Dr. Mary Walshok

Mary Walshok is a thought leader and subject-matter expert on aligning workforce development with regional economic growth. She has authored more than 100 articles, reports, and book chapters on regional innovation, workforce development and the role of research institutions in regional economies. As an industrial social scientist focused on the dynamics of regional economic development and transformation, Walshok has studied various communities across America. She has evaluated 13 WIRED regions funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, studied three innovative regions for a National Science Foundation-funded project and assessed one region’s efforts to grow an industry for a Lilly Foundation-funded endeavor.

Walshok led the continuing education and public programs arm of UC San Diego from 1981 to 2021. As Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Programs, Walshok continues to play an active role in helping the university expand its local impact, national reputation and global reach. She leads a campus-wide effort to establish a significant presence for the university in downtown San Diego on the trolley line which runs from the US-Mexico border all the way to the UCSD campus. UC San Diego Park and Market is a major effort to link the wide array of arts, culture, science, medicine, economic and civic programs of UC San Diego with the needs and aspirations of the region through collaborative research, timely education programs, informative public events, as well as the performing arts, special exhibitions and cinema programs.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Kellogg Foundation’s Leadership Fellowship and was inducted into Sweden’s Royal Order of the Polar Star. She currently serves on the boards of San Diego Connect (which she helped found in 1985), the La Jolla Playhouse, the United States-Mexico Foundation for Science (FUMEC), the Institute of the Americas (IOA), the San Diego Opera, the Smart Border Coalition and the Girard Foundation.

Walshok grew up in Palm Springs, California, she received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Pomona College in 1964, her master’s degree in sociology in 1966 and her Ph.D. in sociology in 1969 from Indiana University. She has been a visiting professor at the Stockholm School of Economics for many years and in 2004 held an international appointment in the Department of Continuing Education at Oxford University in England.

She recently retired UCSD Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Programs and, Dean, University Extension.