Raquel M. Rall is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UC Riverside. Before her appointment at UCR, she was a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Southern California (USC). She has a Ph.D. in urban education policy from USC and degrees in Human Biology and African and African American Studies from Stanford. Her research centers postsecondary leadership and governance. Of particular interest to Rall is research that helps further illuminate the centrality of concepts like equity, diversity, and inclusion in postsecondary decision-making. With her research, teaching, and service, Rall centers equity-mindedness to push issues of leadership and decision-making from the periphery to the core to better understand how the decisions and decision-makers impact outcomes in higher education. At UCR, she teaches courses like Critical Issues in Higher Education, Higher Education Governance, and Black Brilliance Matters. At the system level, she serves on the UC Black Administrator’s Council and is the inaugural convener of the UC Online Advisory Council. She was recently tenured in the UC Riverside School of Education—the first Black woman to do so in the School of Education.
Rall has presented her work at national conferences such as the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Council of Education, and the Association of Governing Boards. The Spencer Foundation, the College Futures Foundation, and the Gates Foundation have funded her research. She has published in academic journals such as the Journal of Negro Education, Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and the Journal of Higher Education.
Rall is also an engaged community leader. She is active on school site councils, parent-teacher associations, and nonprofit organizations. Rall is a board member for the Council of African American Parents and is the program director for the Black Community Education Promise Program. The connections she has made on campuses and beyond help her to understand the breadth and reach of personal relationships and how those relationships can change the trajectory of individuals and communities. Additionally, in the opportunities she has had interacting with leaders, she has noted that many are left out of pivotal discussions and decisions. Fittingly, Rall proposes a project that maps the reach of civic engagement of key decision-makers in higher education. Rall is a national expert whose work on decision-making and equity is advancing higher education in novel ways. The project aims delineated in this submission would continue to move the knowledge and understanding of the understudied yet critical topic of governance to center stage in higher education.
