Adela de la Torre, Emily Prieto and Erik Tseregounis
Dr. Adela de la Torre has nearly 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. She has served as the ninth president of San Diego State University in San Diego, California since 2018. She is the first woman to serve in the role.
Her publications and research primarily focus on taking a community-engagement approach to Chicano/Latino health issues, childhood obesity within rural Mexican origin communities, binational health, and educational disparities and intervention strategies for Chicana/o Latino students. Her major book publications include: Building with Our own Hands: New Directions in Chicana/o Studies (UC Press with Beatriz Pesquera); Moving from the Margins (UA Press); Sana, Sana: Mexican Americans & Health (UA Press with Antonio Estrada); and most recently, Speaking from the Body: Latinas on Health and Culture (UA Press).
In all of her various leadership and teaching positions throughout her career, Dr. Adela de la Torre has endeavored to provide equal access to health and educational opportunities for all students, with a particular focus on improving outreach, recruitment, and retention of highly qualified students from underserved communities.
Dr. Emily Prieto-Tseregounis most recently served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at UC Davis. She has extensive experience in higher education, formerly serving as the director of the Latino Resource Center at Northern Illinois University and in adjunct faculty roles teaching courses on US-Mexico Border Relations and Multicultural Education.
She has dedicated her professional career to creating a more inclusive environment for first-generation, immigrant, and underrepresented school youth; she also served as the executive director of the AB540 and Undocumented Student Center at UC Davis. During her time at Northern Illinois University, Dr. Prieto served on the Board of Directors for Instituto del Progreso Latino. As a leader at IDPL, she helped pioneer education pathways tasked with providing a comprehensive set of services for low-wage and low-skilled workers.
Dr. Prieto earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Community Rhetoric from the University of California, Davis in 2002, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Education from UC Davis. She is also a graduate of U.C. Berkeley’s Executive Leadership Academy and has received two Fulbright Specialist grants administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State to work with educators in Nigeria and Japan on teaching and research strategies.
While Dr. Emily Prieto-Tseregounis was the Director of the Latino Resource Center, she established the Adela de la Torre Latino Honor Society (ATLHS) in recognition of de la Torre’s mentorship. ATHS was the first Latino honor society at NIU and was established in direct response to the need for a program that recognized the academic achievement of Latino undergraduate and graduate students as well as their dedication to the community. Critical values of ATLHS are to contribute toward members’ leadership growth, increase their access to scholarship opportunities, as well as promote academic excellence and strengthen students’ understanding of their Latino heritage and culture.
Her publications and research focus on the cultural, social and economic factors affecting female workers in Mexico, and creating effective and community-based intervention strategies.
Dr. Iraklis Erik Tseregounis is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at the University of California, Davis. He has received a PhD in epidemiology from the University of California, Davis. His research is currently focused on substance use epidemiology.