Diana Natalicio (née Diana Siedhoff; August 25, 1939 – September 24, 2021) was an American academic administrator who served as 10th president of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) from 1988 to 2019. After growing up in St. Louis, Natalicio studied Spanish as an undergraduate, completed a master's degree in Portuguese and earned a doctorate in linguistics. She became an assistant professor at UTEP in 1971, and was named the first female president of the university on February 11, 1988. As of February 2016, Natalicio had the longest tenure among incumbent presidents at major public research universities. In 2016 Natalicio was named to Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. She was named president emerita of UTEP by the University of Texas System Board of Regents in August 2019. Early life and career Natalicio was born Eleanor Diana Siedhoff in St. Louis in 1939. Her father William Siedhoff owned a small retail business and her mother Eleanor Josephine Bierman (Jo) was a homemaker. After high school, Natalicio took a job at the switchboard of a company called Nordberg Manufacturing. Natalicio said that she learned to operate the switchboard quickly, but about a month into the job she realized that she did not want to make it a career. She said that the desire for a more fulfilling career led her to enroll in college at Saint Louis University (SLU). Natalicio said that when she entered SLU, she realized that her high school preparation had been subpar. While she said that she was behind in math and literature, Natalicio had taken Spanish in high school and had an aptitude for it. She earned an undergraduate degree in Spanish at SLU and was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil. She completed a master's degree in Portuguese and a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1971, Natalicio came to UTEP. She was hired as an assistant professor, and later served as the modern languages department chair, dean of the liberal arts college and vice president of academic affairs. UTEP presidency In 1988, Natalicio became the president of UTEP. She was the school's first female president. One of her initial goals was to recruit a student body that reflected the demographics of El Paso County. The student body was 50 percent Hispanic in 1988; that figure had increased to 66 percent by 1998, not including approximately 1300