Susana Hernandez

Susana Hernández is an Assistant Professor in the Higher Education, Administration, and Leadership pathway in the Department of Educational Leadership at California State University, Fresno, both an AANAPISI and HSI. Susana’s research examines educational opportunity in discourse and policy. Her work disrupts traditional and conventional policy analyses and raises imperative understandings of how educational opportunity is constructed. Her work has examined in-state resident tuition policies that affect undocumented students as well as how federal policy discursively shapes Latino educational opportunity and equity. She is currently conducting research on Hispanic Serving Community Colleges in California’s Central Valley and the role student affairs plays in advancing Latino student success. Hernández earned her Ph.D. from Iowa State University, a Master’s of Science in Counseling with an emphasis in Student Development in Higher Education from CSU Long Beach, and Bachelor’s degrees from UC Irvine. Prior to becoming a professor, Susana held several student affairs positions across multiple systems of higher education. She was a program coordinator in the Hispanic Serving Institution Office at California State University, Long Beach as well as an admissions counselor at UC Irvine where she worked with community college students, high school students, and families across the state of California. Susana is the daughter of Mexican immigrants from the state of Jalisco and grew up in the city of Inglewood, California. Her longstanding commitment to educational equity is demonstrated in the meaningful ways she incorporates her family’s history into her daily practice as a scholar and educator.