Sylvia Hurtado, a distinguished professor of education at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, has been voted president-elect of the American Educational Research Association, or AERA, for 2026–27. Her presidency will begin at the conclusion of the association’s annual meeting in April 2027.

As president, Hurtado will help lead one of the world’s largest interdisciplinary research organizations devoted to the study of education and learning. The role involves helping guide the association’s strategic priorities, representing the field of educational research in national and international conversations about policy and practice, and overseeing major initiatives that promote rigorous scholarship and collaborations that advance research on teaching, learning and educational equity.

Hurtado said she hopes to use the opportunity to help build more equitable educational and democratic systems and to promote educational equity, quality research and academic freedom.

Hurtado, who directed UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute for more than a decade, studies the transition to college, the campus racial climate, and STEM pathways and interventions. Her research, which centers equity for historically marginalized groups and institutional transformation, has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as organizations like the Spencer Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Gates Foundation.

Long involved with AERA and inducted as a fellow in 2011, Hurtado received the association’s Social Justice in Education Award in 2018, and in 2021 delivered the AERA Distinguished Lecture, “The Inevitability of Racial Bias and Exclusion: Implications for Identity-Based Education and Practice.” She also has served as co-editor of the association’s peer-review journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis since 2023.

Hurtado was inducted into the National Academy of Education in 2019 and is past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She was honored in 2022 with the Sidney Suslow Award from the Association for Institutional Research for career contributions that inform higher education decision-making.

Read more on the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies website.