Toasting Social Welfare’s Diamond Anniversary Alumni, faculty, students and friends gather to celebrate 75 years of advancing justice

The UCLA Luskin Social Welfare family came together May 6 for an evening of festivity and reflection to celebrate a memorable milestone: 75 years since the study of social work began at UCLA in 1947.

Alumni, faculty, staff and friends from across the decades joined current students at the gala event at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center, the culmination of a yearlong lineup of special events in honor of the anniversary:

  • A fall gathering of Social Welfare PhD students and doctoral alumni highlighted the research and scholarship aimed at advancing justice in both society and academia.
  • A reception in winter quarter honored the many community groups and agencies that have guided Social Welfare students in field placements over the decades.
  • And a special UCLA Luskin Lecture by Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell put a spotlight on the alleviation of poverty, a key focus of the social welfare discipline.

The importance of field education was underscored at the spring gala with the presentation of the 2023 Joseph A. Nunn Social Welfare Alumnus of the Year award to Gerardo Laviña MSW ’86. Laviña, the longtime director of field education, is retiring at the end of the academic year. His award was presented by field faculty Larthia Dunham and Laura Alongi MSW ’92.

Adjunct Professor Jorja Leap MSW ’80 emceed the gala, which included a welcome from UCLA Luskin’s interim dean, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, as well as perspectives shared by Laura Abrams, chair of Social Welfare; Rosina Becerra, professor emerita and former dean; current MSW student Elisse Howard; and alumni Stephen Cheung MSW ’07 and Diane Terry MSW ’04 PhD ’12. Adjunct Assistant Professor Khush Cooper MSW ’00 PhD ’10 raised a champagne toast to end the formal program and invite guests to the dance floor.

Read about 75 years of social welfare education at UCLA, including an account of the program’s “finest moment” during the Los Angeles riots.

Read profiles of key figures in UCLA Social Welfare’s history:

  • Rosina Becerra, former dean and professor emerita
  • Jack Rothman, professor emeritus
  • Joe Nunn, professor emeritus
  • Gerry Laviña, director of field education
  • Coming soon: Fernando Torres-Gil, retiring professor of social welfare and public policy

Watch a video celebrating the importance of field education at UCLA

View photos from the gala on Flickr

SW 75th Anniversary Gala

L.A. County Supervisor Advocates ‘Poverty Disruption’ at Luskin Lecture Holly Mitchell wants to reweave the social safety net with an equity focus in the wake of COVID-19 and the stark inequalities it exposed 

By Les Dunseith

Poverty has been a cornerstone of the professional life of Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell as an elected official and in her prior work within child and family welfare organizations. Today, she is at the forefront of next-generation approaches that she thinks could fundamentally dismantle poverty in our society.

Speaking on the UCLA campus during a May 3 Luskin Lecture organized by the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Mitchell urged a crowd of faculty, staff, alumni and students to rally behind a current movement that goes beyond simply strengthening the social safety net.

“I think we have to reweave it, reimagine it and remake it to serve with equality, inclusion and humanity,” Mitchell said. “We have got to be as intentional about equity as previous generations have been intentional about exclusion.”

Organized in conjunction with a yearlong 75th-anniversary celebration of social work education at UCLA,  Mitchell was invited to speak because her focus on poverty coincides with the Luskin School’s mission.   

Social work was born as a profession to respond to poverty and inequality in society, said Laura Abrams, professor of social welfare and department chair, in her introductory remarks. Yet, social services programs like welfare and food stamps “have too often been coercive and judgmental, [with] caste stigma and population stereotypes racialized and inflicting harm on communities.”

Since being elected as a supervisor in 2020, Mitchell has pushed help for disadvantaged communities as a countywide priority, and her office’s effort to ensure that equity is a centerpiece of the local COVID-19 recovery plan has been held up as a national model.

In the wake of the pandemic, public officials have access to what Mitchell described as a “once-in-a-generation onslaught of public funds called COVID-19 recovery dollars.” Past tradition in L.A. County would have meant simply splitting those dollars equally among the five supervisorial districts. That made no sense to Mitchell. 

“From my perspective, it’s really pretty simple math: Those who have been disenfranchised and hit the hardest deserve the disproportionate investment in their recovery,” she said. 

This led to the creation of the first-ever countywide equity formula and public dashboard to ensure that federal dollars reach those most impacted by the pandemic. The L.A. County formula incorporates economic, social and environmental factors to identify the communities with the highest need, so far allocating $1.9 billion to 120 projects from the Antelope Valley to East L.A. to South L.A. and beyond. 

“For many of these neighborhoods, it’s the first time that government puts them at the front of the line for investments,” said Mitchell, who led one of the largest private, nonprofit child care and development corportations in California, Crystal Stairs, before entering politics and going on to serve in the California Assembly and Senate.

‘The era of invasive and patronizing social welfare in L.A. County is over,’ says Holly Mitchell.

A centerpiece of her policy history has been fighting against so-called benefit cliffs — eligibility restrictions on social services benefits that can trap people into cycles of poverty just to remain eligible for public assistance.

During her time at Crystal Stairs, Mitchell said, “my most painful days” related to working mothers faced with the prospect of losing public assistance because a work promotion would put them “pennies, literally, over the eligibility limit. And they were having to decide whether to walk away. ‘Do I keep this $3,000-a-month childcare voucher? Or do I take this promotion at work?’” 

Eliminating such dilemmas requires radically new approaches, Mitchell said.

“The era of invasive and patronizing social welfare in L.A. County is over. I’ll put the final nail in that coffin right now,” she said, prompting supportive applause from the UCLA audience.

“Research has shown us that things like work requirements and impossible barriers to eligibility do nothing to truly address poverty. It just continues to criminalize poverty,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got to go beyond, in my humble opinion, poverty alleviation and focus on poverty disruption.”

Central to her poverty disruption agenda for L.A. County is a pilot program called Breathe L.A., which is one of the largest guaranteed income programs in the nation. Since March 2022, it has been providing 1,000 Angelenos with $1,000 a month. The payment will continue for three years, no strings attached, for randomly selected participants who are 18 years or older and have been negatively affected by the pandemic.

Assistant Professor Judith Perrigo is among the researchers at UCLA Luskin helping to evaluate Breathe L.A., joining scholars currently evaluating similar guaranteed income efforts across the nation and around the world. 

Mitchell said that early results of that research belie the misguided perception put forth by opponents attempting to cast doubt on whether recipients will spend the money wisely.

“What’s the No. 1 thing participants in Breathe L.A. have spent the money on?” Mitchell asked the crowd, pausing a moment to let her listeners think about an answer. “It’s food. Food and basic necessities to feed their families. And making sure one less child is going to bed hungry, I believe that’s a good thing.”

After her prepared remarks, Mitchell was joined on stage by Perrigo for a Q&A session. “You have fire inside of you,” Perrigo told Mitchell, then invited her to describe where she finds the courage to advocate for poverty approaches like guaranteed income that have a history as political lightning rods.

Mitchell stressed the public servant aspect of her role, saying she thinks about the new mothers among her constituency who dream of creating a better life for their children. 

“Everyone has the right to have that dream. And the role of our society is to not create barriers to lift those possibilities,” Mitchell said. “When I think about things like that, it gives me the courage to go against the grain and fight.”

She recalled her effort in Sacramento to do away with a state provision that penalized low-income families receiving cash aid for having another child. After three frustrating defeats, she found success on the fourth try.

It will take similar perseverance to make guaranteed income a cornerstone of social services policy. 

“It’s a righteous fight,” said Mitchell, urging supporters in the audience to look at the gradual rollout of guaranteed income efforts as “an opportunity to expand your warrior base of people who will fight.”

She noted that the basic idea of guaranteed income is not new — Martin Luther King Jr. was a proponent, in fact. Decades later, it’s only now taking hold.

“It’s a movement,” said Mitchell, comparing Breathe L.A. to today’s bedrock public aid programs like Medicare and Social Security. 

“Those were, in their time, cutting-edge, innovative concepts around income security,” she said. “When I think about those game-changing, life-saving policy initiatives that I’m sure had a very rough start also, I believe we can get there.” 

The name, Breathe L.A., implies providing the means to weather a crisis — a little time to breathe — directly to people facing financial hardship.

Perrigo noted the popularity of the idea among lower-income, underserved communities and their advocates. But how will policymakers like Mitchell persuade skeptical taxpayers? 

 “If we are able to create healthier communities, safer communities, everybody benefits,” Mitchell said. 

Public education is also necessary. 

“It’s trying to acknowledge and help [skeptics] understand they started out 10 steps ahead, and this other community is trying to catch up. I think it’s important to have those kinds of conversations,” she said, “because that’s the honest truth.”

Mitchell is also a board member of LA Metro, and in response to a question from the audience, she said her priority for public transportation in the county is bus service “because that’s what a lot of our poor rely on.”

Eventually, she said, her goal is an entirely fareless bus system. For now, she takes heart in the success of Metro’s GoPass pilot program, which has provided more than 241,000 youths a free transit pass since it launched as a pandemic recovery measure in October 2021.

“The data … on school attendance is mind-blowing,” Mitchell said. “For some of us, it may be hard to imagine that $1.75 can stop a lot of people from going to school, but it can. Our K-12 ridership is double the pre-pandemic numbers.” 

Much of Mitchell’s presentation focused on touting accomplishments, but she acknowledged that L.A. County has no shortage of problems yet to be solved. Homelessness is a primary ongoing concern, “and we are 500,000 housing units short in L.A. County,” she said. “So, we have to build.”

Mitchell acknowledged that reality leads to difficult conversations. Want to stir up a political hornet’s nest? There’s no surer way in Los Angeles than going to a community homeowners association and talking about building more densely in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes, she said.   

“People will roll up on me, and it’s, ‘What do you do about the homeless?’ And I say, ‘Well, as soon as you tell me how you are willing to have the composition of your own block change, I’ll tell you what I’ll do about the homeless,’” Mitchell said. 

“It is our moral dilemma,” she said. “And only when we have decided that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired — and that we’re not going to allow people to live like this anymore — can [developers, public agencies and governments] expand and build the diversity of housing that people need.”

View additional photos on Flickr:

UCLA Luskin Lecture With Holly Mitchell

UCLA Public Policy Community Celebrates Exceptional Alumni and Students Reception highlights the 'incredible, influential, important, world-transforming things our alumni are doing'

The UCLA Luskin Public Policy community came together this spring to connect and reconnect with one another and honor selected students and alumni for their outstanding achievements.

The April 20 reception at the UCLA Faculty Club gave Master of Public Policy students, graduates, faculty and staff the opportunity to network face-to-face for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his welcoming remarks, interim chair and Professor Mark Peterson said that hearing updates about the work of former students leaves him “simply dazzled — not just by the numbers, but by the incredible, influential, important, world-transforming things our alumni are doing.”

During the pandemic, individuals honored as UCLA Luskin Public Policy Alumni of the Year were announced virtually. This year’s reception put a long-awaited public spotlight on award recipients from the past four years:

Regina Wallace-Jones MPP ’99 is Alumna of the Year for 2023. With a background in engineering and policy, Wallace-Jones ascended to several prominent Silicon Valley positions, culminating in her selection this year as CEO and president of ActBlue, the tech nonprofit that facilitates online donations to progressive organizations and candidates. She has also served in public office as a city councilwoman, vice mayor and mayor in East Palo Alto.

Sandeep Prasanna MPP/JD ’15 is Alumnus of the Year for 2022. After serving in staff positions in the U.S. Congress and Department of Justice, Prasanna recently completed work as investigative counsel on the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Working to preserve democracy is quite a good gig for an MPP alum,” Peterson remarked. Prasanna is now a senior advisor with the law firm Miller & Chevalier Chartered.

Isaac Bryan MPP ’18 is Alumnus of the Year for 2021. Bryan turned his record of effective advocacy and community leadership in Los Angeles into a successful bid for the California Assembly in 2021. Since taking office, he has authored over 24 bills and co-authored over 300 bills and resolutions. Bryan’s chief of staff is former classmate Caleb Rabinowitz MPP ’18.

Max Gomberg MPP ’07 is Alumnus of the Year for 2020. Gomberg was selected for his work mapping out strategies for climate change mitigation for the California State Water Resources Control Board. He has since resigned the post, publicly accusing the state of being unwilling to adopt transformational policies. Gomberg now works as an independent consultant on water policy. “Max took a bold step when he resigned from his position in protest,” Peterson said. “Sometimes standing out means really standing up.”

Bryan accepted his award in person. Addressing current students and recent graduates at the reception, he said, “The dreams you have about how you can make a difference in the world, the things that you want to do for the community, for society, for your family, for whatever drove you to a program like this, instead of an MBA or something else — you can make that difference and you can make it as quickly as you need to.

“Just stay focused, stay hungry and build the kind of relationships like the ones in this room, to do good work together.”

Also honored at the reception were students who received the Alumni Leadership and Service Fellowships, made possible by donations from MPP alumni. The awards recognize public service, resilience and leadership at UCLA and in the community. The 2022-23 recipients are Lana Zimmerman and Donald Zelaya, and the 2023-24 recipients are Samuel Newman and Sydney Smanpongse.

Peterson reminded those at the reception of the many paths students can take to make an impact after graduation.

“Just take in that range of alumni careers: federal, state and local government. Legislative and executive branches. Appointed and elective offices. Nonprofit organizations on the front edge of the tech revolution. All making a difference,” he said. “That’s what is on your horizons, current MPP students!”

View photos from the UCLA Luskin Public Policy reception on Flickr.

UCLA Luskin Public Policy Alumni Reception

Robert Fairlie Appointed Chair of Public Policy at UCLA Luskin Distinguished scholar has nearly three decades of teaching and research in the University of California system

By Stan Paul

Robert Fairlie, longtime professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz and a distinguished senior scholar, has been recruited to serve as the next chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy.

Fairlie, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), is a “prominent and prolific scholar who brings with him a strong portfolio of research interests, a record of policy-relevant and impactful research findings, and an overall commitment to social justice,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris in announcing his appointment.

“Robert Fairlie is one of the most productive and most cited economists in the world,” said Mark A. Peterson, a past chair and current interim chair. “He personifies the ideal public policy faculty member, generating robust evidence on major issues of the day using sophisticated and innovative research and communicating directly with policymakers to inform their decision-making.” Peterson is a professor of public policy, political science and law.

Fairlie’s research has been published in leading economic and policy-related journals. Topics include public policy, entrepreneurship, education, information technology, labor economics, developing countries and immigration, typically with close attention to the implications for racial, ethnic and gender inequality.

He has strong ties to the state, arriving in California at age 2 and growing up in San Jose. He attended Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s in economics. He previously held visiting academic positions at Stanford and UC Berkeley. He also serves on the Faculty Council of the UC Sacramento Center.

Outside California, he has held visiting appointments at Yale and Australian National University. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University.

A new book on entrepreneurial job creation and survival — seven years in the making — will soon be published with MIT Press. Fairlie and his co-authors at the U.S. Census Bureau created a new dataset to track the universe of startups in the country — the Comprehensive Startup Panel, or CSP.

“We find that startups, on average, create fewer jobs and have lower survival rates than previously documented,” Fairlie said.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has determined the direction of some of his research, which has had substantial academic and policy influence.

“At the start of the pandemic I realized that, from all the work that I had done in the past, I was in a good position to compile and analyze data on the first impacts of COVID-19 on racial and gender inequality in business ownership, unemployment and work effort,” he said.

As the pandemic progressed, Fairlie said he also became interested in the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), examining whether PPP funds were distributed proportionately to communities of color and finding delays in equitable distribution.

Fairlie said he recently has been routinely contacted by both the U.S. President’s Office and Vice President’s Office for an update on his research findings amid the pandemic’s continued impact on racial inequality in entrepreneurship.

“My latest research that goes through December 2022 shows promising improvement in the number of Black, Latinx and Asian business owners,” he said. “For all three groups, business owner levels are higher now than where they were at before the pandemic started. In contrast, the number of white business owners is down from pre-pandemic levels.”

Fairlie’s award-winning research and efforts to inform policymakers in California have also garnered recognition. He has provided testimony before the California State Legislature on several occasions. A joint resolution from the State Assembly and State Senate commended his “innumerable achievements and meritorious service to the State of California and beyond.”

On the national stage, Fairlie has testified before the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Department of the Treasury. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Academies and Russell Sage Foundation, as well as numerous government agencies and foundations. Most recently, his work was cited in the 2023 edition of the “Economic Report of the President.”

Fairlie is regularly interviewed by print and online media about economic, education, small business, inequality and policy issues.

Fairlie’s scholarly work will continue when he takes his new post this summer.

“Luskin is an amazing place with so much timely and important research going on. I look forward to contributing to those efforts as part of the team,” he said. “I am also looking forward to working at one of best and most exciting universities in the world.”

Shining a Light on Hidden Corners of Environmental Injustice Catherine Coleman Flowers fights for the health and dignity of rural communities where water and sanitation systems are failing

By Mary Braswell

Catherine Coleman Flowers calls it “America’s dirty secret” — the lack of decent sanitation systems in many rural communities where residents must live alongside their own sewage.

It’s a public health calamity that takes the highest toll on poor people of color, and Flowers has made it her life’s calling to shed light on these appalling conditions found in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Her work, which began in Lowndes County, Alabama, where she grew up, has now become a national movement with echoes around the world, vaulting her into the top tiers of environmental advocacy and U.S. policymaking. Flowers shared the triumphs and frustrations of her journey, and the work yet to be done, with a UCLA audience as part of the Meyer and Renee Luskin Lecture Series on April 27.

“Catherine has found that the problems of inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure reach across rural America, including California, and these problems … are tied deeply to systems of racial and class oppression,” said Megan Mullin, professor of public policy and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, as she introduced Flowers to a packed room at the university’s Kerckhoff Hall.

In addition to founding the nonprofit Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, Flowers has received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and serves as vice chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. A week before her Luskin Lecture, she introduced President Joe Biden as he signed an executive order making environmental equity a priority of federal agencies.

Flowers works with policymakers, researchers and advocates around the country, earning her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2023. But she told the UCLA audience, “I’m better being out in the community because that’s where my strength is, to help people tell their stories when they wouldn’t be listened to otherwise. …

“Who wants to talk about sewage coming back into your home? Most people won’t do that,” she said. “But now we have to because we don’t have a choice.”

‘Is it possible that there could be diseases in the United States that American doctors are not trained to look for? Because we have not even acknowledged that we have a problem of sanitation in this country.’

Flowers told of impoverished rural communities where residents are by law responsible for disposing of their sewage. Some people own septic tanks that have fallen into disrepair, pushing waste back into sinks and bathtubs. Others simply cannot afford the systems and instead pipe their sewage underground or onto nearby land.

At times, those with substandard waste systems are hit with fines or imprisonment in a system that reveals the interplay of economic, health and criminal justice inequities.

The sanitation emergency has been made more acute by climate change, with its flooded coasts and rising water tables, Flowers said. And the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted public health risks that threaten rural and urban areas alike.

“One of the things that COVID has taught us is that we have to deal with these issues or the next disease is not going to come from China and a wet market, it’s going to come from somebody’s wet backyard that has sewage on the ground,” she said.

Flowers told of a rash she developed after being bitten by mosquitos near a pool of untreated sewage. Her doctor and a dermatologist could find no cause and offer no relief, so she contacted an infectious disease expert.

“Is it possible that there could be diseases in the United States that American doctors are not trained to look for?” she asked him. “Because we have not even acknowledged that we have a problem of sanitation in this country.”

The experience led Flowers to partner with researchers on a peer-reviewed study of the health of Lowndes County residents. It revealed that a third of those tested had been infected by hookworm, an intestinal parasite associated with poor sanitation and thought to have been eradicated in the U.S. decades earlier. The findings were covered by media around the world, and the United Nations special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights came to Alabama to investigate.

“The people of Lowndes County, by speaking up and telling the truth, have given a lot of other people permission to talk about these problems as well,” Flowers said.

Her Luskin Lecture was followed by a dialogue with Mullin and Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, who shared both his professional expertise and lived experience as a native of the rural Eastern Coachella Valley.

The panel spoke about the key role of research and data in shaping equitable policies, and the new technologies that could lead to solutions in places where water and sanitation infrastructure is failing.

Esquivel described the state’s decision to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars in water bill debt that built up during the pandemic in low-income households. The stakes were too high to ignore, he said.

“That lack of access to sanitation and drinking water could actually create a system where you could lose your house, you could lose your kids if your water is shut off,” Esquivel said. “There are huge consequences for those at the bottom of the system.”

Flowers said her organization is speaking with NASA engineers to determine whether technologies used to create waste management systems in space could inspire new innovations on the ground.

“We decided that we’re not going to just wait on someone to change policy. We’re going to reengineer the septic tank. And we’re looking to collaborate,” she told the UCLA audience.

“We need your ideas. Because this is not just an Alabama problem. It’s a California problem too.”

View photos from the lecture on Flickr.

 

Coleman Flowers Luskin Lecture

Gerry Laviña, Paying It Forward and Passing the Torch ‘You cannot do this work alone,’ says longtime field education faculty leader as he prepares to retire after four decades at UCLA

By Stan Paul

For Gerry Laviña, the 75th anniversary of UCLA Social Welfare is something to celebrate, but it’s also a bittersweet moment — the Luskin School’s longtime field education director is retiring at the end of the academic year.

“I was here for the 50th anniversary, which was really significant, and now I’m going to end at the 75th. I’ve seen lots of changes, lots of positive changes in our program,” said Laviña, who has worked at the Luskin School for more than three decades.

His 40-plus-year affiliation with UCLA, which began as an undergraduate student, is a story of personal connection as well as collective achievement — a group effort, he said, that extends far beyond the School and into the community.

“I can happily — and realistically — say there’s been a lot of positive changes in our program due to the hard work of a lot of us who’ve been committed to making it a better place,” he said.

Making Connections

Before Laviña was a master’s student in social welfare in 1986, he was already reaching out to faculty and making connections with the School.

“I made it a point because I was in these large [undergraduate] classes and I wanted to get to know faculty as much as I could. … I just wanted to know why they chose social work. And it was interesting to me. I never imagined it would lead to a position here.”

UCLA Social Welfare instructors and field education faculty became mentors and colleagues to Laviña, continuing after he got his MSW in 1988 and went to work in the community. Among these, Laviña noted, were faculty alumni Joe Nunn and Wanda Ballenger, as well as field education faculty members Jane Kurohara and lecturer Rebecca Refuerzo.

“Rosina Becerra, who became my mentor right before I became director of field education, was a really great mentor to me later in my career,” he said.  “We can always use mentors at any point in our career.”

During his time as a social worker at the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services in Culver City, Ballenger was the field liaison.  “She would say, ‘I’m coming by to say hi,’” Laviña explained, and they stayed connected that way during the time when he was a secondary field instructor for some of the UCLA students at Didi Hirsch.

‘My “life lessons,” I called them — my truths — [are] the importance of mentorship, of finding, establishing and maintaining relationships.’

In 1993, Laviña was hired into the field education faculty himself by UCLA Social Welfare. It was a great match.

Nunn also was a longtime director of field education, and he has fond memories of his association with Laviña. When email came into popular use decades ago, Nunn said it was Laviña who sent him his very first email.

“I was fortunate to work with some really good people in the field, and some of them have gone on to do other things,” he said. “It’s been good to see Gerry as the director.”

Now it’s his former student, mentee and colleague who is retiring and passing the torch to someone else, as Nunn did to Laviña.

“You know you’re getting older when the person you hired is retiring,” joked the professor emeritus of Social Welfare. “Gerry was one of the best hires I made while I was there.”

Laviña’s roles and recognitions have included being faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Diversity, Disparities and Difference Initiative (D3) and garnering accolades and awards over his career. This year, he is being honored as UCLA Luskin Social Welfare’s Alumnus of the Year. But, for Laviña, the payoff has always had a forward trajectory.

Paying It Forward

Laviña said Didi Hirsh has long served as a vital training center for social workers and interns.

“Because of that, I got to work with interns from UCLA and other schools and disciplines, and I was constantly asked to present and supervise and teach at Didi Hirsch,” he said.

When Refuerzo was still teaching at UCLA, she would ask Laviña to lecture in her classes. Despite not being keen on public speaking at first, Laviña quickly discovered that he enjoyed mentoring students and that they found value in what he had to say.

“It’s always been the students — what our parents taught us about always giving back — and what my mentors had really given me and pushed me to do,” he said. “Even when I felt I wasn’t ready, they pushed me into other roles. And I honored them by paying it forward in the work I do with students.”

Paying it forward remains a significant part of his teaching and mentoring.

“One of the things I did at orientations this year for first- and second-year students is I gave them — my ‘life lessons,’ I called them — my truths,”  Laviña said. “The importance of mentorship, of finding, establishing and maintaining relationships.”

Forging connections is a big part of what social workers do, he said, and he’s always tried to connect students with jobs and internships. “That’s one thing that I feel I’ve done and been pretty successful at for 30 years — one of the things I hope is remembered,” he said.

UCLA students are smart and capable, and this has led to strong relationships building up over time with participating agencies.

“They are committed to taking our students and to working with us, whether the student is excelling or whether the student is having difficulties,” Laviña said. “One of the things that I learned as an MSW student from the first year and throughout my career … you cannot do this work alone.”

Luskin School Reaches Top 10 Among Public Affairs Schools Nationwide Subcategory rankings include seventh in urban policy and ninth in social policy

By Stan Paul

UCLA Luskin has achieved Top 10 recognition among public affairs graduate schools in the nation based on newly released U.S. News & World Report ratings.

The School is in good company, sharing the spot with prestigious programs including Princeton, NYU, Georgetown and the University of Texas, Austin.

“I am very proud of our School’s rapid and continuing rise in the rankings, reaching now the Top 10 Public Affairs Schools in the U.S.,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “The recent rankings represent only one indication of the excellence that characterizes the Luskin School and its faculty, staff and students.”

In congratulating the School, Gary Segura, who served as dean from 2017 until the end of 2022, said that it is particularly gratifying that the academic community is taking notice.

“The improvement in our rankings is a reflection of the efforts of faculty and staff across the School and the unique constellation of expertise here at UCLA Luskin,” Segura said.

Mark Peterson, interim chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, also pointed out that the achievement is particularly notable for the Luskin School, which is significantly younger — and smaller — than the schools that ranked higher and thus have larger faculties and longer histories from which to develop reputations.

“With our national standing, one might say that we are the proverbial little engine that could,” Peterson said.

Among public institutions, UCLA Luskin was among the top eight nationwide, second among public colleges and universities in California, and third among all public affairs programs in the state. UCLA Luskin Urban Planning is ranked No. 1 in North America by Planetizen, a planning and development network based in Los Angeles that is the only entity that ranks urban planning programs.

The School — with graduate departments in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning, and a Public Affairs undergraduate program — also received high marks from U.S. News & World Report for subcategories that include urban policy (No. 7), social policy (No. 9), environmental policy and management (No. 14) and public policy analysis (No. 14).

The latest rankings of public affairs programs, released in May 2023, are based on peer assessment survey results from fall 2022 and early 2023, according to U.S. News & World Report, which surveyed deans, directors and department chairs representing 269 master’s programs in public affairs and administration.

The lists of all the schools, all the individuals surveyed and all the names of the specialty areas evaluated were provided to the news organization by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, known as NASPAA, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

See the full list of the 2023 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools.

New Roadmap for 1st Comprehensive Assessment of U.S. Drinking Water Quality UCLA Luskin researchers and Rural Community Assistance Partnership Incorporated plan to implement the recommendations over five years

By Mara Elana Burstein

Today, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Rural Community Assistance Partnership Incorporated released a comprehensive roadmap for what the first national assessment of drinking water quality compliance can and should look like in the next decade.

The nation’s roughly 50,000 regulated community water systems face aging infrastructure and underinvestment that cause challenges in providing safe drinking water — but no one has assessed the full extent of the problem. Current national data on water quality can be underreported, inconsistent and difficult to extract for analysis.

The new report outlines how to identify the specific problems systems face, the solutions and which communities should receive priority investments. The four phases of a full compliance assessment are detailed in the report as follows:

  1. Develop a transparent, accessible and consistent set of national drinking water quality data to help agencies identify which water systems are regularly out of compliance.
  2. Evaluate feasible solutions and select the best options.
  3. Estimate the upfront and ongoing costs.
  4. Improve access to no-cost technical assistance to help disadvantaged communities receive funding.

Despite the availability of new government funding, these steps will be challenging to achieve, as each one is complicated and multifaceted.

“Our recommendations, while layered and complex, are feasible to incorporate over the next decade with a continued commitment to and funding for community water systems across the country,” said Gregory Pierce, co-director of the Luskin Center for Innovation.

This report builds on the first comprehensive analysis from the Luskin Center for Innovation on what is needed to provide safe drinking water throughout California. It identifies where water systems are out of compliance, proposes solutions and estimates how much it would cost to implement those solutions.

“The work to advance the human right to water is too important to limit to just one state. Countless communities do not have access to safe, affordable drinking water. We need a nationwide assessment,” said Pierce, who also directs the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at UCLA.

States and the federal government are making unprecedented investments in water infrastructure and environmental justice, particularly after the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021. Now there is a historic opportunity to make water infrastructure improvements and work toward ensuring safe drinking water for all.

View the full report, made possible by financial support from the Water Foundation

Learn more about the latest water research by the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab

 

‘We’re Beginning the Work of Rewriting the Next Chapter of Los Angeles History’ Top officials join scholars and advocates to tackle the region's most pressing problems at the fifth annual UCLA Luskin Summit

By Mary Braswell

A search for solutions to Southern California’s most urgent problems brought top researchers together with government and civic leaders at the fifth annual UCLA Luskin Summit.

Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian gave the keynote address at the April 19 gathering, attended by more than 200 scholars, students and community members seeking to learn more about how the region is responding to homelessness, climate change, racial disparities, voting rights violations and more.

Krekorian spoke about the state of governance at L.A. City Hall, acknowledging that citizens’ faith has been shaken by corruption cases, politicized redistricting and the release of a racist recording that led to high-profile resignations. But he added that the upheaval has opened the door to a period of change.

“The kind of city hall that the people of Los Angeles deserve [is] a city hall that’s more ethical, more transparent, more trustworthy, more urgent, more collaborative and hopefully much more effective,” Krekorian said.

He laid out a roadmap that includes a top-to-bottom charter review that could add more seats on the City Council, change who decides land-use issues to reduce incentives for corruption, and take the power of setting district boundaries away from elected officials.

“Together, we’re turning the page on a very dark time and we’re beginning the work of rewriting the next chapter of Los Angeles history,” Krekorian said.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who oversees the annual UCLA Quality of Life Index, reports on this year’s findings. Photo by Les Dunseith

The Luskin Summit, held in person at the UCLA Faculty Club after three years of remote and hybrid convenings, continued its tradition of spotlighting the UCLA Quality of Life Index (QLI), a wide-ranging survey of Los Angeles County residents.

This year’s QLI revealed deep dissatisfaction with many aspects of life in L.A., a sign of the region’s slow emergence from the dual shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring inflation, said Zev Yaroslavsky, who oversees the survey as director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin.

In conversation with ABC7 News reporter Josh Haskell, the emcee of this year’s Luskin Summit, Yaroslavsky said the high cost of housing continues to sow anxiety, with 28% of respondents saying they worry about losing their home and becoming homeless as a result.

“Now, let me put this in more stark terms than just percentages,” Yaroslavsky said. “The county’s population is a little over 10 million people, so 28% means that there are 2.8 million people in this county who are going to bed every night worried about whether they’re going to lose their home. Think about it that way. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of stress.”

The region’s housing emergency also took center stage at a plenary session that illustrated a hallmark of the Luskin Summit: the participation of key elected and appointed officials in a position to turn social science research into policies for change.

Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of California’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, moderated the dialogue with L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, L.A. City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson and the city’s chief of housing and homelessness solutions, Mercedes Márquez.

The conversation emphasized a new push to coordinate efforts by a multitude of agencies to relieve California’s housing emergency.

“A challenge of this magnitude requires all levels of government to work together, and that’s exactly what we have been doing over the last two years, working very closely with our federal partners, working very closely across the state agency and department, and working in a unified and coordinated manner with local cities, counties, continuums of care and folks on the ground that are doing this work every single day,” said Castro Ramírez, a UCLA Luskin Urban Planning alumna who oversees 11 state departments and boards.

With the end of pandemic-era eviction moratoriums, Horvath said her office is working with cities to implement new protections for both renters and mom-and-pop landlords, with the aim of keeping residents in their homes.

“We have no time to waste,” she said. “We’re not going to wait until every detail is perfect. People are dying on our streets and we have to do something.”

The panelists credited newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for jumpstarting efforts to shelter the homeless, including the appointment of Márquez to cut the red tape that has delayed the construction and acquisition of desperately needed housing.

“We have identified 360 projects that are 100% affordable. That’s over 8,000 units that are now on a fast track,” Márquez said, adding that her team is also reviewing government-owned land including Metropolitan Transit Authority car lots that could be converted to residential development.

Harris-Dawson, whose district includes South Los Angeles, said housing strategies must be guided by a sense of equity to prevent poverty from becoming concentrated in pockets of the city.

“The commitment has to be both to build and build fast, but also to build where it’s difficult to build,” he said. That includes parts of the city where the prevailing attitude is “ ‘send all the poor people over there, build housing over there and build it as dense as you need to, but keep them over there’ — as if poverty is a communicable disease and living near it damages your quality of life somehow.”

The Summit also featured a series of breakout sessions where scholars, officials and advocates zeroed in on critical issues. They included representatives from UCLA Luskin research centers, including the Luskin Center for Innovation and its Human Rights to Water Solutions Lab, the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies  and the UCLA Voting Rights Project. The sessions explored:

  • vehicular homelessness, the unique circumstances of those who must shelter in their cars;
  • persistent disparities based on race and ethnicity in the mortgage industry;
  • how to build popular support and political momentum for investments in climate infrastructure;
  • whether California’s plan to transition to zero-emission vehicles is sufficient to meet climate goals;
  • the uncertain future of voting rights pending decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • and the activation of far-reaching programs to bolster the region’s water supply.

Following the Summit, several participants gathered for a lunch presentation on equity and clean energy that included UCLA experts and representatives from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the lead sponsor of this year’s Luskin Summit. Other sponsors include Bank of America, the Weingart Foundation, David Bohnett Foundation, California Community Foundation and California Wellness Foundation. The media partner is ABC7.

View photos from the 2023 UCLA Luskin Summit on Flickr.

Luskin Summit 2023

In Memoriam: Margaret I. FitzSimmons, Former UCLA Urban Planning Scholar She was a respected UC geographer and professor emerita at UC Santa Cruz who focused on water and the environment in California

By Stan Paul

Margaret I. FitzSimmons, former UCLA Urban Planning faculty member and professor emerita at UC Santa Cruz, died April 3, 2023, in Santa Cruz surrounded by family and friends. She was 76.

FitzSimmons was an award-winning scholar known to colleagues and students at UCLA and UCSC for her outstanding research, teaching and mentorship.

In 1980, she was appointed assistant professor in urban planning at a time when the program was part of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. At UCLA, she was a leader in founding the Environmental Analysis and Policy (EAP) concentration within the urban planning graduate degree program.

FitzSimmons joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz in 1994, retiring in 2015 from the Environmental Studies Department of UC Santa Cruz’s Rachel Carson College.

She was born in Berkeley in 1947, the daughter of Edward and Elizabeth (Sauer) FitzSimmons. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford University in 1969, then turned to geography for her graduate work. She completed a master’s degree at California State University Northridge in 1975 and a Ph.D. at UCLA in 1983.

Her connection to geography at the University of California goes back to the field’s early days in the golden state. Carl Sauer, her grandfather, was an eminent scholar and longtime head of UC Berkeley’s geography department from 1923 to 1954 — the “Sauer years,” according to UC Berkeley Geography, and it later became known as the “Berkeley School.” He is described in the institution’s history as one of “the century’s most important geographers.”

FitzSimmons would go on to make her own name in the field.

As a doctoral student, she examined the interaction of nature, labor and capital in the agricultural industrialization of California’s Salinas Valley, as well as the region’s political ecologies and environmental history.  She was later recognized by the American Association of Geographers (AAG) for the best paper based on a dissertation. Her work also received attention in prestigious publications such as the journal Economic Geography.

Her 1989 article, “The Matter of Nature,” published in the journal Antipode, has been widely cited.

Collaboration with colleagues also was a hallmark of FitzSimmons’ work and career.

Former UCLA Urban Planning colleague Robert Gottlieb, professor of urban and environmental policy, emeritus, at Occidental College, co-wrote with FitzSimmons “Thirst for Growth: Water Agencies as Hidden Government in California,” which was published in 1991.

In writing the book, FitzSimmons and Gottlieb focused on issues of public accountability and water policy innovation, specifically in California. The authors created case studies based on their research of a number of water agencies throughout Southern California.

Their book received enthusiastic praise. One reviewer described the publication as “a luminescent addition to the rapidly growing literature on the history of water policy and management.” The Journal of the American Planning Association credited the book in a review with making “an excellent case for recognizing the role of local water agencies as de facto land use planners due to the social nature of their water policy choices.”

Gottlieb said, “It was a wonderful time we had together working, both the book and the articles we wrote together and in the work we did in helping establish the environmental program.” Despite being “quite different, in terms of background and training,” he said, “we just ended up being wonderfully complementary to each other.”

Gottlieb, who came from a journalism background, said, “I always considered Margaret to be kind of a pure academic in the sense of she was so alive with ideas. And so connected to people she was engaging with, whether they were fellow faculty, staff or students.”

Gottlieb also noted her work with students. “One of the quite wonderful things about Margaret was her role as mentor and nurturer and connector — the interaction she had with students.”

He recalled when FitzSimmons’ former Ph.D. students organized a gathering and dinner at the 2016 AAG annual conference as a tribute to their mentor.

“That gathering was just a wonderful example of what people had to say that really stuck in my mind, of what a wonderful way to honor Margaret.”

When UCLA Urban Planning alumna Laura Pulido Ph.D. ’91 was contemplating where to do her doctoral studies, FitzSimmons was suggested to her as an ideal advisor. Pulido said that although she wanted to stay in geography — and was hesitant at first to apply to UCLA Urban Planning — once she met FitzSimmons, she knew it was the right decision.

“Going to UCLA and studying with Margaret was a transformative experience for me. She was a great source of knowledge, wisdom, generosity and love — I am deeply thankful for Margaret’s role in my life,” said Pulido, now professor of indigenous, race and ethnic studies and geography at the University of Oregon.

Pulido added that at that time there were no geographers working in Chicana/o/x studies and very few planners.

“Margaret and I shared deep interests in the environment, agriculture and Mexican labor. Most importantly, she offered me a supportive environment to develop my research in Chicana/o/x studies, race and social movements,” Pulido said.

Her work and rapport with students — and dedicated support of them — did not go unnoticed at UCLA.

In 1991, FitzSimmons received UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award, in part for her work in developing the Environmental Analysis and Policy concentration, where she “exceeded all expectations,” according to the award citation.

“Margaret had an important role in infusing planning with an environmental sensibility, which had largely been lost from the ’50s to the ’80s when planning became enchanted with suburbs and freeways,” said UCLA Urban Planning colleague Susanna Hecht. “She pointed to a future in which environmental concerns would have to move more centrally into the profession, as it was moving dramatically into American and global politics.”

Hecht said FitzSimmons’ work aligned with her own interest in large-scale politics and transformation.

“Her concerns were often in advance of the times, but harkened to a more holistic type of understanding,” Hecht said. “She rejected the kind of reductionism that later became popular in policy in planning, and insisted always on the broader view.”

After FitzSimmons joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz, she remained engaged in questions of sustainability in agricultural production, as well as in the complexity of California’s ecological systems, Hecht said. “This is a complex legacy, but one in which she played a vital, if perhaps unrecognized, role.”

For former UCLA colleague Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture, urbanism and American studies emerita at Yale, FitzSimmons’ work extends far beyond UCLA and the UC system. “She will be missed by her colleagues and students in the United States and around the world.”

No formal memorial services have yet been announced. More information is available via the family obituary and tribute wall online.