Mary Lou de Leon Siantz, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N.
Professor Emeritus
Mary Lou de Leon Siantz is a professor emeritus at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis and founding director of the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS). She is nationally recognized for her interdisciplinary efforts to prepare health and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals in leadership and policy, as well as internationally respected for her research in migrant population health.
As a professor at the School of Nursing, de Leon Siantz teaches, conducts research and mentors students in leadership policy and population health. Her research has focused on the impact of migration on the health and development of Hispanic migrant and immigrant children and families. Her current research, funded by the Binational Health Initiatives of the Americas, UC Berkeley, explores migration and the mental and reproductive health of rural Mexican migrant adolescent girls in California’s Central Valley and Jalisco, Mexico. Sponsored by the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute, she also investigates the impact of climate change on the health of Mexican farmworker women and their families.
In 2013, de Leon Siantz was appointed founding director of (CAMPOS) whose mission is to support discovery of knowledge by promoting diversity in STEM science. She is also the associate director of the Latino Aging Research Resource Center’s Mentorship Core, a National Institutes of Health Resource Center for Minority Aging focused on the study of the cognitive health of Latino elderly and the development of faculty who will study this phenomenon.
Prior to her appointment at UC Davis, she was the assistant dean of Diversity and Cultural Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. She established an interdisciplinary leadership education and policy development program (LEAP) as well as a multicultural and global health minor that included a focus on national and international migration.
She earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development from the University of Maryland, College Park with a minor in bioethics. She earned a Master of Nursing in Child Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing and Community Mental Health from UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles.
De Leon Siantz’s academic awards and honors include the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Fellowship in Bioethics at Georgetown University, a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellowship, and recognition as a Top Latina in Health and Science by Hispanic magazine. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and an expert panel member for the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine, Health of Immigrant Children and Immigrant Children’s Health, and most recently recognized as a fellow of the Western Academy of Nursing for her research on Mexican immigrant families and contributions to the education of nurses and population health. She is a founding member and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses.
She was most recently published in the International Journal of Nursing Clinical Practice, American Journal of Health Education, Global Advances in Health and Medicine, and Journal of Family Nursing.
Contact Information: Phone: 916-734-7488 | E-mail: deleonsiantz@ucdavis.edu
