I am pleased to announce that after an extensive national search, Karen Biestman will join UC San Diego as our Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Equity and Inclusion on August 1, 2023. Karen has more than 30 years of experience in higher education in a variety of leadership, EDI, and teaching positions. She joins us from Stanford University, where she serves as Associate Dean and Director of the Native American Cultural Center and teaches Native American Studies in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She received both her Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from UC Berkeley.
Karen began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1983, and her teaching areas include Federal Indian Law, Nation Building, American Indian Religious Freedom, Decolonizing Methodologies, and Peacemaking. She has held teaching appointments at both Berkeley and Stanford Law Schools, as well as the Stanford Design School where she taught courses on Crafting Challenging Conversations and Peacemaking through a cultural lens. Karen previously served as Director of Indian Education for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX, in San Francisco, where she developed a national curriculum on Working Effectively with Tribal Governments. While at UC Berkeley, she also served as the Assistant Dean of Students. In this role, she had as many as 50 supervisees, managed a seven-figure budget, and oversaw student affairs units and centers.
As a founding faculty member and board member of UC Berkeley’s Executive Leadership Academy in the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Biestman trains rising college presidents on Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking. She is a board member of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, and has consulted widely in Indian Affairs with tribal, governmental, and non-profit organizations.
At UC San Diego, Biestman will provide leadership in advancing student equity, diversity, and inclusion. As a member of the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s (VC EDI) leadership team, she will oversee VC EDI’s community centers and programs, provide strategic support to address any infrastructure service gaps in collaboration with campus partners, and help to advance Minority Serving Institution (MSI) designations.
In addition to the wealth of experience and expertise Biestman brings to this new role, her passion for promoting inclusion and ensuring equitable opportunities for all students will help advance our mission to create a more welcoming UC San Diego.
Please join me in welcoming Karen Biestman to UC San Diego. I extend my gratitude to the search advisory committee for participating in this important recruitment, and to our campus partners for their assistance with this process.
Sincerely,
