Dr. Mica Estrada received her Ph.D. (1997) in Social Psychology from Harvard University and now Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity for the School of Nursing and a Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her research program focuses on social influence, including the study of identity, values, forgiveness, well-being, and integrative education. Currently she is engaged in several longitudinal studies, which involve the implementation and assessment of interventions aimed to increase underrepresented minority student persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medical careers (funded by NIH, NSF, and HHMI). With the NSF Climate Change Education grant, she directed an interdisciplinary team, to provide learning opportunities to San Diego leaders about the changing climate. She continues to advise on the Climate Stewards project.
Dr. Estrada’s scholarly work has had two areas of emphasis. First, her work is theory driven. Specifically, she assess how educational interventions result in greater integration into a community and increased engagement in the normative behaviors of that community. She utilizes the Tripartite Integration Model of Social Influence (TIMSI; Estrada et al., 2011, 2018) to inform the design of educational interventions as well as form the basis of evaluation and research used to assess if and why educational interventions work (or do not work). Second, Dr. Estrada’s work focuses on ethnic populations that are historically underrepresented in higher education, most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and are providing diverse and creative solutions to the pressing challenges of our day. As a leading scholar on issues of diversity and inclusion, she is currently serving on a National Research Council Roundtable. She also was recently selected by Howard Hughes Medical Institute to be a Facilitator-Scholar, as part of a cohort who will assume curricular design and facilitation of mentorship skills development courses for HHMI scientists.
On a personal note, Dr. Estrada has three grown children, indulges in the consideration of mystical ideas and enjoys life with her sweetheart, Chaplain Carl Magruder, in the Bay Area.