Leal will guide education initiatives

Vicki Leal has joined the University of Colorado system in a position that will guide education initiatives.

Leal most recently served as academic policy officer and the governor's advocate with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, where she coordinated the statewide transfer articulation program (gtPathways), facilitated the annual Faculty-to-Faculty Statewide Conferences, served as lead on Colorado's P-20 alignment legislation (CAP4K/SB 08-212), and administered performance contracts.

For more than 20 years she has worked in the field of post-secondary education in the areas of teaching, recruitment, retention, transfer articulation and policy, serving primarily first-generation, low-income and underrepresented student populations. She has taught courses in multicultural and Mexican-American Studies, as well as courses in historical/philosophical foundations of education at different institutions of higher education.

Before embarking on her doctoral studies, she directed the Cesar Chavez Cultural Center at the University of Northern Colorado, served as education analyst and director of the adult and postsecondary education program for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale, Ariz., and directed a multimillion-dollar HRSA/diversity grant at the University of Colorado's School of Pharmacy. She is an alumna of the University of Northern Colorado, a past Kellogg Fellow of the Hispanic Border Leadership Institute, and a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona State University.