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Kris D. Gutiérrez

Board of Directors
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Kris D. Gutiérrez is the Carol Liu Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean at the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her expertise is in the learning sciences, literacy, policy, and qualitative and design-based approaches to inquiry. Gutiérrez’s research examines the cultural dimensions of designed learning environments, with attention to students and families from immigrant and translingual communities. She has been widely published in premier academic journals and is a co-author of Learning and Expanding With Activity Theory.

Gutiérrez is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and vice-chair of the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences. She serves on the Executive Committee and Board of the International Society of the Learning Sciences and is past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Gutiérrez has won numerous awards: the 2014 AERA Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research; the 2016 Medal of Excellence from Teachers College, Columbia University; and the Spencer Foundation Mentorship award, among others.

Her longstanding collaborations with immigrant and migrant communities include afterschool programs Las Redes and El Pueblo Mágico, and the UCLA Migrant Student Leadership Program for California youth from migrant farmworker backgrounds.

Gutiérrez served on the U.S. Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee and was a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team.