Professor Richard Durán Discusses What It Means to Be the New Associate Dean for Faculty Equity

The Gevirtz School has appointed Richard Durán, Professor in the Department of Education, Associate Dean for Faculty Equity. System-wide the UC has called for such positions at the college-school-division level to help improve the diversity of the faculty, staff, and students and improve campus climate. In his new position Dr. Durán will serve as a liaison between the Dean’s office and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, who will convene advisors, help to coordinate common goals and programs, and work with Academic Personnel and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Discrimination Prevention to coordinate trainings, workshops, and other programs.

“All this is coming at a really cool time, for in true California style, we’re re-inventing ourselves again with our new GGSE strategic plan,” Durán says. “It’s a chance to appreciate the inspiration we have and at UCSB how we can lead by example.” As one part of such leadership, the GGSE will be asking candidates for its two senate faculty job searches this fall to submit equity, diversity, and inclusion statements to show how their teaching, research, and service can serve such goals.

“Our School is deeply committed to enhancing the educational advancement and leadership development of the many communities we serve with special attention to those communities that have faced discriminatory social, economic, and other forms of historical or current social and economic injustice,” Durán asserts.

Durán is particularly interested in working with curriculum development. “I want to help faculty and graduate instructors be aware of resources that can be brought into the design of their courses,” he says. “We must be sure to include the voices of all community members.” Such change is even more important as the Gevirtz School’s composition grows to mirror California’s demographics as a minority majority state.

“Given the Gevirtz School’s focus is to create models of education that give all children access to an education essential to their participation in our 21st century democracy, society, and economy, we have to be sure that sense of equity begins in our own hallways,” is how Dean Jeffrey Milem puts it. “Since no one on our faculty has done more for equitable education than Richard Durán, I look forward to his sage advice.”

Durán’s track record in the field is impressive: he worked as part of the committee that conducted the study and wrote the 2017 report Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and he served as a member of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council’s Committee on Fostering School Success for English Learners: Toward New Directions in Policy, Practice and Research, to give just two examples.

“I'm not the PC cop,” he flatly states. “But we do have to consider how California can be the fifth richest economy in the world and somehow still have some of the biggest pockets of poverty and homelessness in the country, while also having the greatest state university system in the world. As a learning community, we have to discover how to learn better together. And more importantly we must apply this knowledge of equity, diversity, and access as we maintain sensitivity to the needs of all people.”