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Undergrads Gather to ‘Chat With the Chair’

The UCLA Luskin Undergraduate Program hosted “Chat With the Chair” on April 19 on the front lawn of the Public Affairs Building. The event gave students the opportunity to speak with the department chair, Meredith Phillips, as well as Luskin counselors and peers while enjoying pastries, coffee and tea. Public affairs majors and minors, pre-majors and students interested in the major were invited to the event, an opportunity for students to have a casual chat with Professor Phillips and reconnect with their peers. Students raised questions about career prospects and graduate school, as well as general inquiries about the major.

Photos by Louis Susunaga


 

Grad Students Make Career Connections at Spring Fair

UCLA Luskin master’s and doctoral students made connections with potential employers at the 2022 Spring Career Fair, held April 19 in UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom. Representatives from business, nonprofits, academia, philanthropy, and government agencies at the city, state and federal levels set up tables to greet the Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning students and share information about available opportunities. Seventeen UCLA Luskin alumni were among the recruiters who came to campus to seek out talented and passionate employees and interns. The 100 students in attendance had prepared for the face-to-face networking opportunities by researching the companies and providing their resumes in advance. “We had a great time and were impressed by the number of students who already knew about our office and came specifically to speak with us,” one recruiter said. The fair was one of several career development and leadership training programs offered by UCLA Luskin Career Services.

View photos from the Career Fair on Flickr.

UCLA Luskin Career Fair, Spring 202


 

Luskin Summit Focuses on Advancing Gender Equality Through Sports

An April 1 Luskin Summit webinar focused on how sport can be used to engage boys and young men alongside girls to advance gender justice. “Sport for development is the use of sports for other outcomes related to education, learning, health, peace and financial empowerment,” said Jeff DeCelles, technical director of curriculum and training of the nonprofit Grassroots Soccer. Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah, director of UCLA’s Global Lab for Research in Action, partnered with Grassroots Soccer to conduct a study across Tanzania with the goal of improving the sexual health of females. In addition to female intervention programs in 150 communities, 50 locales were randomly chosen to also have the Grassroots Soccer intervention for young boys and men. In those locales, girls reported lower rates of intimate partner violence while boys reported improved attitudes about reproductive and sexual health outcomes. In the second half of the webinar, Adelphi University Associate Professor Meredith Whitley and Julia Menefield Lankford, director of operations of Laureus Sport for Good Foundation of America, spoke about sport development for adolescents in the United States. Lankford’s work supports sports development programs and aims to improve the lives of youth and unite communities. “A safe, stable climate that supports adults and young people in developing trusting relationships is critical,” Whitley noted. She highlighted the importance of listening to what participants are sharing about what they like, then designing curriculums that work best for them. The webinar was moderated by Stephen Commins, associate director of Global Public Affairs at UCLA Luskin. Board of Advisors member Stephen Cheung offered a closing statement and call to action.


UCLA Scholars Publish Reports on Future of California Transportation, Housing

UCLA scholars have published two new reports on the future of California, as part of the California 100 initiative. One paper, issued by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, focuses on recommendations for transportation and urban planning. The authors describe policy alternatives around four possible scenarios:

  • Residents will need cars to get around.
  • There will be more city living and lots of traffic.
  • Multiple modes of travel will be available, but car travel remains the primary one.
  • It’s easy to get around without a car.

The second report, produced by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, cityLAB UCLA and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, puts forth policy suggestions based on two interrelated factors: how much (and where) housing is built, and how much planners prioritize social and racial equity. The transportation and housing reports were published in concert with two other California 100 analyses, one on energy and the other on technology. Nine additional reports are expected to be published this spring.

Read more about the UCLA-led California 100 reports.

UCLA Luskin Students Host First In-Person Event at Golden Age Park

Students affiliated with the UCLA (Un)Common Public Space group hosted more than 100 attendees on Feb. 26 to celebrate Golden Age Park, a pocket park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles that incorporates ideas championed by Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. The Saturday afternoon event included food, games and music provided by 45 members of the Heart of Los Angeles’ Intergenerational Orchestra. Five members of a Shakespeare troupe also performed an excerpt from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Gus Wendel MURP ’17, a doctoral student in urban planning at UCLA, said the (Un)Common Public Space group was formed in 2021 as a collective of community members, students, researchers, performers and public space activists with the goal of activating public spaces in different neighborhoods using research, performance and community-based events. Usage of Golden Age Park, which opened in 2019, had been hindered by its relative newness and by the COVID-19 pandemic. A primary purpose of the event was to build local awareness of the park’s presence and to promote its intergenerational appeal. “By creating opportunities for people of all ages to share time, space and experiences, intergenerational public spaces support engagement, learning and understanding across generations,” Wendel said. In addition to students in UCLA Luskin’s urban planning program, organizers and supporters included the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, UCLA cityLAB, the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT) and St. Barnabas Senior Services (SBSS). The UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative provided additional support, as did the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation.

View additional photos on Flickr:

Golden Age Park celebration

 

School Personnel Report Threats, Harassment During Pandemic

Professor Ron Avi Astor and a team from UCLA Luskin Social Welfare contributed to research on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on teachers and other school staff as part of a task force launched by the American Psychological Association. In a report released today, the task force found that approximately one-third of teachers surveyed said they had experienced at least one incident of verbal harassment or threat of violence from students during the pandemic. Almost 50% of the teachers expressed a plan or desire to quit or transfer jobs, according to the report, based on a nationwide survey of 14,966 teachers, administrators, school psychologists, social workers and other pre-K through 12th grade school staff. “This was one of the first studies we know of that looked at how both COVID-19 and issues of school safety impacted all school personnel,” said Astor, who holds a joint appointment with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. “School staff such as bus drivers, janitors, secretaries, yard aides, crossing guards and cafeteria workers are often left out of these large national studies. Their voices are so important and commonly ignored.” The APA task force will present its findings at a congressional briefing today at 2 p.m. EDT,  joined by several national co-sponsoring organizations. The UCLA team that contributed to the findings included Hector Palencia of the Social Welfare field education faculty and doctoral students Laura Liévano-Karim, Natalie Fensterstock, Chaoyue Wu, Kate Watson and Sawyer Hogenkamp. Gordon Capp of CSU Fullerton was also part of the UCLA team. — Joanie Harmon

Read the full story

Read the APA report

Register to view the congressional briefing


 

Wray-Lake Helps Launch Journal’s Series on Racism and Youth

UCLA Luskin scholar Laura Wray-Lake served as co-editor of the March issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence that features 17 papers and four commentaries that address the sweeping impact of racism and other systems of oppression on Black youth. Titled “Black Lives Matter!: Systems of Oppression Affecting Black Youth,” the special issue calls for new ways to combat racism and intersecting oppressions and improve the lives of Black adolescents. In their introduction, Wray-Lake and co-authors Dawn P. Witherspoon of Pennsylvania State University and Linda C. Halgunseth of the University of Connecticut write that the commentaries “provide a historical view and future perspective to contextualize how far we have come and how much farther we need to go in our quest to combat racism and other systems of oppression and improve the lives of Black adolescents.” The issue kicks off a series in which the journal will be focusing on dismantling systems of racism and oppression during adolescence. Wray-Lake, an associate professor of social welfare at UCLA, will also be co-editor for the second and third parts of the series, and she will be lead editor for the fourth, which will appear in the September issue of the journal.


 

Meyer Luskin Shares Insights on Responsible Entrepreneurship

Meyer Luskin, benefactor and namesake of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, spoke to UCLA students about leadership skills and responsible entrepreneurship at a March 3 gathering held in person and via Zoom. Luskin shared stories from a long and varied career in investment advising, oil and gas, rental cars, beauty schools and, ultimately, the recycling of food waste. Scope Industries, the company he has led for more than six decades, turns tons of bakery goods that would otherwise have gone to landfills into food for livestock. “Meyer is a businessman who invented a business, and that’s not common,” UCLA Luskin Dean Gary Segura said at the event. “Meyer had an idea, and his idea was to take something most people threw away and make it into something useful.” Luskin’s talk included stories from his own UCLA education, which was interrupted by a tour of duty during World War II, and his experiences facing anti-Semitism as a young businessman. Luskin advised students embarking on their careers to examine their motivations, acknowledge conflicts of interests and uphold the highest ethics. “You have to be retrospective about yourself,” he said. “You have to take time to think about what you’ve done and where you’re going and who you are and what you want.” He encouraged those blessed with success in business to act responsibly and generously. “The first principle is get good people, pay them well, think about them,” he said. “When you do something that’s right, it comes back and helps you. … It just works that way in a long life.” 

View photos and a video from the event.

A Conversation With Meyer Luskin


 

UCLA Luskin Scholars Receive Fulbright Awards

Two UCLA Luskin Social Welfare faculty members have been named Fulbright awardees by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Professor of Social Welfare Mark S. Kaplan received a Fulbright Specialist Award, which will allow him to complete a project at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain in the Department of Social Sciences. Professor of Social Welfare Ian Holloway received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, which enables American scholars, artists, faculty and professionals to lecture and conduct research abroad for up to a year. Kaplan, now a four-time Fulbright awardee, said the main focus of his project with the Spanish university is to help “design and plan internationalization strategies for their research that maximize the impact of their work.” The Fulbright Specialist Program sends U.S. faculty and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning and related subjects at academic institutions abroad for two to six weeks. Holloway will spend four months as a visiting scholar at Universidad de Los Andes and work in partnership with a community-based organization in Bogotá, Colombia, that serves transgender people engaged in human rights organizing. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build connections between the United States and other countries. The program, which operates in over 160 countries, was established in 1946 and has provided more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.