Adrian H. Huerta is a tenure-track faculty member in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the Rossier School of Education and the Department of Population & Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine (by courtesy), both at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Huerta is a leading expert on the social and academic experiences of active and former/inactive gang-involved people across the educational pipeline. Through sociocultural perspectives and qualitative methods, he examines individual and structural factors that impact college access and success, boys and men of color, student parents, and gang-involved populations. Dr. Huerta has secured more than $2.8 million in local, state, federal, and philanthropic dollars for research, evaluation, fellowships, and contractual projects tied to his research agenda. Some funders include the U.S. Department of Education, the ECMC Foundation, the W. T. Grant Foundation, the College Futures Foundation, the California Community Foundation, and others. His more than 28 peer-reviewed research papers appear in some leading education journals, including The Review of Higher Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development, Community College Review, The Urban Review, Urban Education, and many other outlets. He is a past co-winner of the American Sociological Association Julia Anna Cooper Early Career Award from the Sociology of Education section, a recipient of the Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, and an Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). He earned his PhD and M.A. in education from UCLA, an M.A. in educational policy & leadership from The Ohio State University, and a B.S. in human services counseling from UNLV, and he attended both the College of Southern Nevada and Santa Barbara City College as a part-time student.
