Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Associate Professor of English, University of California-Berkeley, Ph.D. in English, University of Washington
Nominee: Rhona Weinstein
As Vice Chancellor, Dr. Padilla has Co-Chaired the Faculty Senate Commission on Undergraduate Education that is leading to a renewed emphasis on providing an inquiry-based undergraduate experience. He oversaw the study of The First Year Experience Task Force that recommended greater concentration on academic and computing resources in residential housing. He provided leadership in fundraising over $42,000,000 in scholarships for low-income, first generation college students. He is currently charged with coordinating K-12 partnerships with the result that students who participated in academic outreach programs were admitted to Berkeley at a rate of 49% compared to an overall rate of 25%.
As the Vice Chancellor overseeing admissions at Berkeley, he has been asked to speak on numerous occasions about the challenge of admissions in a post-affirmative action environment (Proposition 209 in California) and he provides leadership to broadening the criteria by which students are admitted from a wide range of academic, social, and economic backgrounds. He remains committed to access and diversity within the student body at Berkeley.
He is the author of My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography (1993), editor of The Stories of Fray Angelico Chavez (1987) and has co-edited numerous other books including The Recovery of the U.S. Hispanic Literary Tradition (1993), Nuevomexicano Cultural Legacy: Forms, Agencies, and Discourse(2004), and Power, Race and Gender in Academe: Strangers in the Tower (2005). Some of his influential articles include “The Literature of the Spanish Borderland,” “The Catholic Church in Chicano Literature,” “The Mexican Immigrant as *: The (de)Formation of Mexican Immigrant Life Story,” “Myth and Comparative Cultural Nationalism: The Ideological Uses of Aztlan,” “Anthony Quinn’s Autobiography: The Original Sin,” “The Recovery of 19th Century Chicano Autobiography,” “Imprisoned Narrative? Or Lies, Secrets and Silence in New Mexico Women’s Autobiography.”
