Magdalena L. Barrera

Vice Provost for Faculty Success

Phone: 408-924-2405
Email: magdalena.barrera@sjsu.edu

Biography

Dr. Magdalena L. Barrera serves as the inaugural Vice Provost for Faculty Success. In this role, she provides thought leadership on all aspects of faculty recruitment, onboarding, and professional advancement within a Minority Serving Institution context. Her work is informed by a deep commitment to recruiting and retaining diverse faculty who bring asset-minded pedagogies to the classroom. Dr. Barrera oversees SJSU’s Center for Faculty Development and eCampus, and collaborates with college leadership teams, the Senior Director for Faculty Affairs, Chief Diversity Officer, and other campus leaders to support the success of our nearly 2,000 faculty members. In addition to leading SJSU’s faculty recruitment and tenure and promotion processes, Dr. Barrera also heads the Accessible Technology Initiative and Hispanic Serving Institution initiatives on behalf of the Office of the Provost.

Prior to this role, Dr. Barrera was professor and department chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies; Director of the Ethnic Studies Collaborative in the College of Social Sciences; Faculty-in-Residence for Diversifying the Faculty in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and Faculty Fellow at the Chicanx/Latinx Student Success Center. She currently serves on the Committee on Faculty Affairs for the Association of Public & Land Grant Institutions and is in the 2023-24 cohort of the Becoming a Provost Academy, sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

A former first-generation student, Dr. Barrera earned a B.A. in English literature and Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. She began her faculty career at SJSU in 2008, following a postdoctoral teaching fellowship in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities program. Dr. Barrera’s research focuses on the experiences of historically underserved students and faculty in higher education; her work has appeared in a wide range of journals, edited collections, and higher education news outlets. She is the co-author of the Latinx Guide to Graduate School (Duke University Press, 2023), which offers historically underserved students a roadmap for surviving and thriving in master’s and doctoral degree programs.