Linda Sax

Linda J. Sax is a professor of higher education in the School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her B.A. in political economy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990, an M.A. in higher education from UCLA in 1991, and a Ph.D. in higher education from UCLA in 1994. Since joining UCLA in 1994, she has held various roles, including lecturer (1995-1996), visiting assistant professor (1996-1998), assistant professor-in-residence (1999-2001), associate professor-in-residence (2001-2006), associate professor (2007-2010), and full professor since 2010. She served as division head of Higher Education and Organizational Change (2010-2012), faculty director of the Master’s in Student Affairs Program (2007-2022), director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (1997-2005), and associate director of the Higher Education Research Institute (1994-2005). In 2019, Sax founded and directs Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology, a research hub focused on diversifying computing fields.

Her scholarship centers on gender differences in college student development, women’s participation in STEM, and broadening participation in undergraduate computing, with nearly 130 publications. Notable works include her book, The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Women and Men (Jossey-Bass, 2008), and articles such as “Anatomy of an Enduring Gender Gap: The Evolution of Women’s Participation in Computer Science” (The Journal of Higher Education, 2017), “Can computing be diversified on ‘principles’ alone?” (ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 2022), and “Reframing the representation of Black students in undergraduate computing” (Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 2020). Funded by over $11 million from NSF, Google.org, and others, her research informs equity initiatives. Sax has earned the Association for the Study of Higher Education Research Achievement Award (2025) and Mentoring Award (2019), UCLA Department of Education Distinguished Teaching Award (2015), Early Career Award from ASHE (1999), and serves on editorial boards for The Journal of Higher Education and Research in Higher Education.

Professional Email: lsax@ucla.edu