Rosina Becerra
Special Liaison for Faculty Development
Professor Emerita of Social Welfare
Appointed in April 2022, Rosina M. Becerra, Professor Emerita of Social Welfare, serves as Special Liaison for Faculty Development. In 2018, the Offices of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Personnel and Faculty Development recognized an increasing need to provide support and resources to faculty once they achieved tenure and to help them advance in their careers. To meet the needs of our mid-career faculty, the Faculty Development Liaison position was established and designated to provide mentoring and guidance to faculty, particularly under-represented minority and women faculty. Dr. Becerra brings a unique set of qualifications and expertise to this role and over the course of her career has given dedicated service to UCLA, to the community, and to our faculty.
Dr. Becerra serves as an advocate to faculty who need guidance on a wide variety of academic matters related to faculty welfare and advancement, including issues of climate and harassment/mistreatment. She will meet one-on-one with faculty regarding concerns, listen to the issues brought forward, assess situations, present available options to faculty, and refer them to the appropriate channels. Although conversations with faculty will be strictly confidential and independent from the Academic Affairs and Personnel Office (AAPO), Dr. Becerra can also identify general areas of concern in order to enhance the development of successful programming and policies in AAPO. She will also collaborate with the AAPO in developing and implementing initiatives serving the best interests of faculty and faculty diversity.
Her research focuses on policy issues in health and mental health over the life span, with particular emphasis on social gerontology and child welfare. Her book, Social Services and the Ethnic Community, documents the relationship between the social work profession and ethnic communities. She is currently the Senior Associate Director of the Center for Minority Health Care Disparities and has previously served the University in the following capacities, as UCLA’s Vice Provost of Faculty Diversity and Development (2007 to 2010); Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Diversity (2002 to 2007); Director and Chair of the UCLA Cesar Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicano/a Studies (1996); Associate Dean and later Dean of the UCLA School of Social Welfare (1986 to 1994) and more recently as the Department Chair in Ethnomusicology (2013-2015) and in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (2018-2021). Dr. Becerra has also worked as a child therapist, a drug counselor, a psychiatric social worker and a probation officer. She has advised a wide variety of government agencies and non-profit organizations, including the NIH, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the American Association of Retired People and the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Becerra is well positioned to provide support and resources to our faculty, in particular to our mid-career faculty. She is available to Academic Senate faculty and administrators throughout the campus by email at rbecerra@ucla.edu or by phone at (310) 206-9379.
