The Walla Walla University 2022 Distinguished Scholar Lecture will feature Rebecca Covarrubias, associate professor of psychology and faculty director of the Collaborative Research for Equity in Action Research Group at UC Santa Cruz. Covarrubias will discuss how educational institutions privilege white cultural capital and how these institutions can learn to affirm students with other cultures. 

Covarrubias’s presentation is titled “Unmasking and Addressing Cultural Privileging in University Settings” and will occur on Thursday, April 7, at 7 p.m. in the Melvin K. West Fine Arts Auditorium at 290 S. College Ave., College Place. 

Covarrubias holds a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on issues of identity, culture, health, and educational quality and access for underrepresented individuals. She looks at how universities privilege middle-class, white ways of being and therefore undermine the experiences of low-income students of color, then examines how these effects can be reversed. 

The lecture is free and open to the public. Learn more about Covarrubias, her research, and her lecture at wallawalla.edu/DSL.

Posted on April 5, 2022