About
Dr. Jessica Cruz serves as the Research Projects Managing Director for the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. In this role, Dr. Cruz supports all CSS streams of research, from grant proposal and development to publication and dissemination of research. This includes academic research publications for interdisciplinary audiences in sociology, history, race relations, education, and health as well as publications for practitioners in nonprofit community development work. This role also builds on Dr. Cruz’s expertise in education and university-community partnerships by focusing on developing a model for place-based, research-informed initiatives designed to increase access to higher education for historically underrepresented students.
Dr. Cruz most recently served as Managing Director of the Center for Social Solution’s Mellon funded project, Crafting Democratic Futures, (CDF). In this role, Dr. Cruz oversaw operations for all CDF teams, which comprised partners from Carnegie Mellon, Emory and Rutgers (Newark) universities; Concordia (Moorhead, MN), Connecticut, Spelman, Wesleyan (Macon, GA) and Wofford (Spartanburg, SC) colleges; and the University of Michigan campuses. Pittsburgh’s public media flagship, WQED [Multimedia], was also a key partner, charged with developing a public documentary about wealth, reparations, and race in the US. Ultimately, CDF explored how reparations might involve components such as acknowledgement, accountability, redress, and closure; all in the spirit of repair and reconciliation. In 2022, in recognition of this work, Dr. Cruz received the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Social Sciences Division Rising Star Award.
Recently, she served as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Northern Michigan University where she was one of two in the nation selected for the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) Chief Diversity Officer Fellowship. In that role, she founded Aim North, a placed-based program designed to increase access and retention rates among historically underrepresented students in higher education. Dr. Cruz also transformed the university’s campus cultural center to focus on two priorities: 1) to build and maintain an equitable infrastructure to support Black, Indigenous, Students of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQ+ students, and more; and 2) to engage in the transdisciplinary study of equity and social justice.
As Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Latin@ Studies at Ferris State University, Dr. Cruz helped establish the Promesa Education Pathway; a place-based, culturally relevant pathway to higher education designed to increase college access and completion rates for historically underrepresented students.
Dr. Cruz also served as Gubernatorial Appointee to the Hispanic Latino Commission of Michigan, from 2018-2021. As a Commissioner, she advocated for community health information, such as information about COVID-19, to be disseminated in Mam, an Indigenous language spoken by a significant percentage of the Guatemalan community in the greater Grand Rapids area.
Dr. Cruz received a BA in French and a BS in Public and Nonprofit Administration with an emphasis on Community Development from Grand Valley State University. She holds an MA, M.Ed., and Ed.D. in International Educational Development, with specializations in Bilingual-Bicultural Education, Latina/o and Latin American Education, Higher and Post-secondary Education, respectively; all degrees are from Teachers College, Columbia University.
