Professor Melissa Morgan of the Gevirtz School has been appointed Vice Chair of UC Santa Barbara’s Academic Senate, with a special portfolio for advancing diversity and equity. Professor Morgan also chairs the Senate’s Committee on Diversity and Equity (CDE). The Committee on Diversity and Equity is charged with promoting diversity and equity on campus to ensure equal treatment of the following under-represented groups: women, ethnic minorities, individuals of diverse sexual orientations, individuals with disabilities, and other members of the campus community. She will serve in this position for the 2020-21 academic year.
The Academic Senate represents the faculty in the shared governance of the University of California. The Academic Senate is the voice of the faculty, and the organization through which the faculty expresses its views to the University and beyond.
Melissa Morgan is a Professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology and CCSP Director of Clinical Training. She specializes in multicultural, international, and immigrant research, with an emphasis on Latino/a populations. In particular, she focuses on the areas of resilience and thriving and their relationship to cultural variables. All of this research is conducted through a social justice lens, utilizing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods designs as well as community based research paradigms. Her goal is for research to be culturally relevant, informative in the development of prevention and other community programs, and useful in addressing societal issues of concern for the populations with whom she works.