Vicki L. Ruiz is a Distinguished Professor of history and Chicano/Latino Studies and former dean of the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. An award-winning scholar and educator, she is the author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives and From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth- Century America and co-author of Created Equal: A History of the United States. Ruiz co-edited the three-volume Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, which received a 2007 “Best in Reference” Award from the New York Public Library. On September 10, 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Ruiz the National Humanities Medal, the eighth UC faculty member and first Latina so honored. Ruiz was also selected as a 2015 National Women's History Month honoree by the National Women’s History Project.

The event is part of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity’s Campus Conversations Series which aims to provide the campus community with opportunities to engage in dialogues about contemporary topics related to equal opportunity and diversity. For more information and to RSVP, please call 949-824-5594 or email: rfaraj@uci.edu. To learn more about OEOD, please go to: www.oeod.uci.edu.