Contact: Kathy Wyer, wyer@gseis.ucla.edu
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UCLA Associate Professor of Education Mitchell Chang Awarded Sudikoff Fellowship For 2004 - 05

The Sudikoff Family Institute for Education & New Media, as part of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, has announced it has awarded its fellowship for 2004 - 05 to Mitchell Chang, Associate Professor of Education in the division of Higher Education & Organizational Change. Professor Chang's term begins July 1^st; he succeeds Education Professor Douglas Kellner, who served as the 2003 - 04 Sudikoff Family Institute Fellow. Founded by philanthropists Jeffrey and Joyce Sudikoff, The Sudikoff Family Institute creates a public forum for the research and scholarship of GSE&IS faculty whose work promotes greater awareness and understanding of critical issues in education and new media.

Focusing his scholarship on diversity related issues in higher education, Professor Chang joined the UCLA faculty in 1999 after previously holding positions at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Stanford University, and Loyola Marymount University. Addressing the needs of higher education, his work seeks to improve understanding of initiatives that have grown out of the modern civil rights movement and have been enacted on campuses nationwide over the last thirty years, such as affirmative action, ethnic studies, and cross-cultural course requirements. By examining the educational efficacy of initiatives that address race and ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, and disabilities, he looks to democratize institutions and maximize student learning.

Professor Chang's book, Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education (2003, Stanford University Press), was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Grutter v.Bollinger, one of two cases involving the use of race sensitive admissions practices at the University of Michigan. Additionally, Professor Chang recently completed two high profile collaborative research projects. The findings of the first study, which examined the dynamics of racial diversity on complex thinking, will appear in the August '04 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society. The second study's findings, which utilized a national longitudinal data set of college students, examined the educational significance of cross-racial interaction. Results will be published in the August '04 issue of Research in Higher Education.

Chang earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Education from UCLA in 1996 and received his Masters in Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jeffrey and Joyce Sudikoff are long-standing supporters of UCLA and the GSE&IS, and have contributed over $2.3 million to foster its work, including an endowment of $1.5 million in support of The Sudikoff Family Institute for Education & New Media, which was established in 2002.