UC Santa Barbara
Office of the Chancellor
March 5, 2025
Dear Members of Our Campus Community,
After nine years of outstanding leadership as the Jules Zimmer Dean of our Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, Professor Jeffrey Milem has decided to retire, effective June 30, 2025.
We are honored to have this opportunity to thank Dean Milem for his many contributions to our campus over the years. Under his leadership, The Gevirtz School has continued to develop as a hub of educational innovation, conducting leading-edge research in educational practice and applied psychology. The Gevirtz School’s clinics and research centers are tremendous assets to our campus and local communities, building partnerships through programmatic and fundraising efforts such as our GGSE and Harding University Partnership School, which recently celebrated their 15-year collaboration, and the McEnroe Reading Clinic. During his tenure, competitive research grants received by GGSE faculty from funding agencies have steadily increased. As an example, GGSE, along with three other universities, was recently awarded a four-year, $10.4-million contract from the Department of Education to launch and operate a national center to expand the nation’s school-based mental health workforce.
Among his many achievements, Dr. Milem was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Education in 2023. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and was awarded the American College Personnel Association’s Contributions to Higher Education award. A widely recognized expert in the area of racial dynamics in higher education, Dr. Milem has made pioneering contributions to research on the ways in which colleges and universities can be organized to enhance equity, access, and success for all students. He has been commissioned by numerous organizations to conduct scholarly research, including the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Council on Education, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Prior to joining UC Santa Barbara, Dr. Milem served as the Ernest W. McFarland Distinguished Professor in Leadership for Education Policy and Reform in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. He was also a Professor in the Center of the Study of Higher Education and Director of the Arizona Medical Education Research Initiative (AMERI) in the College of Education and Medicine at the University of Arizona, in addition to holding a faculty position in the College of Medicine. He was also on the faculty of the University of Maryland and Vanderbilt University.
I will consult with the Academic Senate and our Executive Vice Chancellor to form a search advisory committee to conduct a national search for our next Dean. In the meantime, please join me in offering Jeffrey our sincere thanks and congratulations for his achievements and his many contributions to UC Santa Barbara. We wish him well in this exciting next step.
Sincerely,
Henry T. Yang
Chancellor