William Perez, Ph.D. became the chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at LMU School of Education on May 15, 2024. He was previously the school’s inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from 2020 to 2022. He has been a professor at LMU SOE since 2018, and his research focuses on the social and psychological processes associated with academic success and higher education access among immigrant, undocumented, indigenous, and deported students in the U.S. and Mexico. He is recognized as one of the nation’s leading academic experts on undocumented students.
In 2009, he received the 2009 Mildred Garcia Prize for Excellence in Research from the Association for the Study of Higher Education for his book, We ARE Americans: Undocumented Students Pursuing the American Dream. His follow up book, Americans by Heart: Undocumented Latino Students and the Promise of Higher Education, was selected for the 2013 Critics Choice Award by the American Educational Studies Association. He has been interviewed or quoted as an academic expert in various media outlets including NBC Nightly News, Time Magazine, the LA Times, Hispanic Magazine, the Washington Post, and NPR’s All Things Considered. He has also received various awards for his research on immigration and education including the Stanford University Distinguished Scholar Alumni Award, the early career scholar award from the Hispanic Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association and the Fulbright Fellowship. For the past four years (2015-2018), he has been selected for Education Week’s annual ranking of the top 200 university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice.