Dr. Aurora Chang, Director, McNair Scholars Program

Biography: Dr. Aurora Chang was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala.  Her parents immigrated to the United States when she was five years old.  She is the second oldest of six siblings and was raised in the California East Bay and attended Richmond public schools.  A graduate of UC Berkeley (BA in English) and Stanford University (MA in Education), Dr. Chang remained on the west coast until she moved to Austin, Texas to pursue her doctoral degree in Cultural Studies in Education and further her career as a professional educator.  She has served as a K-12 teacher, outreach coordinator, academic services director, educational manager, graduate research assistant and a student affairs administrator.  Dr. Chang is a true teacher at heart and believes deeply in empowerment through education.

Professional Profile: Dr. Aurora Chang is Director of the McNair Scholars Program at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Her research interests center around 1) racial identity, education and agency, 2) Multiracial students and their impact on the educational landscape and 3) access and equity issues in K-16 contexts.  She is specifically interested in  Multiracial identity, intersectionality as it pertains to identity production and the development of conceptual frameworks, and the concept of queerness as a change agent.  Aurora Chang received her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010.  She has been recognized as a University of Texas at Austin Continuing Fellow, in recognition of her original and rigorous research.  Most recently, Dr. Chang published a single-authored piece in the Journal of Multicultural Perspectives entitled, Reflections of a Racial Queer, which introduces the Racial Queer Conceptual Framework, a new lens from which to study Multiraciality.