Sarah Socorro Hurtado

Assistant Professor

What I do

Faculty member in Higher Education. I teach several of our elective courses such as Critical Race Theory, College Student Development Theory, and Inclusive Excellence in Programming and Development. I've also taught a seminar on Campus Sexual Violence. My research focuses on campus sexual violence and how institutions contribute to the perpetuation of this issue with a specific focus on the role and responsibility of faculty members.

Specialization(s)

higher education, sexual violence, faculty

Professional Biography

Dra. Hurtado has been with DU Higher Education since 2018. She first started in a visiting role, and loved it so much she decided to stay. She has been in her current Assistant Professor position since 2019.

While pursuing her PhD in higher education at Indiana University Bloomington, she served as a Project Associate for the Center for Postsecondary Research. Specifically, she worked with the National Survey of Student Engagement Institute for Effective Educational Practice. In her role, she worked with institutions to better utilize their NSSE data to inform practice. She also co-authored several survey item sets focused on providing institutions actionable data related to students' and faculty members' experiences with discrimination, students' experiences with inclusive coursework and perceptions of institutional commitment to inclusion, and faculty members use of inclusive teaching practices. She also developed resources related to inclusive quantitative assessment and data sharing practices including the important of sharing the stories of small populations.

Prior to that, she worked as a Coordinator of Student Development at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for three years. She received her Masters from Indiana University Bloomington and her Bachelors from the University of Redlands.

Degree(s)

  • Ph.D., Higher Education, Indiana University Bloomington, 2018
  • M.Ed., Higher Education and Student Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, 2010
  • BA, Speech Pathology, University of Redlands, 2008

Media Sources

Research

Dra. Hurtado's scholarly agenda is tangible in nature. She asks passionately, which means that she focuses her research on critical questions that need answers. She centers her research on examining the ways institutions maintain inequity that contribute to the perpetuation of rape culture and identifying strategies for transformative change. She identifies two main strands in her research related to eliminating sexual violence. First, she takes an organizational approach to investigate how institutions replicate rape culture through policies, procedures, structures, curriculum, etc. Second, she looks at responsibility including who has power within institutions and how it is leveraged to eliminate sexual violence. Currently, this second strand focuses on the role and responsibility of faculty members.

Featured Publications

Marine, S., & Hurtado, S. S. (2021). Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) response to the Department of Education's May 2020 regulations on Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1972 (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance). Las Vegas, NV: Association for the Study of Higher Education.

Presentations

Blanchard, J., Rhoades, G., Chang, M., Nienhauser, K., & Hurtado, S. S. (2020). Taking a Stand: ASHE's Position Taking Committee Year in Review. Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Meeting. virtual: Association for the Study of Higher Education.
Marine, S., Linder, C., Karunaratne, N., Grimes, N., & Hurtado, S. S. (2019). Centering Critical Interdisciplinary Campus Sexual Violence Research: A Summit Symposium. Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Conference. Portland, OR: ASHE.
Felix, E., Hurtado, S. S., Vigil, D., & Wheatle, K. (2019). The Possibilities of Policy and Practice: Reclaiming Radical Reforms. Association for the Study of Higher Education. Portland, OR.