Director, Center for Advancement for Racial and Ethnic Equity
Interim Director, Office of Women in Higher Education
American Council on Education (DC)
Diana Córdova directs the American Council on Education’s (ACE) Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity (CAREE) which monitors and reports on the progress of underrepresented groups in postsecondary education and engages in efforts to promote their educational and employment opportunities in higher education. She is also serving as the Interim Director of ACE’s Office of Women in Higher Education. Current programs in her portfolio include the Spectrum Initiative: Advancing Diversity in the American College Presidency, Summits for Women of Color Administrators in Higher Education, National and Regional Women’s Leadership Forums, and the Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education.
Before joining ACE, Córdova served as the acting associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. In this capacity she was responsible for the overall management and administration of several major discretionary research grant programs in the areas of cognition, reading, mathematics, and science education. She was also involved in the development of new interdisciplinary pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowship programs in the education sciences.
From 1994 to 2003, Córdova was a member of the psychology department faculty at Yale University, where she received the 1999 Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. She served as director of undergraduate studies in psychology from 1998 to 1999 and as assistant dean of theYale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2000 to 2003.
Córdova earned her BA in psychology and Spanish literature from Smith College, followed by a PhD in social psychology from Stanford University in 1993. She has published extensively in the areas of affirmative action, cognitive and motivational biases in the perception of discrimination, and intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation in educational settings.