For over 25 years, she has been a practitioner, leader, advocate, speaker, and author on the need for pedagogies of engagement in higher education. She was a guest lecturer, visiting professor, and consultant on academic civic engagement at Carleton in the spring of 2006, and a Headley House Scholar-in-Residence during fall term 2006. She attended the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines from 1966-68, obtained her B.A. in Political Science at the University of San Francisco, Lone Mountain College in 1971, and completed her M.A. also in Political Science from Marquette University in 1974. Cruz directed the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University from 2000-2003, having worked in the center from 1999-2003. At the Haas, she developed the Public Service Scholars Program that integrates service with senior honors thesis research, taught service learning courses for the Program in Urban Studies, and lived with students as Resident Fellow of the Okada Asian American Ethnic Theme Undergraduate Residence. From 1993-94, she worked in Minnesota as the Executive Director of the High Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). In this position, she led 18 colleges and universities in the Upper Midwest to develop community-based learning programs in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Latin America, Scandinavia, and other parts of the world. As the Eugene M. Lang visiting Professor of Social Change at Swarthmore College, she piloted service learning for the political science department. Currently she is an independent consultant, working with a variety of college and universities.
Text of her Commencement speech
Introduction by Professor Mary Savina and audio of the Commencement speech