primary research field is feminist legal theory, and
she has led courses in employment discrimination, critical race theory,
disability rights and sexual orientation. She helped develop the UCLA School
of Law's policies and procedures on accommodations for students with
disabilities, and has served on faculty advisory committees for the Women's
Law Journal and for UCLA's Critical Race Studies program and Williams
Institute on Sexual Orientation and Law. Professor Littleton joined UCLA
after serving as law clerk to Judge Warren J. Ferguson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
She began teaching in the women's studies interdepartmental program in 1985 and served as
chair for several terms. From 2008 - 2010, she served as founding chair of the Department of
Women's Studies, where she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses. She also was
interim director of the Center for the Study of Women from 2003 to 2006.
Professor Littleton has served on Chancellor's advisory committees on the gay and lesbian
community, on working groups and task forces on disability issues, and on the recent Academic
Programs Task Force. She also has been active in the community as a founding member of the
Board of the California Women's Law Center and a volunteer attorney for several nonprofit civil
rights organizations. She has conducted or overseen investigations for the university and the
City of Los Angeles involving allegations of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and
disability, has conducted trainings on sex and sexual orientation discrimination and served as
special master or consultant for major settlements in cases brought by the U.S. Department of
Justice concerning housing and public accommodations discrimination. She earned a bachelor's
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degree with highest distinction in secondary education and communications from Pennsylvania
State University and a J.D. from Harvard University.
DARYL G. SMITH, Professor of Education and Psychology at The Claremont
Graduate University.
Prior to assuming her current faculty position at CGU in 1987, Smith served
as a college administrator for 21 years in planning and evaluation,
institutional research and student affairs. Smith’s current research, teaching,
and publications have been in the areas of organizational implications of
diversity, assessment and evaluation, leadership and change, governance,
diversity in STEM fields, and faculty diversity.
In addition to numerous articles and papers, she is an author or co-author of Diversity’s
Promise for Higher Education: Making it Work, The Challenge of Diversity: Alienation or
Involvement in the Academy, Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking The Myths,
Interrupting The Usual: Successful Strategies for Hiring Diverse Faculty, Organizational
Learning a Tool for Diversity and Institutional Effectiveness, In partnership with five other
evaluators of national diversity projects, she has been a co-author of To Form a More Perfect
Union: Campus Diversity Initiatives, A Diversity Research Agenda, and Assessing Campus
Diversity Initiatives. Dr. Smith also served as one of three Principals responsible for the
evaluation of the Campus Diversity Initiative for the James Irvine Foundation in collaboration
with the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. This five-year
project involved working with 28 private colleges and universities in California to develop their
capacity to sustain and monitor progress on institutional diversity. That project resulted in a
final report, 3 research briefs (on unknown students, faculty hiring, and the intersection of race
and class), a resource kit for campuses and a monograph, Making a Real Difference with
Diversity: A Guide to Institutional Change.
She has served as an evaluator and consultant to numerous projects and campuses across the
country and to foundations such as the James Irvine Foundation, the Haas Jr. Foundation, the
Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Hewlett Foundation. She was a participant
in a Kellogg Foundation Research Advisory Board at Harvard Medical School, Building an Agenda for
Research on Affirmative Action and Diversity in the health professions. She served as part of two U.S.
delegations to Ford Foundation sponsored trinational conferences (India, South Africa, U.S.) on
campus diversity in higher education that took place in South Africa and the United States for
which she wrote a paper on issues of evaluation. Recently Smith served as a Fulbright Senior
Specialist in South Africa.
Christy Mallory, UCLA Williams Institute
Christy Mallory received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 2008, where
she was a Dean’s Merit Scholar. Christy’s research at the Williams Institute
focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination against
state and local government employees. During law school, Christy worked
at the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles assisting dependent youth and
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a plaintiff’s side employment firm where she focused on disability and race discrimination cases.
Christy received her B.A. in Psychology, magna cum laude, from the University of Arizona.
Michelle Bholat, Clinical Professor, School of Medicine
Michelle Anne Bholat, MD, MPH is Professor and Vice Chair of the
Department of Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at
UCLA. She earned her medical degree from the University of California,
Irvine College of Medicine, completed Family Medicine residency training
at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and earned her Master of Public Health in
Health Policy and Management from the UCLA School of Public Health.
Throughout her medical career, Dr. Bholat has sought to develop and
integrate new models of primary care delivery in the arenas of addiction and behavioral
medicine, childhood and adolescent preventive medicine, chronic disease management,
emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pain management, and palliative medicine, with
a particular focus on adapting health care systems to improve access and quality of care for
underserved and vulnerable populations. She has served as Associate Residency Program
Director for the Harbor-UCLA Department of Family Medicine; Medical Director of the
Wilmington Family Health Center in Los Angeles; Chair of the UCLA Health System Ambulatory
Care Services; and Director of Clinical Operations for the UCLA Department of Family Medicine.
She is a former field surveyor for the Joint Commission Bureau of Primary Health Care, and is
currently Chair of the Los Angeles County Public Health Commission.
Dr. Bholat’s involvement with physician training, leadership, and health systems adaptation for
increasingly diverse populations led in 2006 to her co-founding the UCLA International Medical
Graduate (IMG) Program, a nationally-recognized effort to provide comprehensive and
systematic pre-residency training to international medical graduates, with the goal of increasing
the number of bicultural, bilingual Family Medicine physicians serving in medically-underserved
rural and inner-urban communities in California. As Executive Director of the IMG Program, Dr.
Bholat has overseen an effort that in six short years has arguably become the top producer
among California’s medical schools of Family Medicine residents who possess the linguistic and
cultural competencies to meet the particular needs of the state’s rapidly growing Hispanic
population.
Dr. Bholat is a former leadership fellow of the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA),
and is currently active in both the national organization and the California chapter. She is a
recipient of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Recognition of Service Award
for “Excellent Leadership and Tremendous Dedication to Our Community and Patients”, and in
2008 was named by the Los Angeles Business Journal as Rising Star of the Year at its annual
Women Making a Difference Awards Ceremony.
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Mitchell Chang, Professor, GSE&IS
Mitchell J. Chang is Professor of Higher Education and Organizational
Change at the University of California, Los Angeles and also holds a joint
appointment in the Asian American Studies Department. He previously
worked as an Associate Dean at Loyola Marymount University and
school evaluator at Alum Rock Union Elementary School District in San
José, California. Chang's research focuses on the educational efficacy of
diversity-related initiatives on college campuses and how to apply those
best practices toward advancing student learning and democratizing institutions. He has over
eighty publications and has served on the editorial board for several journals. He also served as
the lead editor of Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher. This
book was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Grutter v. Bollinger, one of two cases involving
the use of race sensitive admissions practices at the University of Michigan.
Professor Chang received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Fellowship in 2001 and was
awarded the Outstanding Outcomes Assessment Research Award, 1999-2000 by the American
College Personnel Association (ACPA). In 2006, the national magazine Diverse Issues in Higher
Education (formerly Black Issues in Higher Education) profiled Professor Chang as one of the
nation's top ten emerging scholars and in 2008, he received the ACPA Asian Pacific American
Network Outstanding Contribution to APIDA Research Award (shared w/ J. Park, M. Lin, O. Poon, &
D. Nakanishi). Chang was elected to serve as an At Large member for Division J of the American
Educational Research Association in 2004 and as a member of the Board of Directors for the
Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2010.
Philip Atiba Goff, Assistant Professor, UCLA Psychology Department
My research investigates the possibility that contextual explanations play
an under-explored role in producing racial inequality. Rather than
focusing on racial attitudes that are internal to an individual, my research
examines ways in which environmental factors can produce racially
disparate outcomes. Through this research I hope to expand the scope of
what comes to mind when one thinks of the causes and consequences of
inequality. Though race is central to my research agenda, I am also
interested in identity-based inequality across multiple domains including
gender, sexuality, class, and ableness. My empirical research can be roughly divided into 4 areas:
1. Research on Dominant Group Identity (e.g. Whites and males)
2. Research on Mental Representations of Stigmatized Groups (e.g. Non-Whites and women)
3. Research on Intersectional Identities (e.g. examining race and gender simultaneously)
4. Research on Policing and Criminal Justice (e.g. all of the above)
My work on equity issues in policing has led to formation of the Consortium for Police
Leadership in Equity. Along with Chief Tracie L. Keesee, I am the co-founder and Executive
Director of Research.
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Sylvia Hurtado, Professor, GSE&IS, Higher Education Research
Institute
Sylvia Hurtado is Professor and Director of the Higher Education
Research Institute at UCLA in the Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies. Just prior to coming to UCLA, she served as
Director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary
Education at the University of Michigan. Dr. Hurtado has over eighty
publications related to her primary interest in student educational
outcomes, campus climates for diversity, and diversity in higher
education. She has served on numerous editorial boards for journals
in education and served on the boards for National Research Council Board of Higher Education
and Work, the Higher Learning Commission, and is past-President of the Association for the
Study of Higher Education (ASHE). Black Issues In Higher Education named her among the top
15 influential faculty whose work has had an impact on the academy. She obtained her Ph.D. in
Education from UCLA, Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and A.B. from
Princeton University in Sociology.
Dr. Hurtado has coordinated several national research projects, including a longitudinal study of
high-achieving Latina/o students sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and a U.S. Department of
Education-sponsored project on how colleges are preparing students to achieve the cognitive,
social, and democratic skills to participate in a diverse democracy. She launched a National
Institutes of Health/National Science Foundation longitudinal project on the preparation of
underrepresented students and diversification of the STEM workforce. She is also working on a
Ford Foundation sponsored project focused on assessing the campus climate, practices, and the
outcomes of diverse learning environments, facilitating institutional capacity to build on
research evidence to create the conditions for diverse student success.
Susan Cochran, Professor, Epidemiology
Susan Cochran, Ph.D., M.S. is a Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA
Fielding School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in clinical
psychology and her M.S. in epidemiology from UCLA. Over the years she
has conducted extensive and innovative research in the area of sexual
orientation and health. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a
National Institute on Drug Abuse grant seeking to determine rates of
substance and mental health disorders among lesbian, gay and bisexual
Californians first interviewed in the California Health Interview Survey.
Her work has received several national awards and honors, including the
one of the highest honors given by the American Psychological Association, the 2001
Distinguished Contributions for Research in Public Policy. She currently serves as a member of
the Board of Professional Affairs for the American Psychological Association and is a member of
the World Health Organization Working Group on the Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual
Health.
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Selected Recent Publications:
Cochran SD, Mays VM. Burden of psychiatric morbidity among lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in the
California Quality of Life Survey. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 2009;118(3):647-58.
Ponce NA, Cochran SD, Pizer JC, Mays VM. The effects of unequal access to health insurance for same-sex
couples in California. Health Affairs. 2010;29(8):1539-1548.
Grella CE, Cochran SD, Greenwell L, Mays VM. Effects of sexual orientation and gender on perceived need
for treatment by persons with and without mental disorders. Psychiatric Services. 2011;62(4):404-410.
Cochran S, Mays V. Sexual Orientation and Mortality Among US Men Aged 17 to 59 Years: Results From
the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III. American Journal of Public Health. 2011
101(6):1133-1138.
Devon Carbado, Professor, School of Law
Devon Carbado, who recently served as the Vice Dean of the Faculty,
teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Critical
Race Theory, and Criminal Adjudication. He was elected Professor of the
Year by the UCLA School of Law Classes of 2000 and 2006, is the 2003
recipient of the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching, and was
recently awarded the University Distinguished Teaching Award, The Eby
Award for the Art of Teaching. He is a recipient of the Fletcher
Foundation Fellowship, which modeled on the Guggenheims, is awarded
to scholars whose work furthers the goals of Brown v. Board of Education.
Professor Carbado graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994. At Harvard, he was the Editorin-Chief of The Harvard Black Letter Law Journal, a member of the Board of Student Advisors, and
winner of the Northeast Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition. After receiving his law
degree, he joined Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles as an associate before his appointment as a
Faculty Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law.
Professor Carbado writes in the areas of critical race theory, employment discrimination,
criminal procedure, constitutional law, and identity. He is editor of Race Law Stories (Foundation
Press) (with Rachel Moran) and is working on a book on employment discrimination tentatively
titled “Acting White” (Oxford University Press) (with Mitu Gulati). He is a former director of the
Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA Law, a faculty associate of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for
African American Studies, a board member of the African American Policy Forum and a James
Town Fellow.
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Miguel Unzueta, Assistant Professor, UCLA Anderson School of
Management
Miguel Unzueta is an Assistant Professor of Management and
Organizations at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His
research explores how people understand their position within social
and interpersonal hierarchies and the impact this understanding has on
their perceptions of self, others, and group-based inequality.
Professor Unzueta teaches the core organizational behavior course for
full-time MBA students (@MGMT 409). In 2010, he was awarded the
George Robbins Assistant Professor Teaching Award. More recently, he was selected by Poets &
Quants as one of the best 40 business school professors under age 40.
Professor Unzueta is currently serving on the editorial board of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano
Studies and is a member of the Riordan Programs' advisory board.
Juliet Williams, Associate Professor, UCLA Gender Studies
Juliet Williams is Associate Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of
Women’s Studies at UCLA. She holds a PhD in Government from Cornell
University and regularly teaches courses in the areas of feminist theory
and politics. Professor Williams is the author of Liberalism and the Limits
of Power (Palgrave, 2005) and contributing coeditor of Public Affairs:
Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals (Duke University Press, 2004). She has written widely on the
legal and cultural regulation of sex, gender and sexuality, and her scholarly articles have
appeared in journals including Signs and The Harvard Journal of Law & Gender. Professor
Williams currently is completing a book entitled Making a Difference: Single-Sex Public Education
and the New Politics of Sex Equality, which explores debates over the meaning and significance of
sex differences in recent education reform policy debates.
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Elizabeth Ribet, J.D., Ph.D
Research Director, Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy
Studies
Columbia University School of Law
Beth Ribet is appointed as the Research Director for the Center for
Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia University School of
Law. She obtained her PhD in Social Relations at the University of California-Irvine, and her JD at
UCLA Law. She is currently serving as principal investigator for a project focused on state
approaches to family and medical leave law, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Much of her broader research agenda focuses on "emergent disabilities", or injuries,
impairments, and illnesses caused by systemic inequality and institutional violence. Her recent
publications include: "Emergent Disability and the Limits of Equality: A Critical Reading of the
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities", published in the Yale Human Rights
and Development Law Journal (2011), and "Naming Prison Rape as Disablement", published in
the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law (2010).
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