Dr. Adrian H. Huerta, Assistant Professor at the Pullias Center for Higher Education and the USC Rossier School of Education, has been awarded the prestigious Early Career Award for 2022 by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).

The Award was established to recognize an individual whose work embodies “an emerging, significant, and potential for the future of a body of scholarship” in higher education research and practice. 

Dr. Huerta’s research focuses on boys and young men of color, college access and equity, and gang-associated populations. His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, ECMC Foundation, Institute for Research on Poverty/JPB Foundation, and totals over $1.6 million dollars. His scholarship appears in Community College Review, Journal of College Student Development, Journal of the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, Teachers College Record, The Urban Review, Urban Education, and other practitioner and scholarly journals. 

He was named a 2022-2024 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, and is a past receipt of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Minority Dissertation Fellowship.

Dr. Julie Posselt, Pullias & Rossier Associate Professor, and herself the recipient of the ASHE 2017 Early Career Award, nominated Huerta for the Award. “Adrian’s research is bold and compelling, but what might not be as apparent from his CV is his thoughtful, individualized approach to teaching & mentoring,” said Posselt. “In a year that ASHE’s conference theme is focused on humanizing higher ed, Adrian’s a perfect early career scholar to recognize.”

Adrianna Kezar, director of the Pullias Center and professor at the Rossier School of Education noted that Dr. Huerta’s “early career award is so well deserved! Dr. Huerta has centered critically-overlooked, historically-marginalized groups for study including justice-impacted youth, men of color and student parents in his work. He has developed trust among these groups that can be hard to garner, and has honored their experiences in his retelling of their stories. Additionally, he has held campuses responsible to better serve these groups and calling them to action.”

ASHE will confer the Award at its annual meeting in Las Vegas, NV, on Nov. 17, 2022.