Dr. Maricela Oliva

Dr. Maricela Oliva is a founding member of AAHHE and is currently Associate Professor and Associate Vice Provost for Academic & Faculty Support at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Her scholarly work focuses on college access for underrepresented students, including policy, class, first generation issues, and undocumented status; P-20 school to university collaboration; and cross-cultural issues in higher education. As an administrator, she works on academic and faculty issues, including new faculty orientation, institutional policy, faculty evaluation, faculty mentoring, faculty awards administration, faculty recruitment training (especially for diversity), department chair administrator training, and program evaluation. She is a past member of the Academic Assembly Council of The College Board and is active in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). She has been on AERA conference planning committees for Division J (Postsecondary; ongoing), Division L (Policy and Politics), the Leadership for Social Justice Special Interest Group (LSJ-SIG) as well as numerous of operational committees. She has received various awards, including 2016 Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE) Distinguished University Faculty Award; 2012 Texas Association of College & University Student Personnel Administrators (TACUSPA) Faculty Member of the Year; and the 2008 UTSA President's Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in University Service. Dr. Oliva serves or has served on several journal Editorial Boards, including The Review of Higher Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, and the Journal of Research on Leadership Education . She has published in numerous journals, has several chapters in anthologized collections, and has a book--Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education--in 2nd edition.

Dr. Oliva's administrative experience includes work as Associate Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Support at UTSA; seven years at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in assignments ranging from Carl Perkins Gender Equity Coordinator, OCR Compliance Officer, and Associate Program Director in the Community Colleges Division, Program Director in the Universities Division, and as Assistant to the Commissioner; two years as Director of the doctoral program and of the Hispanic Border Leadership Institute at the University of Texas-Pan American; and three years as a department administrator at the University of Houston's Department of Hispanic & Classical Languages. She is a first generation college student with degrees from Yale (BA 1980), the University of Houston (MA 1987), and the University of Texas-Austin (Ph.D. 1997). The oldest of nine children of former migrant workers, she grew up along the US-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.