Vicki Ruiz, Chicano/Latino studies chair and history professor, has been named Distinguished Professor of Chicano/Latino studies and history. The honor is considered UCI’s highest campus-level distinction for faculty. The news comes on the heels of her election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2012.

An expert in 20th century U.S. history, Ruiz has spent her 35-year academic career studying and telling the historical accounts of Latina women as they fought for civil and labor rights. She is credited with helping to establish the field of Chicano/Latino history with her research on Mexican-American women in the U.S. Southwest. She specializes in Chicana/o studies, oral narratives, gender studies, labor, immigration, and California and the American West.

Her past honors include a presidential nomination to the National Council on the Humanities and Latina magazine’s “Woman of the Year” award in 2000.

In 2006, she co-edited Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia. The three-volume set with more than 600 entries and 300 photographs documents contributions by women of Latin American birth or heritage to the economic and cultural development of the United States. It is the first comprehensive gathering of scholarship on Latinas, and it was named a 2007 Best in Reference book by the New York Public Library, and an Outstanding Title by the American Association of University Presses.

A graduate of Stanford University, Ruiz was inducted in 2009 into her alma mater’s Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame, established in 1995 to recognize distinguished alumni of color.

She serves on one advisory board for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She also serves on the board of Imagining America: Scholars and Artists in Public Life, the national action research consortium. She has served as president of four major scholarly associations, including the Organization of American Historians and the American Studies Association.

Ruiz joined the UCI faculty in 2001 and was named dean of humanities in 2008 until she completed her term in 2012. She now chairs the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies in the School of Social Sciences.

-Heather Ashbach, Social Sciences Communications