Featured speakers
Frances Contreras
Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of Washington
Dr. Frances Contreras is an assistant professor at the University of Washington in the College of Education in Leadership and Policy Studies. Dr. Contreras presently researches issues of equity and access for underrepresented students in the education pipeline. She addresses transitions between K-12 and higher education, community college transfer, faculty diversity, affirmative action in higher education, and the role of the public policy arena in higher education access for underserved students of color.
Contreras' most recent book (with P. Gandara) is "The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies." (Harvard University Press, 2009). In addition to publishing in journals such as Educational Policy and the Journal of Hispanics in Higher Education, she contributed a chapter titled "The Role of High Stakes Testing & Accountability in Educating Latinos" in "The Handbook of Latinos and Education: Research Theory & Practice" by E. Murillo (2008). Her second book, "The Brown Paradox: Latinos and Educational Policy in the United States," is currently under contract with Teachers College Press.
She is presently the Principal Investigator of Proyecto Acceso, where she has led a statewide examination of the opportunities to learn for Latinos in Washington State for the Commission on Hispanic Affairs and the state legislature.
In addition to her research and teaching, Contreras serves on the Board of the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, the Journal of Advanced Academics, and has been appointed by Mayor Nickels as a member of the Families and Education Levy Oversight Committee for the City of Seattle.
Contreras received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Educational Administration & Policy Analysis, Master of Education from Harvard University, and B.A. from University of California, Berkeley.
Patricia Gándara, Ph.D.
Professor, UCLA Graduate School of Education
Co-Director, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA
Patricia Gándara is professor of education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles and recently returned there after many years away. She is also Associate Director of the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UC LMRI), and Director of the LMRI Education Policy Center. Between 1981 and 1986 she served as Commissioner for Post-secondary Education for the state of California. She has been a bilingual school psychologist, a social scientist with the RAND Corporation, and Director of Education Research in the California Legislature (State Assembly).
Gándara's research focuses on educational equity and access for low income and ethnic minority students, language policy, and the education of Mexican origin youth. She has just completed a study, with her colleague Russell Rumberger, titled "Resource Needs for California's English Learners," as part of a statewide school finance project involving more than 30 researchers from across the country, and funded by four major foundations. She is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the forthcoming "Understanding the Latino Education Gap, Why Latinos Don't Go to College," with Harvard University Press.
John Fraire
Vice President for Enrollment Management
Washington State University
John Fraire is the Vice President for Enrollment Management at Washington State University. He has worked for 30 years in the field of higher education, primarily in admissions and enrollment. Previous to WSU, Fraire worked in various administrative positions at Truman State University in Missouri, Western Michigan University, Brooklyn College/City University of New York, Pace University (NYC), the community colleges in Chicago, and Harvard University where he began his career as an Admissions Officer and also earned his BA and a Masters in Education. As a member of the Harvard admissions staff, he helped establish Harvard's minority recruitment programs. Fraire also holds a master's degree in history from Western Michigan University, and currently is pursuing his doctorate at the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio where his research focuses on the cultural and social history of the Mexican community of East Chicago, Indiana, his home community.
In addition, Fraire is a playwright and the founder and former executive director of the New Latino Visions Theatre Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. His first play, Who Will Dance With Pancho Villa?, co-authored with his brother Gabriel Fraire, was produced by the Castillo Theatre in New York City in 1994. Since then they have written and produced several plays, screenplays, and other theatrical performances. Their works focus primarily on the Midwest Latino experience. Fraire has also used theatre and performance as a college recruitment and retention tool for Latino students. He is currently directing "The Warden Memoirs/Las Memorias de Warden," a program at Warden (WA) High School that combines writing and theatre to improve the college attendance and rates of Latino students in Washington while also producing locally based, professional theatre.
For the past nine years, Fraire has worked as a trainer for the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program where he helps with the evaluation of applications from Latino students.
