Leaders of Color in Higher Education: Unrecognized Triumphs in Harsh Institutions (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780759105423)

Leonard A. Valverde, began his education career, as a junior high school mathematics teacher, around the same time as the civil rights movement was starting. He was a teacher in East Los Angeles during the time of the Watts 'Riots' and student walk-outs occurred. Shaped by these societal events and his upbringing as a second generation Mexican-American, his goal -- to work to bring about equal educational opportunity - was formed. Due to his actions to work toward his goal, he was recruited by Claremont Graduate University and awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study to be a change agent. Throughout his 35 years as an educator, he has remained true to be an agent for change and true to his goal and expanded it, i.e., to bring about social justice for persons of color. Specifically, through the roles he has assumed (Bilingual program director, math teacher supervisor, university professor, director of a research office, department chair, college dean, vice president for academic affairs and dean of graduate studies, and an now as executive director of a higher education consortium covering five southwest states) his efforts have been to make the educational enterprise more democratic and fair.