UC Santa Barbara Gevirtz School alumna Dr. Nancy Guerra has been named the Dean of UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology. Dr. Guerra is currently a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Delaware. She earned her Masters in educational psychology at UC Santa Barbara before continuing to pursue her doctorate in human development and psychology at Harvard University.
Dr. Guerra’s areas of specialty include violence prevention and healthy youth development. She has been involved in research sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health, along with consulting for The World Bank and USAID.
Dr. Guerra has been on the faculty at UC Riverside, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has held a number of administration positions at these institutions, including associate provost for international programs and director of the Institute for Global Studies and the Global Research Consortium at the University of Delaware. At UC Riverside, Dr. Guerra was the area head in the Division of Developmental Psychology and associate director of the Robert Presley Center for Crime & Justice Studies.
The GGSE Department of Education faculty members strive to prepare the next generation of thinkers, leaders, and scholars in the diverse subfields of education. Faculty attempt to recognize, value, and build on the diverse talents and experiences of their students. The department attempts to help our students understand not only education in classrooms, but also the broader and increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and digital world we occupy. Through research and course work, students explore different angles of vision: They investigate the differing effects of schools and institutions, the mediating effects of culture and language, the facilitating or constraining effects of leadership and public policy, and the profound effects of human differences. Through their research and teaching, faculty members mentor each student, working to elevate her or him as educators and to inspire enduring commitments to learning, scholarship, and excellence.