Lisa Guerrero

Lisa Guerrero has been an active advocate for the land grant mission at WSU since joining the faculty in Comparative Ethnic Studies in 2004. During her time at WSU, she has served in various leadership capacities including graduate director of the program in American Studies and chair of the University Common Requirements committee (UCORE).

Dr. Guerrero first joined the Provost’s Office in 2020 as the Associate Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusive Excellence before being named the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusive Excellence for WSU Pullman in 2022. Returning to the Provost’s office in 2024 as the inaugural Vice Provost for Access and Opportunity, she provides leadership to academic affairs in integrating WSU’s commitment to broader access, increased opportunity, intersectional expertise, and community building. Her role will be to identify and implement best practices and evidence-based approaches in faculty hiring, tenure and promotion, research support, faculty retention, teaching and mentoring, and curriculum planning, collaborating with faculty and staff systemwide, and coordinating efforts with the Division of Student Affairs, the Office of Compliance and Civil Rights, Institutional Research, system leadership, and other units.

Dr. Guerrero earned her bachelor’s degree from University of California, Santa Barbara, with a double major in Black Studies and English, and holds a Ph.D. in Literature, with a particular focus on 20th century African American literature, from University of California, Santa Cruz. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary and is dedicated to thinking about the impact of intersectionalities in structures and practices of systemic inequality, and the relationship between culture and power. Her central research and teaching interests include African American literature, African American satire and humor, critical popular culture studies, commodity culture, and cultural studies. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on African American literature and culture, and critical popular culture, and the book Crazy Funny: Popular Black Satire and the Method of Madness (Routledge, 2019).