Professor, Department of African American Studies and World Arts and Cultures/Dance.

Patricia Turner was appointed senior dean of the UCLA College in June 2016, and served through June 2020. Additionally, Turner had served as dean and vice provost of UCLA’s Division of Undergraduate Education since December 2012. Turner came to UCLA from UC Davis where, in 1999, she was appointed vice provost for undergraduate education. From 2004 to 2006, she served as interim dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, before returning to the position of vice provost of undergraduate education in the spring of 2007.

Turner is a professor in World Arts and Cultures and African-American Studies, and her research focuses on racial dynamics as they surface in folklore and popular culture. Her fourth book, “Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African-American Quilters,” was published by University of Mississippi Press in 2009.

Turner is a member of UCDC Academic Advisory Council. She also has served as executive director of the Reinvention Center, a national consortium of deans and vice provosts of undergraduate education at research universities.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY College at Oneonta and a master’s and Ph.D. in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.