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Graduate Students and Mentors Connect at Senior Fellows Breakfast

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UCLA Luskin graduate students connected with prominent community, government and business leaders at the 2022 Senior Fellows Breakfast at the UCLA Faculty Club. As the Luskin School’s premier mentoring and networking initiative, the Senior Fellows Program matches master’s students in public policy, social welfare and urban planning with mentors who offer career guidance and leadership development. During the Oct. 26 breakfast, two speakers offered advice on how to make the most of the opportunity: mentor Daniel Lee MSW ’15, mayor of Culver City, and MPP student Alicia Nyein, who is entering her second year in the program. Guests also viewed a video remembering VC Powe, a UCLA Luskin staff member and champion of the Senior Fellows Program for many years until her death in 2020. Mentors and their students then had an opportunity to become better acquainted as they embarked on a yearlong partnership focused on engagement in the public service arena.

View photos from the event

 

Senior Fellows Breakfast 2022

Schwarz Selected as NSF Program Director

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Kirsten Schwarz, associate professor of urban planning, has been named a program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Environmental Biology. In the new role, she will help select which research projects are supported by the foundation’s $8.8 billion budget. Schwarz, one of only three scientists selected by the NSF’s environmental biology division from a nationwide pool of applicants, “has already made significant contributions to the program through her scientific expertise in urban ecology,” said Kendra McLauchlan, the program’s director. Schwarz’s scholarship at UCLA focuses on environmental hazards and amenities in cities, ranging from lead contamination in soil to how shade can improve health by reducing the extreme effects of heat. Her new responsibilities include interacting with potential principal investigators, forming and facilitating merit review panels, and recommending funding decisions. “I’m grateful for the support that NSF has provided to my career, and I’m especially looking forward to connecting new researchers with the programs that can support and expand their work,” Schwarz said. “Most of all, I’m looking forward to learning from new colleagues and playing a small part in supporting great science with the broadest possible impacts.” Schwarz has a joint appointment in the environmental health sciences department of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and is a faculty affiliate at the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity. She has taught at UCLA since 2020.

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UC-Wide Initiative to Increase Voter Participation

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Freedom Summer, an initiative founded by UCLA urban planning and Chicano studies professor Veronica Terriquez in 2018, has spread to a UC-wide movement to help students from communities with low voting rates participate in voter outreach. The program consists of over 100 students from all nine UC undergraduate campuses as well as a few community colleges. “Seven out of 10 young people in California are young people of color,” Terriquez said. “Engaging them is an important part of building an electorate that effectively represents the people of the state.” Students in the program have been able to effect change within their communities by increasing voter participation and reducing apathy. Terriquez said youth of color tend to mobilize less than other groups, in part because high school students from low-income communities do not receive much education about civic engagement and the importance of voting. They are also less likely to be reached out to by voting organizations and political campaigns. This fuels a continual cycle of people from these communities not voting because they were never contacted. Freedom Summer is continuing to make efforts to increase voter turnout, especially by engaging students from underserved groups because they feel a stronger connection with their communities and are able to make a direct impact on local legislation. It is estimated that Freedom Summer has registered or pre-registered over 5,000 new voters this year alone.

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Luskin Scholars Join UCLA’s New Initiative to Study Hate

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UCLA is launching the Initiative to Study Hate, an ambitious social impact project that brings together a broad consortium of scholars to understand and ultimately mitigate hate in its multiple forms. Supported by a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor, researchers including UCLA Luskin scholars will undertake 23 projects this year, the first of a three-year pilot program. Through his work with the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, Aaron Panofsky, professor of public policy and sociology, will map the ways white nationalist groups selectively use and reject science to perpetuate themes of otherization and dehumanization online. Researchers from UCLA Luskin Social Welfare will participate in three projects: Doctoral student Emily Maurin-Waters and associate professor Laura Wray-Lake will examine prejudicial violence against LGBTQ youth and the impact of whether it is framed as bullying or a hate crime. Doctoral student Taylor Reed will lead a team including Sara Wilf and Victoria Millet MSW ’22 to study racism and discrimination within organizing spaces, as experienced by Black and Latinx individuals taking part in youth gun violence prevention movements. And assistant professor Brian Keum and doctoral student Michele Wong will join a team from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health that will explore the spillover effect on the mental health of Asian Americans in the wake of the mass killing of spa workers in Atlanta, Georgia. From Urban Planning, master’s student Eliza Franklin Leggett will disrupt the built environment in an Alabama town with a history of white supremacy by inserting historical markers documenting hidden Black histories.

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An Active Example of Advocacy in West Los Angeles

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More than 200 people celebrated the architectural and cultural significance of the West Los Angeles Civic Center and Courthouse on Sunday, Oct. 2, during a public space activation. The event brought together UCLA architecture and urban planning students, public space advocacy organizations, and longtime users of the space in the third and final event organized by UCLA’s (Un)Common Public Space Group. Participants gathered to make use of the space and envision future uses of the bandshell, ledges and pathways, constructing skate obstacles and devising other amenities, learning about the history of the space, and enjoying music and food. The event encouraged dialogue among policymakers, developers and the public to safeguard community amenities. It also connected UCLA-based public space research with the city’s redevelopment plans for the space and engaged with the local knowledge and perspectives of advocacy organizations near the courthouse. Keegan Guizard from College Skateboarding and Alec Beck from the Skatepark Project hosted skateboard contests, highlighting the area’s history of skateboarding activism. The L.A. Conservancy informed participants about the historical importance of mid-century modern architecture, and students constructed future amenities like modular street furniture and colorful shade structures. Over 140 signatures were gathered for public petitions and comments to preserve community amenities and obstacles in the space’s future redevelopment. The (Un)Common Public Space Group activates public space with and for underrepresented and underserved communities in pursuit of spatial justice. The series was supported by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. — Chris Giamarino 

image shows event organizers facing cameraA skateboarder launches off a DIY ramp over a shopping cart. Photo by Adam Lubitz
image shows event organizers facing camera

View additional photos and videos in a Google photo album

UCLA Research Guides California Reparations Task Force

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Professor Michael Stoll and a team of UCLA Luskin graduate students appeared before the California Reparations Task Force to present research that will guide deliberations on how to compensate Black residents for generations of discrimination arising from the country’s legacy of slavery. At the Sept. 23 public meeting at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, the researchers shared their analysis of personal testimonies, interviews and survey responses collected from January through August of this year — all aimed at gathering perspectives about the Black experience from individuals across the state. The team found widespread support for financial reparations to Black Californians who can establish lineage to enslaved ancestors, as well as for programs that provide non-cash support, such as small business assistance, tax exemptions and land grants. Working under the task force’s expedited timeline, the team transcribed, codified and analyzed an enormous amount of data in less than four weeks, a fraction of the time a project of this magnitude would typically require. The task force, made of up state legislators and other distinguished leaders, will utilize the findings as they develop recommendations regarding how to atone for past harms suffered by Black Californians. Stoll, a professor of public policy and urban planning, is director of the Black Policy Project housed at the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. The graduate student researchers working on the project include Jendalyn Coulter, who is pursuing a joint MSW/MPP degree; Chinyere Nwonye, a second-year MPP student; and Elliot Woods, MPP student and chair of the Luskin Black Caucus.

 

Making Connections at UCLA Luskin

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The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs kicked off the 2022-23 academic year with a series of opportunities to connect with students, alumni, faculty and staff. Welcome Week included a graduate student orientation that brought public policy, social welfare and urban planning students together and an undergraduate open house that shared information about the public affairs major during an outdoor luncheon. And on Sept. 22, the 11th annual UCLA Luskin Block Party drew a record crowd, including the School’s benefactors, Meyer and Renee Luskin.

View UCLA Luskin photo galleries from:

Graduate Student Orientation

Undergraduate Open House

11th Annual UCLA Luskin Block Party

Photo booth images from Block Party

Rover images from Block Party

Public affairs majors, pre-majors, prospective majors and minors learn about the program during an open house. Photo by Mary Braswell
Decorative plastic cups emblazoned with "Block Party" Crowd of students under trees

Research Finds Homeless Students Understudied and Overlooked

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Despite increasing recognition as a national problem, homeless students remain an understudied and overlooked population that endures multiple challenges, as do the schools and districts that serve them, according to a new report co-authored by UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor. The comparative case study, published online in the Journal of Community Psychology, explored the identification, service provision and school experience of homeless students in high- and low-socioeconomic districts. Astor and his colleagues compared two California school districts and their four elementary and middle schools. They found that despite differences in the socioeconomic context, both districts were under-identifying homeless students. “Both districts were underserving and lacking awareness of homeless students that were not identified,” they wrote. However, they found that the low-socioeconomic district had far greater poverty awareness than the high-socioeconomic district and, subsequently, an existing organizational structure to support identified homeless students. “Poverty awareness and districts’ organizational structure are important contextual factors to consider in designing local and tailored interventions and services for homeless students,” they noted. Schools play a major role for homeless students and may be the last social institution with which they interact before disengaging from all social institutions. “Meeting the substantial challenges involved in building schools and districts that support homeless students will require district policies and practices that explicitly address issues of poverty, homelessness and injustice,” they conclude. “Poverty awareness and districts’ organizational structure are important contextual factors to consider in designing local and tailored interventions and services for homeless students.”

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Akee Is Among Equitable Growth Award Recipients

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Randall Akee, associate professor of public policy, is among those sharing this year’s research grants totaling more than $1 million from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. The funding is for research relating to inequality’s impact on economic growth and stability. A study of “deaths of despair” among Native Americans, particularly women and girls, will be conducted by three academic researchers and Akee, who is chair of the American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA. In their funding proposal, the researchers said they plan to investigate why such deaths are proportionately higher for Native Americans than among other ethnic groups in the United States. Researchers will examine whether the known predictors of a death of despair for white constituents, especially men — joblessness, high rates of unemployment — are different than those for Native American women and girls. The study will also focus on the oil fracking industry and whether fracking in proximity to Native American lands induces more human trafficking activity. This, in turn, might also induce coping behaviors such as increased alcohol and substance use that could lead to higher rates of suicides among Native American women and girls, according to the research proposal. Equitable Growth has seeded more than $8.8 million to nearly 350 scholars through its competitive grants program since its founding in 2013. According to the organization’s news release, this year’s 42 grantees include economists and social scientists who currently serve as faculty or are postdoctoral scholars and Ph.D. students at U.S. colleges and universities, as well as scholars from government research agencies.