Bensimon is a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and director of the Center for Urban Education, which she founded in 1999. Bensimon’s critical action research agenda has been supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Teagle Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation. Bensimon has published extensively about equity, organizational learning, practitioner inquiry and change. Her articles have appeared in journals such as the Review of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, Liberal Education and Harvard Educational Review. She has held the highest leadership positions in the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) and in the American Education Research Association (AERA), Division on Postsecondary Education. She has served on the boards of the American Association for Higher Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She was the chair of AERA’s Social Justice and Action Committee. In 2010, the University of Wisconsin system awarded Bensimon with a 2010 Outstanding Women of Color in Education Award. In 2011, she was inducted as an AERA Fellow in recognition of excellence in research and received ASHE’s Council on Ethnic Participation Founders Service Award. In 2013, she received the Association for the Study of Higher Education Research Achievement Award. She is a recipient of the USC Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty and Distinguished Service Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education. In 2015, she received the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Outstanding Latina Faculty Award for Research & Teaching. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Education and she was presented with the Social Justice in Education Award by the American Education Research Association. Bensimon was associate dean of the USC Rossier School of Education from 1996-2000 and was a Fulbright Scholar to Mexico in 2002. She earned her doctorate in higher education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
