Elsa Camargo, assistant professor of higher education in the department of Rehabilitation, Human Resources, and Communication Disorders, was recently named a "Top 100 Under 50 Emerging Leader" by DiversityMBA Magazine.

Camargo traveled to the organization's annual conference in early September to accept the award.

DiversityMBA is a national leadership organization integrating diversity and inclusion with talent management. This is the organization's 13th annual list of Top 100 under 50 emerging and executive leaders with advanced degrees. The group is selected from a broad spectrum of companies with both a domestic and global reach. 

Camargo served as Junior Research Fellow at the Office for Diversity and Inclusion from January 2018 to May 2019. She has a Ph.D. in higher education from Virginia Tech and two degrees from the University of Illinois in Chicago: a bachelor's in English and Spanish as well as a master's in Hispanic Studies.

The Top 100 DiversityMBA honorees represent outstanding achievements in community, leadership and education. They go through a rigorous screening process before being selected.

"The award represents the importance of collaborating with professionals across sectors as we each work from a unique angle toward one common goal: to create inclusive organizations that value differences," Camargo said. "While this award acknowledges the individual contributions that people make towards creating more inclusive organizations, collectively it also acknowledges that in order for us to truly transform industries we need to work in collaboration with one another beyond our individual area of focus."

Camargo's research interests are in the areas of college access and success for minority students and career advancement of underrepresented faculty in higher education.

DiversityMBA's list is separated into emerging and executive leaders. Winners are selected based on their position within a company, scope of responsibility, civic achievement and their advanced degree.

"All champions and dimensions of diversity are celebrated and recognized through these individuals. We are proud that the business community champions leaders that are unselfishly putting it on the line every day," said CEO Pamela McElvane in a press release.

Camargo's research has appeared in a variety of journals including the Journal of Education and Training Studies and Gender Transformation in the Academy. She has also been invited to publish in the Magazine of the Society of Women Engineers.

"Through my research I employ lenses that are critical of the systemic structures in higher education that make it difficult for institutions to become diverse and inclusive," she said. "I investigate various points of the student-to-tenured faculty pipeline and the challenges that minoritized populations face in this trajectory."

In line with this, Camargo said she's currently working on manuscripts focused on the challenges faculty face while pursuing tenure, the perceptions faculty have of administrative communications regarding issues of diversity and inclusion, and the inclusive teaching practices employed by faculty.

Data for these manuscripts come from a larger research project that was conducted at a Hispanic Serving Institution in the Southwest.