Adela de la Torre, Ph.D.

San Diego State University

Adela de la Torre, Ph.D. was recently appointed by the California State University Board of Trustees as the new president of San Diego State University. Joining the campus in June 2018, Dr. de la Torre is the ninth permanent president of SDSU and the first woman to serve in that role. She brings 30 years of service in leadership roles within institutions of higher education, including the California State University system, the University of Arizona, and the University of California, Davis. Prior to her appointment as President, Dr. de la Torre served as the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Diversity at UC Davis. Dr. de la Torre’s research focuses on aspects of Latino community health – an area in which SDSU is a national leader. Dr. de la Torre served as Director for the UC Davis Center for Transnational Health for 14 years, Chair of the UC Davis Chicana/Chicano Studies Department, Director of the Hispanic Center of Excellence in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, and Director of the Mexican-American Studies and Research Center at the University of Arizona. Dr. de la Torre was a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and at the University of Arizona before joining UC Davis in 2002, where she became the first Latina to receive the rank of Distinguished Professor. Dr. de la Torre's grandparents immigrated to the Central Valley from Mexico. She grew up in the Bay Area, where her grandmother and mother taught her important cultural traditions – the importance of family, the value of hard work, and the power of education. Her mother went to Modesto Community College and UC Berkeley and was a public school teacher for 40 years. Dr. de la Torre earned her bachelor’s degree in the Political Economy of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley, where she also earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics.