K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award
The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.
Recipients of the 2025 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award
Summer Blanco
Plant Biology, University of GeorgiaRed D. Douglas
Educational Leadership, Oakland UniversityVictoria Fields
Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana–ChampaignAva Polzin
Astronomy & Astrophysics, The University of ChicagoNishi Ravi
Counseling Psychology, Marquette University

Meet the 2025 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards Recipients
AAC&U announced the 2025 recipients of the annual K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award.
Recipients of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards will be recognized at the AAC&U Annual Meeting in January.
The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards provide financial support for graduate students to attend AAC&U’s Annual Meeting. The awards include travel, lodging, meeting registration, and a one-year affiliation with AAC&U, including a subscription to Liberal Education magazine.
For more information, contact Kathryn Enke at 202-888-4647 or [email protected].
About K. Patricia Cross
The award honors the work of K. Patricia Cross, Professor Emerita of Higher Education at the University of California–Berkeley. Throughout her career, Dr. Cross helped the higher education community better understand our students, their characteristics, and their needs, and recognize what our responsibilities should be. Her groundbreaking scholarship paved the way for a legacy of work on age, socioeconomic class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and numerous other aspects of intersectional social identity.