Deena Gonzalez has been named provost and senior vice president at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. The university, affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, enrolls more than 5,300 undergraduate students and more than 2,200 graduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education. Women make up 53 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Since 2001, Dr. Gonzalez has held various academic and administrative roles at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. These included chair of the department of Chicana/o studies, director of faculty development, and associate provost of faculty affairs. During her tenure with the university, she helped establish its newly created rank-and-tenure process, participated in revising its faculty handbook, and collaborated in support of accreditation, strategic planning, diversity, equity, and interculturalism.
Dr. Gonzalez is a co-founder of the Native/Chicana academic organization, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. She is the author of Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (Oxford University Press, 1999) and the co-editor of the four volume set The Oxford Encyclopedia Of Latinos & Latinas In The United States (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Dr. Gonzalez is a graduate of New Mexico State University where she majored in history, anthropology, and liberal arts. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in history from the University of California, Berkeley.