Cecilia Burciaga

Cecilia Preciado de Burciaga (May 17, 1945 – March 25, 2013) was a Chicana scholar, activist and educator. Burciaga worked for over twenty years at Stanford University where she was the "highest ranking Latino administrator on campus." She advocated for the university to hire more women and people of color when she was a high-ranking administrator at Stanford. An award named after her and her husband, José Antonio Burciaga, is given at Stanford to students who show significant contributions to the community.

Biography Burciaga was born in Pomona and grew up in Chino. She graduated from Pomona Catholic High School in 1963.

Burciaga first taught at the high school level as a Spanish teacher in Chino.

Burciaga started working at Stanford in 1974. Part of her initial job was to help increase the number of Mexican Americans attending Stanford and working as staff and faculty. In 1980, she became assistant to the university president and provost for Chicano affairs. In 1991 she was promoted to associate dean.

Burciaga was laid off from Stanford University in 1994, due to budget cuts

In 1994, she became a founding dean of Cal State University, Monterey Bay. In 2002, the university settled on a lawsuit brought by Burciaga and two others, citing racial discrimination as to the cause. The settlement established a $1.5 million scholarship fund for low-income students from California.

She died in Stanford, California on March 25, 2013, of lung cancer.