Message From the Dean UCLA Luskin joins University in supporting those impacted by an executive order that blocks citizens of seven nations from entering the United States

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To the Luskin Family:

As you have no doubt heard, the President issued an executive order last Friday blocking citizens of seven nations from entering the United States for at least the next 90 days.  Parts of this order have been enjoined by the federal courts in New York and Virginia, but at this writing, the administration appears to be continuing to enforce the order, in its entirety or in parts, at several ports of entry into the U.S.

The University is recommending to anyone holding a visa or who are lawful permanent residents but who hail from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Syria not to leave the United States until this matter is resolved. 

The President of the University, in conjunction with all of the chancellors, has issued a statement of strong support for these students and colleagues, and for our longstanding principles of inclusion.  The Luskin School of Public Affairs stands with the UCLA Chancellor and Provost in their view that “the executive order directly challenges the core values and mission of universities to encourage the free exchange of scholars, knowledge and ideas.”

For those with questions about the evolving legal environment and its effects on students, please contact the Dashew Center, which is working tirelessly to stay up on events as they occur and to help inform students of their rights and their options.

Sincerely,

Gary M. Segura
Professor and Dean

 

 

 

Public Policy Organization’s Volunteer Day Highlights Community Service AMPPS brings together students, staff, and faculty to mark presidential transition in a non-partisan way and ‘do good where it is needed’

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By Stan Paul

Amid angst and uncertainty over the U.S. presidential transition, a group of students, faculty and staff from the UCLA Luskin Department of Public Policy volunteered a Saturday to help needy people throughout Los Angeles.

More than 30 members of the Association of Masters of Public Policy Students (AMPPS) arrived early in the morning on Jan. 21, 2017, at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in Vernon for a day of community service, where they sorted, packed, stacked and combined bins of food onto pallets for distribution to partner organizations that serve thousands of people.

Mark Peterson, chair of the UCLA Luskin Department of Public Policy, works with second-year MPP student Ahmed Ali Bob to stack bins of donated food. Photo by Stan Paul

“This is cool. So many volunteers, even on a Saturday. … I like it,” said Siynan Meng, a first-year MPP student. Meng, who is originally from China, said she wanted to experience U.S. volunteer work.

“This is important for us to give back as a cohort and to the community,” said Nikki Lewis, also a first-year student.

She joined with her peers on a fast-moving assembly line adorned with multi-colored stickers indicating the foods to be sorted and packed. Juice, rice, pasta, vegetables and a variety of canned goods were gathered into bags, then placed into bins stacked together to form large cubes.

Joining the effort was the chair of the Public Policy Department, Mark Peterson, who displayed his knack as a natural “wrap artist” by securing large bins of food atop pallet after pallet, circling at a brisk pace to surround the red and blue cubes in swaths of plastic. The pallets were then quickly fork-lifted away.

“Joining with our MPP students and Public Policy Department staff for a Volunteer Day at the L.A. Regional Food Bank warehouse was, to me, truly inspirational,” Peterson said. “Their dedication, spirit and camaraderie were simply infectious.”

Video by Yasaman Boromand

After a few hours of work that went by quickly, the clatter of pallets and frenzy of activity ceased. In total, the morning’s group assembled more than 5,100 units of food for distribution. According to the nonprofit organization’s website, the food bank serves more than 320,000 individuals each month in Los Angeles County.

“A single day packaging food at the food bank will not transform the world, but what these individuals and others like them do each day going forward unquestionably will,” added Peterson. “There is real clarity in contributing to direct and concrete action that will enhance the lives of families and individuals most in need in our own community. “

“This was something everyone can get behind,” said second-year MPP student Ahmed Ali Bob, who served as the group’s student leader for the day. He said the food bank had a strong record of serving the community and helping the homeless and the needy population who live in “food deserts” across the region.

Originally from the Bay Area, Ali Bob said the group wanted to find a non-partisan way to “do good where it is needed, right now.”

“Given the tensions of the recent election, AMPPS wanted to provide an opportunity for people to give back to their community,” said Sydney Ganon, a second-year MPP student and AMPPS member who helped organize the event. “We thought kicking off the winter quarter with an opportunity to do good would be a great way for students and staff to come together, as well as emphasize our personal commitment to improving the world around us.”

Luskin Lecture to Peer Into Future of an Aging America Speaker Jo Ann Jenkins seeks to ‘disrupt aging’ with a fresh outlook on the nation’s increasingly older population – and how society will change as a result

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By Les Dunseith

Thanks to advances in medicine, the number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to double in the next 25 years, and the oldest of the old – those 85 and older – now constitute the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, according to the National Institute on Aging.

Coping with the societal impact of this demographic reality is a challenge that “we find ourselves woefully unprepared” to deal with, said UCLA Luskin urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who is also UCLA’s associate provost for academic planning. “Most seniors live in cities, but the cities are not really designed, planned or developed for them.”

New policies will be needed to successfully adjust to an aging population, and a key player in helping to shape those policies is the next Meyer and Renee Luskin Lecture speaker, AARP’s Jo Ann Jenkins. She is the CEO of an influential national organization that has more than 37 million members over age 50.

During her lecture at Skirball Cultural Center at 6 p.m. on Feb. 7, Jenkins will talk about the transformation of AARP into a leader in social change, dedicated to enhancing quality of life for people as they age.

“She will convey very clearly that older adults are equal citizens who have a right to expect the same rights and benefits and amenities from cities as other groups,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “This is not yet happening. The onus is on the people who are the city builders, the policymakers, the planners, the politicians.”

Because those are the types of people who work and study at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, hosting a visit by Jenkins was a natural fit. But her presentation about AARP will also be of interest to staff, faculty and students in many other departments on campus.

“UCLA is the premier university when it comes to geriatrics and the biomedical side of gerontology,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, professor of social welfare and public policy. “UCLA, as a university, has tremendous research strength in issues of aging.”

The Luskin Lecture by Jenkins is an example of a growing relationship between the university and AARP that was fostered by Torres-Gil over the past few years while he served on the organization’s board of directors.

AARP is “beginning to understand what we can do for them,” he said about UCLA. “In a nation becoming old and moving to majority-minority status, AARP needs to take a leadership role in responding to multicultural populations and the nexus with aging.”

California, and Los Angeles in particular, present a perfect opportunity for organizations such as AARP to achieve a better understanding of the needs of older Americans from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One aspect of that effort is a $300,000 grant from AARP to help fund the research of faculty members such as Loukaitou-Sideris, whose studies of the public environment in and around cities have previously noted shortcomings related to the needs of older residents.

For example, because of a lack of public transit options, many elderly people are reluctant to give up driving their cars even when continuing to do so presents a safety concern for themselves and others.

“The truth of the matter is that American cities, and especially West Coast cities that have built so much around the automobile, are not age-friendly cities,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

Not only are people living longer, but their expectations for quality of life are changing as well. This notion of re-thinking what it means to grow old is one that Jenkins has championed since she became the leader of AARP in 2014, and it is the core message of the bestselling book, “Disrupt Aging,” that will also serve as the topic for her UCLA lecture at Skirball Cultural Center.

In Jenkins’ view, people need to challenge the negative stories often associated with getting older. Her book chronicles Jenkins’ own journey, as well as those of other individuals who are working to change what it means to age in America.

Jenkins has been described as a visionary and thought leader, a catalyst for breakthrough results, accelerating progress and contribution while fostering positive relationships inside and outside her organization, according to Tammy Borrero, UCLA Luskin’s director of events.

The societal evolution that Jenkins and AARP envision cannot be accomplished through words alone, of course. “You want to disrupt aging – this can be your desire – but you really need to have design, planning and policy in place to do that,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “And that’s where UCLA Luskin comes in.”

Jenkins’ UCLA Luskin Lecture is free and open to all, but an advance RSVP is required for admittance. Details can be found here.

Responding to the Call in a ‘Post-Truth’ World Presented by UCLA Luskin’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, ‘From the Frontlines of Justice’ and other J18 events demonstrate how ‘places of learning will not bear silent witness’

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By Stan Paul

Teach! Organize! Resist!

That was the call by organizers of J18, a daylong exercise of teaching and learning at UCLA, as a response to the uncertainty and fear of many people surrounding the transfer of power to a new U.S. administration.

The Jan. 18, 2017, event, positioned between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration, was planned as “an opportunity to mobilize the power of knowledge and the creativity of the arts” to challenge the new administration and its stated ideals, said Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and lead organizer of an evening event titled “From the Frontlines of Justice.”

There is “new, powerful work to be done” said Peter Sellars, a UCLA professor of World Arts and Cultures and director of opera, theater and film. Photo by Yasaman Boromand

“The politics of exclusion and isolation are all around us,” Roy told the overflow audience at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom in her opening remarks. “Here in the United States … we face the systematic dismantling of environmental regulations, of newly won labor rights, hard-won civil rights, of the first scaffolding of national health care and the last vestiges of social protection,” she said, adding that the purpose of the evening was to “learn to listen and reflect and to do so with love and respect.”

And the J18 call was heard, said Roy, who is also a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at the Luskin School. “J18 is made up of a multitude of actions, teach-ins, discussions, performances, rallies — nearly 100 of them — from American University to UC Santa Cruz, from Rome to Singapore, here in L.A., at Skid Row, at CalArts, Cal State LA, Caltech, USC and of course here at UCLA,” she said. With a smile, she added that her favorite J18 event was Elementary School Kids for Equality, which organized a march at UCLA “complete with music, fun … and snacks.”

Patrisse Cullors, UCLA alumna and co-founder of #Black Lives Matter, started by checking in with the audience in anticipation of the political transition two days away. “How ya doing? How are you coping?” asked the artist, organizer and founder and board member of Dignity and Power Now.

“We know that when someone becomes the president of the U.S. they become the president of the world,” said the L.A. native, who wondered what the response should be. “Do we go back into our classrooms? Do we go back to our homes? No, we need to be in the streets. We need to be mobilizing and we need to be organizing, and at this point in history we need to have the most innovative and creative approaches.”

Jeff Chang, a cultural critic who writes about race, music and politics and is executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, said, “We’re weary, we know of the fight ahead, and it’s having to demand our place in the world again.” The co-founder of CultureStr/ke and ColorLines said his most recent work has included writing about cycles of crisis.

“When it comes to race in this country we seemed to be to caught in this permanent cycle of crisis,” Chang said. “It’s like climate change, the cultural wars — they seem to be an enduring feature of our daily lives. It’s a permanent fog that covers everything.”

Peter Sellars, a UCLA professor of World Arts and Cultures and director of opera, theater and film, said that there is “new, powerful work to be done,” describing the challenge as a “new discipline,” while reminding everyone that “none of this started a few weeks ago.”

The MacArthur Fellowship recipient said, “It’s time for a new set of solidarities and for actually crossing the line,” adding that while others may have voted a different way and might hold “very scary ideas,” the point is “not to mirror back the demonization.” Instead, “the point is to insist on equal humanity, and that means equal humanity of people who disagree with you on absolutely everything.”

Migrant and activist Ilse Escobar’s presentation started with her own emotional and harrowing story, one she said represents many who like her were not born in the U.S., and whose futures have always been uncertain but may be in jeopardy now.

The UCLA alumna spoke of her own experience crossing as a child into the United States to escape abject poverty. “I remember walking the border with my mom and my sister … I remember getting into the trunk of the car and coming here and starting kindergarten and knowing illegality intimately … 5 years old knowing I had a secret to hide.”

She recalled applying for college without a social security number, being accepted and not being able to pay for school.

And, while gains were made during the previous administration, she said that the fear of deportation has always been there and remains. “So I knew then, as a conscious political being, that what really mattered was organizing, that I could come back here to my comrades that are here in the room and work some of that out and figure out what to do next.”

In addition to the messages shared in words, song and dance, the audience of students, faculty, organizers and advocates also viewed a video narrated by Roy titled “3 Truths About Trumpism,” which Roy begins with the definition of “post-truth,” the Oxford English Dictionary’s choice for 2016 word of the year.

“Truth is out of fashion. Truth is past its expiration date,” Roy says in the animated feature that has already been viewed thousands of times online.

The J18 message was also delivered through performances, including the poetry of feminist, essayist and poet Erika L. Sánchez, the daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, and Bryonn Bain, artist/activist and creator of “Lyrics From Lockdown,” who pumped up the audience with presentations of spoken word and powerful lyrical performances accompanied by bass and cello. Concluding the program was hip-hop artist Maya Jupiter, whose rousing musical performance included a song with a refrain that effectively summarized the evening: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

Roy said that J18 is meant to go beyond the one evening. As a collective endeavor, “J18 is both a platform of interconnection and solidarity,” Roy said. “It will be up to all of us to put it to good use in the coming months and years.

“Our J18 call is an insistence that places of teaching and learning will not bear silent witness, that we will stand up for those among us who are the most vulnerable that we will defend the academic freedom to examine with courage the stockpiling of wealth and power,” Roy added. “That we will not be bullied into quiet acquiescence with ignorance, hate and fear.”

The crowd included Lolly Lim, a first-year master of urban and regional planning student at the Luskin School who was also among a packed classroom for an earlier J18 event at the Luskin School — an exercise on “Envisioning Compassionate Cities.” The session included collaboration between students and faculty from the Department of Urban Planning.

Urban planning student Lolly Lim listens as faculty members talk about the need for planners to be inclusive of all types of people. Photo by Les Dunseith

In the exercise, Lim and the other students were asked to imagine what future cities might look like, what social justice values they would encompass and what problems they would solve. Ideas generated by the exercise were grounded in a working definition of compassion — “the response to the suffering of others that motivates an actual desire to help.”

Lim said she appreciated the opportunity to sit at the same table with faculty and work on the problems together.

The event was introduced by Vinit Mukhija, the newly installed chair of urban planning, and facilitated by new urban planning faculty member Kian Goh; Gilda Haas, longtime urban planning instructor and founder of the department’s Community Scholars program; and Kiara Nagel, program associate from the Center for Story-Based Strategy.

As part of the session, the students and faculty participated in a thought exercise to “remember when” — looking back from a future reference point — and framing aspirational ideas such as “remember when we all got along, everyone had free healthcare, everyone had access to food and all people were safe in cities and no individuals were dispossessed?” Questions such as how to make cities “spaces of hope” and how to “prototype radical ideas” were brought up as work groups focused on imagining alternate visions of urban space.

The students’ ideas of the future were generated on multicolored post-it notes, represented graphically on paper and in three dimensions. Mukhija said that he hoped that the exercise would serve as inspiration for further exploration of these topics in similar future events.

For J18, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy was the lead organizer, joined by RAVE (Resistance Against Violence through Education), UCLA; UCLA Department of African-American Studies; UCLA Department of Chicana/o Studies; UCLA Institute of American Cultures; Justice Work Group, UCLA; UCLA Labor Center; UCLA LGBTQ Studies; and The Undercommons.

Taking the Fight for LGBT Health Equity to the Streets Late-night canvassing to assess a meningitis outbreak exemplifies the dedication that has earned UCLA Luskin Social Welfare professor Ian Holloway national recognition for his groundbreaking research

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By Les Dunseith

It’s the Tuesday night before Christmas as UCLA Luskin professor Ian W. Holloway tucks his 2-year-old daughter Sofía into bed and prepares to leave his home on a tree-lined street of bungalow-style houses in the Larchmont neighborhood of Los Angeles.

It’s time for Holloway, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Welfare, to get back to work.

Along with three UCLA student researchers, Holloway will spend the next several hours in West Hollywood doing legwork for his latest research project. Their task will be to find and interview gay and bisexual men outside popular nightspots and discover how much they know about an ongoing meningitis outbreak and the steps that health officials have taken to battle it.

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This type of time-consuming, on-the-ground research is par for the course for Holloway, who serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin-based Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center and is currently juggling four major research efforts related to his expertise in health disparities among sexual and gender minority populations. Holloway’s dedication and his innovative methods recently led the Society of Social Work Research (SSWR) to select him for its Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award, presented in January 2017 during the organization’s national conference in New Orleans.

“This is our primary professional society,” Holloway says about the honor, which recognizes social work research completed during the recipient’s first decade after earning a doctoral degree. “They give just one a year at the society’s big professional meeting.”

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UCLA Luskin students Jorge Rojas and Christine Munoz listen as Ian Holloway outlines the agenda as another night of research gets underway. Photo by Les Dunseith

On this night, however, the meningitis study takes precedence. Outside the Urth Caffé, Holloway helps the student researchers establish a “line” — in this case basically a crevice in the sidewalk — at the corner of Melrose Avenue and Westmount Drive. One or more of the students then approaches any man who crosses that line, asking them to participate in the research effort by spending 20 minutes answering survey questions using an iPad.

In the first half-hour, however, only one man who meets the study’s criteria has been successfully interviewed. Holloway and his research team are trying to complete about 500 interviews for the project by February, and foot traffic is just too light to continue at the site. So they move on to the next venue that has been randomly preselected for this night’s canvassing effort — the Motherlode, a tavern with removable walls that proudly shows off its dive-bar atmosphere to passersby along Santa Monica Boulevard.

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The thought of an academic research project centered around bar hopping in West Hollywood until 2 a.m. may seem incongruous, but it’s a proven research approach that works particularly well when the target audience is gay and bisexual men in Los Angeles County, including those who are HIV positive. During a meningitis outbreak that has led to two deaths in Southern California since it was first reported last spring, the researchers need to go where those who are most at risk can reliably be found.

UCLA Luskin student researchers Ryan Dougherty and Christine Munoz use digital devices to establish a survey zone. Photo by Les Dunseith

“We use a strategy called venue-based sampling,” Holloway explains. “It’s a systematic sampling strategy that is one of the best ways we know for how to approximate generalizability among gay and bisexual men.”

Holloway’s meningitis study is funded as part of a four-year, $4-million grant from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program to produce “what we call rapid response research,” he says. The idea is to complete research within months, not years, related to timely policy issues that impact people living with HIV or AIDS in California.

As noted on its website, CHPRC.org, the center works closely with community partners from AIDS Project Los Angeles Health and the Los Angeles LGBT Center to tailor research efforts to match urgent needs within the LGBTQ communities.

“We get community input, synthesize that and then set an agenda for policy research,” Holloway explains.

He took over the center’s leadership last April from Arleen Leibowitz, professor emeritus of public policy at UCLA Luskin, and feels fortunate to conduct research efforts that directly arise from community interaction.

“Models of funding like this aren’t widely available, so we are lucky to have a center here at UCLA, and we are lucky to have had it for seven years,” he says. “We want to continue to do this work and be able to conduct research that is driven by the community and that directly benefit the community.”

The meningitis study resulted from a meeting in October at which about 40-50 advocates, health workers and social service providers from across Southern California came to Los Angeles to talk about the needs of people in the local LGBTQ communities.

“These are people who are working with HIV-positive clients, who are doing prevention work,” Holloway says of the attendees. The meeting gave them an opportunity to think about and debate the issues most affecting their communities. The researchers primarily were there to listen and help structure projects that could be completed in a rapid response timeframe to produce data that would actually benefit those communities.

“It is … very much aligned with the mission of Luskin and the mission of the Department of Social Welfare,” Holloway notes.

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Ian Holloway discusses where to relocate with his survey team when one of their preselected research sites proves unworkable. Photo by Les Dunseith

Back in West Hollywood, the Motherlode proves unworkable as a survey venue on this night. A private party is booked at the site, but it won’t start for a couple of hours and the survey team can’t afford to simply bide time waiting.

Holloway, ever cheerful no matter the hurdle he faces, quickly gathers his team to discuss their options. Proceed to the next pre-selected venue? Or go just around the corner to the “emergency backup” site, the Abbey, a 25-year-old West Hollywood landmark that has been voted the best gay bar in the world.

Within minutes, the team is in place outside the Abbey, and all three student researchers are actively engaged in recruiting potential survey respondents.

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To gather enough surveys to produce statistically valid results by their deadline, Holloway has put together a rotating team of about 10 UCLA student workers, assisted occasionally by a couple of alumni who help out during staffing shortfalls. The majority are current Luskin master of social welfare students, but two are in a Ph.D. program.

“There’s lots of exciting work going on,” Holloway says with a broad smile. “And we have a fantastic team at UCLA supporting it.”

The data being gathered now will be analyzed by March to inform a research brief that should help California produce better outreach and better programs centered around meningitis vaccination for this population. The student workers collecting the information were carefully screened during a selection process led by Holloway’s research manager, Elizabeth Wu.

“We are looking for people who are obviously outgoing and who understand the importance of collecting good quality data,” says Holloway, whose own affable manner permeates the research effort. The canvassers, who refer to Holloway mostly by his first name, also need to be comfortable staying out to the wee hours to chat with strangers they encounter outside bars and clubs.

The iPad-based surveys are completed by the researchers based on respondents’ answers. Photo by Les Dunseith

For researcher Christine Munoz, a first-year MSW student who got her undergraduate degree at UC Riverside, the learning process was frenetic at first, but also rewarding.

“It is very new to me because I wasn’t really involved in the LGBTQ community previously,” she says during a break during the canvassing effort. “I am learning so much from this community. So, it’s broadening my skills, my social work skills. Now I can work with clients who are from the LGBT community. I am learning so much as a future social worker.”

The survey teams have been on the job since November, gathering data that Holloway says will either confirm or refute the notions that helped form the basis of the survey hypothesis.

For example, there is a feeling that the distribution of meningitis vaccine to the targeted community “is pretty haphazard,” Holloway says. “There isn’t always a good refrigeration system for the vaccine at community clinics; health workers aren’t always tracking how many doses have been given.”

Without a systematic infrastructure in place to promote the wellbeing of these men, health officials often find themselves in a defensive posture when dealing with outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses among HIV-positive men or men at high risk for HIV. “It shouldn’t take an outbreak for us to realize this is a priority community,” Holloway says.

His passion to understand and promote better health options for LGBTQ communities is an outgrowth of Holloway’s life experience. He was raised in Northern California during the early years of the HIV crisis in America. His parents’ generation saw an entire community of gay men decimated, almost wiped out by AIDS.

“Growing up and knowing that I was gay, and hearing and seeing what happened close by in San Francisco, I think it was pretty impactful for my young life,” Holloway recalls. “When I decided that I wanted to go back to school for social work, I was pretty clear that this was the community that I wanted to work with, and this was the issue that I wanted to work around.”

Professor Ian W. Holloway has been selected by the Society for Social Work Research as its 2017 Early Career Achievement Award winner. Photo by George Foulsham

That dedication is evident in the meningitis study as well as three other research projects that Holloway is currently shepherding:

  • A two-year study supported by a $1.89-million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense is looking at the experiences of of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender active-duty service members since the 2010 repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law barring homosexuals from openly serving in the military.
  • A study funded by the NIH through a small research grant mechanism uses predictive technologies to understand how gay and bisexual men use geo-social networking apps and other kinds of social media to find substance use partners and sexual partners. This collaborative effort with UCLA’s departments of engineering and computer science is using predictive algorithms and social media data to try to understand how social media behavior predicts health behavior.
  • And he is involved in the development of a social networking app for HIV-positive black men in L.A. County in the 18-29 age range through a grant from California HIV/AIDS Research Program. It will be a virtual community space where these men can connect with those with similar experiences, focusing not just on health and medication adherence but on housing, job assistance, social services and/or legal needs.

Despite his prolific research output, Holloway doesn’t neglect his classroom responsibilities. If fact, he finds that his research interests often dovetail nicely with teaching opportunities.

“I teach a class on diversity, oppression and social functioning. Each year when we talk about community responses to oppression, I show the ‘Silence = Death’ banner that Act Up used as a call to action in the early days of HIV when nobody was talking about it and the entire community was being wiped out,” he explains. “Each year I show that banner from the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and each year fewer and fewer students recognize it.”

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UCLA students working as canvassers approach any men who cross into their survey area. Photo by Les Dunseith

Out on the streets of West Hollywood, student researchers such as Ryan Dougherty are learning first-hand how much knowledge exists among today’s gay and bisexual men about the serious health issues that still impact many of them.

Dougherty joined the survey team as a result of taking Holloway’s research methods class, where he learned “about the process of research, everything from the theoretical foundations of collecting data to the ethics of research. And Ian extended an opportunity for students to get involved and see what that process looks like on the ground.”

As a student in the social welfare Ph.D. program at UCLA Luskin, Dougherty may follow in Holloway’s footsteps someday, pursuing research of his own that will benefit marginalized populations and ameliorate health disparities.

“To be able to do this kind of work, and to work alongside Ian, has helped me to gain more theoretical perspectives and learn about different types of research methods,” Dougherty says. “You can spend all day in the classroom learning about research, but to actually do it and overcome the logistical barriers that come with implementing a really good research project, is a really good learning experience to have.”

At the Abbey, those logistical barriers are in full force as Dougherty attempts to stop men who cross his survey line outside the venue’s patio-style entrance. Some ignore him. A few politely wave him off. One is willing to take the survey but doesn’t qualify because he is not a resident of L.A. County.

Soon, however, a young man in a white hooded sweatshirt approaches. Dougherty catches his attention. The newcomer meets the research criteria. And he is willing to take the survey.

Nearby, Ian Holloway nods his approval. And the research interview begins.

Ryan Dougherty, a Luskin Ph.D. student, conducts a survey interview. Photo by Les Dunseith

‘A Mission I Can Embrace’ New Dean Gary Segura discusses his first 100 days, and why UCLA Luskin is the ‘right fit’ for him

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By George Foulsham

On Jan. 1, Gary M. Segura began his tenure as Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

In a Q&A conducted soon after his appointment in October, Segura, professor of public policy and Chicano studies at UCLA and the former Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy and professor of political science at Stanford University, discussed his new role and how excited he is to lead the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

First of all, congratulations on being named the new Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Can you tell us your initial reaction when you got the news?

Segura: I was stunned, in fact, and really quite surprised to hear the news. I was in Europe at the time and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I was on a beach when Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Scott Waugh called me. But he was in Europe too, so we were in the same time zone, and it worked out OK. But I was really quite surprised and very, very pleased.

Can you share with us your initial thoughts on what you hope to accomplish when you get started, maybe in your first 100 days at the Luskin School?

Segura: I’m not a physician — I’m not that kind of doctor — but my first rule is to do no harm. There are a lot of very good, wonderful and exciting things going on here. And my first step would be to find out what I need to do and where I can be helpful to enhance, enlarge and grow the existing areas of strength in the school. My second step will be a pure information-gathering one.

I need to know the faculty. I want to know what their interests are, what they think we can do better, what they think is working well. And, also, test out a few ideas in terms of how we might broaden the footprint.

In the coming years, we will see any number of important opportunities and changes come to the Luskin School. I want to be certain to figure out how to make opportunity for growth or renewal a win-win for everyone. I think the first 100 days will be a lot of information gathering and a few trial balloons floated, and we’ll see if they get shot down or if they actually make it to the ceiling.

The Luskin School’s previous full-time dean, Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., believed that Luskin prepared students for the future by providing them with a “change-agent toolkit.” Do you see Luskin continuing that role of helping our students become change agents?

Segura: I would say I see Luskin continuing and extending that role, with the possibility of some additional programs at Luskin. I want to create an environment where we have a huge cadre of students who are going to engage the community as it exists. This is purposeful social science. This is the idea that understanding what’s happening in the world is only useful to the extent that we can then take it and make the world — at the individual level, at the family level, at the community level, at the nation level and maybe even globally — somewhat better than we found it before. So I definitely believe in engaged learning, the idea that the tools they get at UCLA Luskin can be brought to bear on their life goals and their own communities and families.

You are steeped in Latina/o, gender, political and all minority issues. How has your academic background informed and prepared you for your new role as Dean here?

Segura: This society is changing in ways that are unprecedented. In 1950, this society was 90 percent white. When Ronald Reagan was president of the United States in 1980, this society was 80 percent white. In the last national census, it was 63.7 percent white, non-Hispanic. And, in the next census, that number is likely to be around 60 percent. At the same time, we’ve had a revolution in gender relations in the United States over the last 50 or 60 years. So heterosexual white males, who have so dominated American society in all of its facets — whether it be governance, business, industry — those individuals comprise only about 30 percent of the national population. We have relatively little understanding of the other 70 percent. The traditional social sciences and even some of the public affairs and public policy folks in the world have devoted less attention because they were not the holders of power.

What we’re seeing now is a gigantic change in the composition of the United States at every level. And I think preparing our students — many of whom come from that 70 percent — to engage in an America that fundamentally looks different than the one you and I grew up in is an important change. My particular research interests speak to that, but I’m certainly not alone in that interest and expertise. There are others in the school and others on campus and that’s a primary concern.

Finally, any special message you’d like to share with our students, faculty, staff, alumni and donors?

Segura: I’m very excited to be here. When you look for opportunities to take a leadership role, many of them look like just administrative roles, basically file cabinet management.

I didn’t want that. I wanted an administrative role where I believed in the mission of what I was doing. Here, we have three wonderful departments, an array of research institutes, all of which are dedicated to the improvement of the quality of life, of people living in the United States and beyond, especially in the Los Angeles basin. That’s a mission I can embrace and get behind and something I can actually bring something to personally. This was the right fit for me. I hope I can do my best to help everyone achieve the goals that they have for their time here at Luskin.

3 Alumni Are True Change Agents When recruiting for gender, cultural and ethnic diversity, founders of Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors start at UCLA

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By Les Dunseith

Working together from a restored 1920s office building in the heart of a city they are helping to revitalize, three graduates of the UCLA Luskin Urban Planning program are fulfilling a shared vision of diversity and innovation.

Their goal? Change the world.

“UCLA, when we went there — and I think it is still the case today — is really about integration,” says Jennifer LeSar MA UP ’92, one of the founding partners of Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors. “You are not just a transportation planner or an affordable housing person or an environmental planner. You understand the integration of it all.”

The company, which provides strategic counsel to public agencies, foundations, business associations and civic organizations, reflects the partners’ deep respect for each other, a bond that first formed about three decades ago for LeSar and her close friend and company co-founder Cecilia V. Estolano MA UP ’91. Through professional interactions, they later met their third business partner, Katherine Perez-Estolano MA UP ’97, and her values were closely aligned.

“We knew that there were diverse people of color who were anxious to make a difference,” says Perez-Estolano.

ELP Advisors and its sister firm, San Diego-based LeSar Development Consultants, makes a point of recruiting smart, talented people who reflect the gender, cultural and ethnic diversity of Southern California.

“Every time I would go and meet with other people who had their own companies, their top folks were all white men,” Perez-Estolano remembers. “And I thought this is not the world that we are planning for.”

Their vision crystalized at UCLA — they cite faculty members such as Martin Wachs, Joan Ling MA UP ’82 and Goetz Wolff as key influencers — and their commitment to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs remains a vital aspect of their personal and business interactions today. All three are active in alumni activities, and Estolano and Perez-Estalano have both served as Luskin Senior Fellows. They coordinated a visit by a delegation of planners from Panama a few years ago. Their firm also hosted a reception for Professor Ananya Roy when she first came to UCLA in 2015.

And the close association with UCLA has benefited the company as well. Three of ELP Advisors’ six full-time employees are also UCLA Luskin alumni, and the firm has employed a steady stream of interns from the Luskin School since its founding in 2011.

LeSar notes the “amazing talent pool at UCLA.” Estolano says their firms are a direct reflection of the “particular way that UCLA teaches students how to be urban planners. In order to be an activist planner, you have to have strong sense of civic purpose.”

Estolano continues:  “The idea of building a company owned by three women with multiple core competencies in Southern California, the most diverse place in the country, based upon the graduate educations and work experience that we have had, and an ability to hire staff  out of the institutions from which have come, was our vision then and still is to this day.”

Their many professional accomplishments contributed to the three founders’ decision to join forces at ELP Advisors. But there is a personal side to it, too.

Katherine Perez, a former Deputy to Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, and Cecilia Estolano, the former chief executive officer of the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, married in 2013. LeSar’s spouse is San Diego Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, who served as Assembly Speaker from 2014 until March of this year.

The three also believe that their backgrounds mesh particularly well. “If you look at Katherine’s career, and my career, and Cecilia’s career, we have all worked in different sectors,” says LeSar, who also has an MBA from UCLA and is an expert in community development and real estate finance. Estolano, who is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, has expertise in sustainable economic development and urban revitalization. Perez-Estolano, who in 2013 was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the board of directors of the California High Speed Rail Authority, brings knowledge of transportation and stakeholder engagement.

They have a professional contact list — “a giant Rolodex” as Perez-Estolano notes it once would have been called — that few companies can match.

It has helped them land clients such as Los Angeles County, the Metropolitan Water District, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Goldhirsh Foundation. The latter is a great example of the firms’ strengths, Estolano says.

The Goldhirsh Foundation “wanted to completely change their approach” to philanthropy and orient it toward making L.A. the best it can be by 2050. The resulting 2050 Report “really put us on the map,” Estolano recalls. “And the folks we hired to do a lot of the analysis, gather the data and design the report, they are just top-flight. And they are still working with us.”

ELP Advisors takes pride in solving solutions that have stumped others.  “We are just scrappy,” Estolano says, “and resourceful. We are smart people, and we have  broad-ranging interests. So, if a client has a difficult problem and they really can’t figure out how to get at it, sometimes they just give us a call and ask us what we think. And I say, sure, we know how to do that. We can figure it out!”

Success hasn’t always come easily, however. For one, they started ELP Advisors while the Great Recession was still dragging down the economy and hindering new projects. Then, just a few months after ELP Advisors opened for business, Gov. Brown dissolved the state’s redevelopment agency.

“We formed at a time that, in hindsight, was the worst possible,” LeSar recalls.

But they quickly adapted, putting their knowledge to good use to help clients adapt to the new reality they were facing. “So,” Estolano says, “we made lemonade out of lemons! What we thought would be a negative for us ended up creating a base for our company to expand.”

LeSar adds, “We learned some hard lessons, and that’s OK. You know, most small businesses don’t survive. Most women-owned businesses don’t survive. Most businesses of color don’t survive. And I don’t really know any other businesses today that are quite like ours.”

Each partner brings talents that complement the others. They say their success is based on hard work and smart choices. And it’s also based on staying true to their principles: Inclusion. Diversity. Gender equality. Community engagement.

“You live in our city, you live in our neighborhood, and you have a right to participate in these processes,” Perez-Estolano says about the firm’s commitment to getting involved at every level. “We had people who would understand how they could actually change the outcome by getting involved, participating on local city commissions, by running for city councils, by running for county offices or state offices. That was, to me, the pipeline of future leadership.”

A recent example of this commitment to the community is a project spearheaded by Estolano and Tulsi Patel MURP ’14, a senior associate at ELP Advisors. The L.A. Bioscience Hub and its Biotech Leaders Academy launched in summer 2016 to promote entrepreneurship training for community college students from underrepresented groups. The pilot program, funded by a grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation, introduced 10 students of color (six of them women) to professional opportunities related to a growing biosciences sector in the East Los Angeles area.

It’s another example of the three UCLA graduates’ commitment to open doors for people who might not otherwise get a chance to succeed. It also shows their dedication to the value of education, which underlies everything they do, including their advice to current and future UCLA Luskin students about what it takes to succeed.

“I think the core skills are in writing, research and quantitative analysis,” LeSar says. “And be a creative thinker!”

For Perez-Estolano, being adaptable is important. “The world changes rapidly today,” she says, “and you have to embrace that as a planner.”

Estolano advises today’s students to take full advantage of their educations at UCLA Luskin. “Your classmates are going to be your greatest network,” she says. “Do not turn your back on the school. Your school can be a huge asset for you, and even if you can only do a little bit, always give to this school.”

“It’s about changing the future,” she says. “If you have a commitment to keeping the school strong — to honor its mission — it will continue to graduate people that will change the world.”

 

From left, Leah Hubbard, Katherine A. Perez-Estolano MA UP ’96, Jennifer Lesar MA UP ’91, Cecilia Estolano MA UP ’91, Richard France MA UP ’10, Cynthia Guzman MURP ’12 and Tulsi Patel MURP ’14. Photo by George Foulsham

A Crash Course in Politics For MPP alumni, 2016 was a time to run, to rally and, sometimes, to rant

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By Stan Paul

At least one ran for office. Another handled a presidential candidate’s digital correspondence. A third harnessed emerging media to further her political activism. It was an election year, after all — a time when Department of Public Policy graduates are even more likely than usual to get engaged in the democratic process.

Recent UCLA Luskin alumnus Nelson Esparza MPP ’15 sought public office by running for and winning a seat on his county school board back home in Fresno.

Esparza, who teaches economics at a community college, sees the role as a perfect fit. “The Board of Education is especially personal because I am the students of my district,” said Esparza, who grew up in California’s Central Valley. “I faced the same barriers and obstacles that students in my district are battling every day.”

His political journey began at age 16, he recalls, when a teacher sparked his interest in economics and put him on a path that eventually led to Luskin and on to politics.

“I had a broad desire to understand how the world worked, where the money flowed, why things happened the way they did,” Esparza said. “And economics sounded like it might teach me just that.”

After obtaining what he calls “a sweet fellowship in Sacramento” as an undergrad, Esparza experienced a “crash course” in California politics and public policy.

“And that was it – I was sold,” he said. “My passion was impacting public policy in my home state and home community.”

That led him to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “My collective experience at Luskin was invaluable,” he said. “It was a place where I could capitalize on my experience and interest in impacting public policy at the state and local level.”

Now he’s ready to show the value of that Luskin degree. “I want to have the ability to point and say, ‘We produce change agents in a wide range of capacities, including elected.’”

Vernessa Shih MPP ’14 spent the 2016 campaign working at Hillary for America in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she served as digital correspondence manager for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Another recent MPP graduate, Vernessa Shih MPP ’14, got a chance to relive one of her favorite student memories — a presidential debate — from an insider’s perspective. Shih spent the 2016 campaign working at Hillary for America in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she served as digital correspondence manager. On any given day, she would respond to people with policy questions, pull content to circulate to the campaign’s digital team or pitch a great story to the speechwriting team for possible inclusion in Hillary Clinton’s remarks.

“It’s still a bit surreal when I think about being on this campaign now,” Shih said as Election Day drew near. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, and it’s also the most tired I’ve ever been.”

Shih credits her time at the Luskin School with opportunities to seek and grow in leadership.

“Through working with the Public Policy Department and the Dean’s Office, I felt a great deal of agency to convene opportunities for my class,”

Shih said. “Those were some of my first experiences in project management. I learned a lot from the successes and failures of trying to convene people and resources.”

Shih also said she has been challenged to grow in her understanding of other people’s experiences and the big and small details that affect others’ lives.

“This has been a really challenging year for this country. The one thing that seems to cut through all the static is remembering that everything I am doing is in the hopes of continuing forward progress,” Shih said. She hopes the next generation will “have a more diverse, more open and, hopefully, more equitable future than even I had.”

Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed MPP ’07, who co-hosts a podcast titled “GoodMuslimBadMuslim,” describes herself as activist, storyteller and politico.

Looking forward is also important to Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed MPP ’07, who describes herself in three words: activist, storyteller, politico.

But, these labels only scratch the surface of her many creative and empowering efforts. She co-hosts a podcast called “GoodMuslimBadMuslim,” an ongoing discussion on “walking this fine line between what it means to be good and bad” as a Muslim American woman. And she works with the organization 18MillionRising to empower Asian Americans — nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population – to vote.

“We are currently going full force on turning out the vote,” said the Los Angeles-based Ahmed.

Ahmed said she’s helped mobilize thousands of Asian American and Pacific Islanders — representing at least 17 different languages — to go to the polls in the past 15 years.

“I always knew I wanted to leave the world a better place than when I came into it,” said Ahmed, who was honored in September with a Rising Star award by the Organization of Chinese Americans of Greater Los Angeles (OCA-GLA). The mixed-media artist, essayist and poet explained that vision is what motivated her to work in Washington, D.C. as an environmental organizer starting in 2001. In 2016 Ahmed was honored as a White House Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling.

Ahmed said she decided to pursue public policy specifically to work on racial justice, which at the time was an underexplored field. Inside and outside of formal classes, she spent time trying to merge what she was learning elsewhere to what she was learning in public policy classes.

“To this day, I take those learnings on racial justice and incorporate it into what I do now.”

Just One Visit: Volunteers Make a Difference for Prisoners UCLA Luskin professor’s book launch highlights little-known but vital role that volunteers play in the juvenile and adult prison system

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By Stan Paul

Just one visit. For those whose lives are entangled in the pipeline of the juvenile and adult justice systems, the life-changing meeting might come from a family member. It could be a psychologist. Or a chaplain. Or it could never come at all.

For many, though, the visitor is a volunteer — someone who can make the difference between continuing a downward spiral through the criminal justice system and turning a life around.

“The cycle continues until someone breaks it,” said Ernst Fenelon Jr., who was part of a Nov. 3 panel speaking about volunteers who help those incarcerated in America’s juvenile detention centers and adult prisons. The event also launched a new book co-edited by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Social Welfare professor Laura Abrams. It was sponsored by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Department of Social Welfare, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, and the UCLA Justice Work Group.

New book co-edited by UCLA's Laura Abrams.

New book co-edited by UCLA’s Laura Abrams.

The book, “The Voluntary Sector in Prisons: Encouraging Personal and Institutional Change,” was published “to highlight many examples of great practice, of volunteer programs that make a real difference behind bars … and impacting not only those who take part in the programs, but the volunteers,” Abrams said. She was accompanied by one of her three co-editors, Emma Hughes, an associate professor and chair in the Department of Criminology at California State University, Fresno.

“This event, and the book itself, is intended to honor volunteers in jails and prisons, juvenile and adult institutions, who devote their personal and professional time, travel long distances and overcome numerous bureaucratic hurdles to reach out to those locked on the inside, whose humanity and dignity is often limited by the very condition of incarceration itself,” Abrams said in her introductory remarks.

Abrams said that the work of her colleagues and co-editors highlights many examples of great practice, impacting not only those who take part in the programs, but the volunteers as well. “Unfortunately, this evidence of good practice is not well-known, so other volunteers have to keep reinventing the wheel, rather than benefitting from the experiences of others,” she said.

The co-editors pointed out that volunteers themselves are very diverse. They may be formerly incarcerated, currently incarcerated, teachers, musicians, artists, students or people of faith. A unique feature of the book is that it includes the voices of a number of people currently serving time, in addition to the 19 contributing authors from the United States, Canada and Britain.

“You may be that one person,” said Fenelon, whose 25 years of experience with the California prison system includes more than 14 as an inmate. He is now the program coordinator for the Prison Education Project (PEP), a “prison-to-college” program that seeks to enhance the educational experience of inmates and parolees while providing practical tools for reintegration.

“You’re here because it is a calling,” Fenelon told the audience of academics, social welfare students and volunteers, some of whom also had been wards of the foster care, juvenile justice and adult prison systems in California. “The best people to speak are the volunteers,” continued Fenelon said. Like himself, they “speak from a voice of unique experience,” and “sat where they sat” and they strive to “reconnect [those incarcerated] to their humanity.”

Harry Grammer is founder and president of New Earth, which provides youths in detention facilities with mentor-based creative arts and educational programs. Photo by Les Dunseith

He was joined by Rosalinda Vint, president of Women of Substance and Men of Honor Inc. Vint, who grew up in the foster care system, has been “that one person,” Hughes said in introducing her.

“All of us have a friend or relative touched by the system,” said Vint, whose nonprofit organization provides mentoring, leadership training and other services for the Department of Juvenile Justice Ventura Youth facility. The former corporate executive, who left a successful 25-year career to reach out to foster youth, said it is a privilege to serve those who, like her, have suffered abandonment and loss. Recounting her own and her siblings’ experiences within the foster care and criminal justice systems, Vint paused, as her voice cracked with emotion. She continued, “This has changed my life, what I do. I wish someone would have come for me, looked me in the eye and said it is going to be OK.”

The relationship between two of the event’s speakers, Felix Miranda and Matthew Mizel, is an example of the significant difference that volunteering can make in the lives of both volunteers and those they help.

Miranda was raised in Nicaragua and he “saw things that no kid should see.” He was angry when he came to the United States, eventually ended up in trouble and lost 13 years of his life to the prison system in California. Mizel, a native of New Jersey, had a successful career in the entertainment industry before becoming a volunteer with Inside Out Writers in 2003, teaching creative writing in juvenile and adult facilities.

They met while Miranda was imprisoned, and the experience was transformative for Mizel, who was volunteering with the nonprofit organization founded in 1996. Mizel is now a doctoral student in the Luskin School’s Department of Social Welfare, where his research focuses on ways to reduce racial inequality in the justice system.

“I had to grow out of that phase,” said Miranda, who was recently released from prison and is now a member of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC). “You can make a change.”

Miranda said that at first he couldn’t understand why Mizel kept showing up to his prison visits, and more than once asked him why he would do this.

“He came every week — that’s what impacted my life,” said Miranda, who also is now a member of the Inside Out Writers alumni project. He credits Mizel “for the love and friendship he showed me,” and the writing program for the positive changes he experienced.

“Don’t just show up,” Miranda said about volunteers’ need for perseverance and engagement. “It’s the follow-up that matters.”

According to Hughes, the book is also intended to show correctional officials and policymakers how valuable this work is. “All too often volunteers are confronted with insurmountable hurdles in terms of red tape and bureaucracy when trying to access facilities.”

Hughes added, however, that she is encouraged by recent changes.

“I am heartened that this year, CDRC (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) has a mandate to establish a volunteer advisory committee at every adult prison, with the intention of better supporting volunteer-led programs,” Hughes said.

The evening’s presentations also included a moving spoken word performance by Harry Grammar, who brought students from his New Earth Arts and Leadership Center, a comprehensive re-entry center serving 2,500 young people each year who are incarcerated in Los Angeles County detention centers and placement homes.

Urban Planning Scholar Receives Royal Geographical Society’s Top Award UCLA Luskin School’s Michael Storper joins exclusive group of luminaries as a recipient of the organization’s Founder’s Medal

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By Stan Paul

Since the 1830s, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) has presented gold “Royal Medals” to individuals for outstanding achievement in the field of geography. Among past winners are renowned explorer David Livingstone and, more recently, Sir David Attenborough. The awards recognize excellence in geographical research and fieldwork as well as teaching and public engagement.

This year the RGS, with the Institute of British Geographers (IBG), have awarded the Founder’s Medal to Michael Storper, Distinguished Professor of Regional and International Development in the Department of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. The award is for his “leadership in human and economic geography,” according to the Society’s announcement.

The medals, approved by Queen Elizabeth II, are considered “the most prestigious medals awarded and one of the world’s highest accolades in geography,” according to the RGS-IBG. The two gold medals originated in 1831 as an annual gift of 50 guineas. In 1839 the gift to the society from King William IV became the two gold medals awarded since that time. Bob Geldof received this year’s other award, the Patron’s Medal.

“Michael Storper’s research has enhanced our understanding of the significance of the region and the importance of regional economies,” Nicholas Crane, president of the Royal Geographical Society, said in making the announcement.

Crane recognized Storper’s “pioneering research” on the role of informal institutions, as well as on the geography of clusters and innovation. “Michael has been at the forefront of setting up the theoretical and empirical framework of modern economic geography, and his work has inspired a generation of geographers,” Crane said.

Storper, who received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, is an international scholar who focuses his research and teaching on the closely linked areas of economic geography, globalization, technology, city regions and economic development. In addition to teaching at UCLA, Storper holds faculty appointments at the London School of Economics, where he is professor of economic geography, and France’s Institute of Political Studies, better known as “Sciences Po,” as professor of economic sociology.

“Our research is essential to helping humanity find pathways to more just and peaceful societies that respect the environment and are based on respect for all peoples,” said Storper. “I am honored to take my place among other geographers recognized by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) for their contributions to our discipline and our commitment to making a better world through geographical research.”

The Department of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs was recently named the most influential planning school in North America based on citations of planning scholarship. In the same study, published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Storper was listed as the second-most-cited planning scholar among more than 900 scholars evaluated in the analysis.

Storper’s most recent book, “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles” (Stanford University Press, 2015), co-authored with Tom Kemeny, Naji Makarem and Taner Osman, analyzes the economic development policies, and divergent outcomes of the regions since the 1970s.

“We are so proud of and happy for our colleague, Professor Michael Storper, on this momentous award!” said Lois Takahashi, Interim Dean of the Luskin School. “In addition to his groundbreaking scholarship, Michael makes huge contributions to practice and policy. He is a thought leader, critic and innovator in policy and practice circles in the region, state and nation. And, he contributes in innumerable ways to the life and culture of UCLA Luskin. We celebrate with him on this amazing announcement!”

The gold medals will be awarded June 6 in London at the Society’s annual meeting.

Storper was elected to the British Academy in 2012 and received the Regional Studies Association’s award for overall achievement as well as the Sir Peter Hall Award in the House of Commons in 2012. In 2014 he was named one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters. The author of “Keys to the City” (Princeton University Press, 2013), Storper received an honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2008. He also serves as director of Global Public Affairs @ UCLA Luskin.