Mitchell J. Chang is a Professor o
Higher Education and Organizational Change
and Asian American Studies (by courtesy) at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 1999. From March 2018- February 2022, Chang served as the Editor in Chief of The Journal of Higher Education. On July 1, 2023, he began an appointment a
Interim Vice Provost
at UCLA, after having served a
Associate Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Early life and education

Born in Taiwan, Chang immigrated to San Jose, California in 1971, where his father pursued a career in Silicon Valley and his mother worked for Sumitomo Bank. He and his family are beneficiaries of the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the

Civil Rights Act of 1968 The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...

, which made it illegal to practice housing discrimination. He noted that this federal legislation made exposure to diversity an “inescapable reality” for him and his family, but racism was still very present. Upon matriculating at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

, Chang was exposed to ethnic studies and the broader diversity of the university, which helped him understand better the educational implications of his childhood exposure to a wide range of racial and cultural differences. This continued at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA), where Chang also examined issues informed by his work in the San Jose public school system and by the national controversy over affirmative action. His UCLA doctoral dissertation was one of the first studies to test former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s claims about the educational benefits of exposure to racial diversity in his opinion on the case

Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke ''Regents of the University of California v. Bakke'', 438 U.S. 265 (1978) involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities can reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. The case was a la ...

438 U.S. 265 (1978), which is often referred to as the diversity rationale for justifying race conscious admissions practices in U.S. higher education.

Career

Chang's research focuses on the educational efficacy of diversity-related initiatives on college campuses and how to apply those best practices toward advancing student learning and democratizing institutions. He has written over one hundred publications, some of which were cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of

Grutter v. Bollinger ''Grutter v. Bollinger'', 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minor ...

, one of two cases involving the use of race sensitive admissions practices at the University of Michigan. He later served as an expert witness on the case '' Students for Fair Admissions vs University of North Carolina''. Chang received a National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation Fellowship in 2001 and was awarded the Outstanding Outcomes Assessment Research Award, 1999-2000 by the

American College Personnel Association American College Personnel Association - College Student Educators International is a major student affairs association headquartered in Washington, D.C. at the National Center for Higher Education. Founded in 1924 by May L. Cheney, ACPA has 7 ...

for conducting one of the first studies to document empirically the positive educational impact of racial diversity on students’ learning and college experiences. In 2006, he was profiled as one of the nation's top ten scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education and in 2008, he and his co-researchers received the ACPA Asian Pacific American Network Outstanding Contribution to APIDA Research Award. Chang has also served in elected positions for both the American Educational Research Association (at-large Member of AERA Executive Council & Division J), which inducted him as
Fellow
in 2016, and th
Association for the Study of Higher Education
(Board of Directors), which awarded him the Founder's Service Award in 2014 and th
Research Achievement Award in 2020
He has served on many national advisory panels, including for the U.S. Department of Education, White House Domestic Policy Council, National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, and College Board. Chang previously worked as Associate Dean at Loyola Marymount University, where he helped to supervise the structuring and teaching of the undergraduate diversity course requirement and as a school evaluator at the Alum Rock Elementary School District in San Jose, where he oversaw the achievement testing program

References

External links

UCLA GSEIS Faculty Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chang, Mitchell University of California, Los Angeles faculty Loyola Marymount University faculty Living people University of California, Los Angeles alumni Academic journal editors Taiwanese emigrants to the United States University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni 1965 births