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

    Summer Blanco

    Plant Biology, University of Georgia
  • Red Douglas

    Red D. Douglas

    Educational Leadership, Oakland University
  • Victoria Fields

    Victoria Fields

    Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
  • Ava Polzin

    Ava Polzin

    Astronomy & Astrophysics, The University of Chicago
  • Nishi Ravi

    Nishi 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.

In Memoriam: K. Patricia Cross