Biography
Barbara Endemaño Walker, Ph.D.
Director, Strategic Research Initiatives
Special Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor for Diversity Initiatives
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-2150
Term: 02/01/2022 - 01/30/2025
Barbara Endemaño Walker serves as the Director for Strategic Research Initiatives and Special Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor for Diversity Initiatives at the University of California - Santa Barbara. She is responsible for catalyzing research innovation and excellence through institutional strategic planning, mentoring and professional development activities with faculty members, and a portfolio of diversity and inclusion initiatives.
She leads national and state-wide projects that focus on broadening participation in higher education in the context of the research enterprise. Through the Center for Research, Excellence, and Diversity in Team Science (CREDITS), she oversees programs that increase the capacity for diverse science teams and provide tools for university leadership to enact institutional transformation. She also leads the California Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Social Science Advancement (CAHSSA) which strengthens community-based research and public scholarship in the social sciences to align with the Hispanic-serving mission of the majority of institutions of higher education in California. In addition, she collaborates with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) on a project to address the challenge of improving Latinx graduate degree attainment in STEM through a national alliance among the community of HSIs.
Endemaño Walker’s research and publications focus on broadening participation in higher education and STEM, the political ecology of marine resources, and gender and the environment. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, NOAA Sea Grant, the Social Science Research Council, and the Department of Education. Results of her research have been published in Gender Place and Culture; the Journal of Geography and Higher Education; Society and Natural Resources; PLOS ONE; and the Professional Geographer, among others. She was a founding board member and officer of the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP), and is a past council member and officer of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators (AHSIE). She received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Geography from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Anthropology and African Studies from UCLA.