Jeff Milem is Professor Emeritus and former Jules Zimmer Dean of the Gevirtz School. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and was awarded the American College Personnel Association’s Contributions to Higher Education award. He is Past President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education—the major professional research organization for scholars of higher education. Jeff was the Ernest McFarland Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the University of Arizona and had a courtesy appointment in the Department of Medicine. Prior to the University of Arizona, Jeff was a faculty member at the University of Maryland and at Vanderbilt University. He earned his B.A. in political science from Michigan State University, his M.Ed. from the University of Vermont, and his Ph.D. from UCLA.
Professor Milem’s research focused on the ways in which colleges and universities could be organized to enhance equity, access, and success for all students; the racial context within higher education; and the relationship between how colleges and universities organize themselves and student outcomes and faculty role performance. With his colleagues Mitchell Chang and Anthony Antonio, he co-authored Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research Based Perspective published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which translated research demonstrating the educational benefits of diversity to develop a “roadmap” for college leaders of the conditions that must be in place if they wanted to maximize the opportunities for teaching and learning that racial diversity provides. Jeff contributed to two of the three books that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited in her majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger as being influential in helping to document the university’s claim regarding the educational benefits of diversity.
As a widely recognized expert in the area of racial dynamics in higher education, Professor Milem was commissioned to do research by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the American Educational Research Association’s Panel on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education. Jeff also worked with the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education and the American Council on Education to present a series of technical assistance workshops on affirmative action and college admissions. Professor Milem has given speeches and/or provided consultation on racial dynamics to different national education organizations as well as various public and private higher education institutions across the country. In addition to his employment in higher education, Jeff worked as a photographer, janitor, maintenance worker, house painter, landscaper, bartender, cook, and hospital orderly.