Jeffrey F Milem, Ph.D.

Biographical Sketch

Jeffrey F. Milem is the Ernest W. McFarland Distinguished Professor in Leadership for Education Policy and Reform in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. He is Department Head of Educational Policy Studies and Practice and Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education. Jeff also has a courtesy appointment in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona. He is a Past-President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the major professional research organization for scholars of higher education. Prior to joining the faculty at Arizona, Jeff served as an Associate Professor and graduate program director for the higher education administration program in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, where he also served as Director of the Provost’s Research Collaborative, a longitudinal research program which studied the ways in which students’ experiences with diversity while they were at Maryland influence a range of important learning outcomes. He also served as an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University before moving to Maryland. Jeff received his B.A. in political science from Michigan State University, his M.Ed. from the University of Vermont, and his Ph.D. from UCLA.

Professor Milem’s research interests focus on racial dynamics in higher education, the educational outcomes of diversity, the impact of college on students, and the condition and status of the professorate—including the ways in which faculty effectively utilize diversity in their classroom teaching. With his colleagues Mitchell Chang and anthony antonio, he co-authored Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research Based Perspective, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which translates research demonstrating the educational benefits of diversity to develop a “roadmap” for college leaders of the conditions that must be in place if they are to maximize the opportunities for teaching and learning that racial diversity provides.

Jeff co-authored (with Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University) the Special Focus Section of the American Council on Education’s Minorities in Higher Education, 1999-2000: Seventeenth Annual Status Report (The Special Focus manuscript is titled “The Benefits of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Higher Education”). Jeff is a co-author, with Sylvia Hurtado, Alma Clayton-Pedersen, and Walter R. Allen, of the book Enacting Diverse Learning Environments: Improving the Campus Climate for Racial/Ethnic Diversity. He is the author of a chapter titled “The Educational Benefits of Diversity: Evidence from Multiple Sectors” that appeared in Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education edited by Mitchell Chang, Daria Witt, James Jones, & Kenji Hakuta (published in March 2003 by Stanford University Press). Professor Milem is also the author or co-author of numerous manuscripts which appear in Academe, Change, The Journal of Higher Education, Sociology of Education, Research in Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, The Journal of College Student Development, Journal of the Professoriate, Thought & Action, and The UCLA Journal of Education.

As a widely recognized expert in the area of racial dynamics in higher education, Professor Milem has been commissioned to do research by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the American Council on Education, and the American Educational Research Association’s Panel on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education. Jeff has also worked with the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education and the American Council on Education to present a series of technical assistance workshops on affirmative action and college admissions. Professor Milem has given speeches and/or provided consultation on racial dynamics to different national education organizations as well as various public and private higher education institutions across the country. In addition to his employment in higher education, Jeff has worked as a photographer, a janitor and maintenance worker, a house painter, a landscaper, a bartender, a cook, and a hospital orderly.