In Memoriam: Jacqueline Leavitt (1939 – 2015), Professor Emerita of Urban Planning

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UCLA Urban Planning scholar, committed teacher and mentor, and community activist dedicated to social justice passes away following distinguished career.

By Stan Paul

The UCLA Urban Planning Department mourns the loss of Professor Emerita of Urban Planning Jacqueline “Jackie” Leavitt who passed away November 27 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 76.

Professor Leavitt’s research during her decades-long career focused on housing and community development policy, public housing, and the multiple meanings of home, among many other urban and social issues. As a founder of the American Planning Association (APA) Planning and Women Division she is considered a pioneer in research on gender and community development. Additionally, her work brought to light the ways in which low-resourced populations managed to live, work, and survive in cities and regions across the globe.

“I entered urban planning believing in its ability to support social movements through both rigorous research and ethical practice,” she said in a 2008 interview by Progressive Planning Magazine. “In a country where rights are being usurped, and where the government has an ability to demolish public housing…, I still hold to beliefs for social and economic justice, and have tried to develop ways to bring those themes into my classrooms, not as an afterthought but an integral and basic goal.”

“Jackie loved her students, cared for her friends, had passion for her work and community activism. She was as comfortable inspiring her students to change the world, or talking at international gatherings for the rights of the poor, as she was holding the hand of public housing tenants and bringing holiday gifts to their children. We will miss her greatly,” said UCLA Luskin Associate Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris.

An award winning scholar, Professor Leavitt was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study the privatization of rental housing in New Zealand and Los Angeles, and won first place in the “New American House” competition earlier in her career. She studied the impact of privatization on tenants living in public housing and led projects that helped community organizations reverse disinvestment in underprivileged urban areas. Most recently, she worked with UCLA Emeritus Law Professor Gary Blasi to study the working conditions of taxi drivers in Los Angeles, expanding this research to include women taxi drivers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.

Professor Leavitt held both master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where she is recognized as one of the school’s outstanding practitioners and a central figure in the feminist movement within Urban Planning.

She came to UCLA in 1983 as a visiting lecturer after teaching posts in prestigious planning programs at Columbia University, New York University (NYU), Cornell and City University of New York, and taught continuously in the UCLA Urban Planning Department for the last 32 years. Throughout her career, Professor Leavitt was a committed teacher and mentor, serving as faculty director of the Urban Planning Department’s undergraduate Urban and Regional Studies minor and teaching undergraduate courses in Urban Planning and UCLA’s Undergraduate Honors Collegium. Since 1999, she served as the director of the UCLA Urban Planning Department’s Community Scholars Program, a joint program with the UCLA Labor Center (a unit of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, IRLE), bringing labor and community leaders together with urban planning graduate students to conduct applied research projects. Professor Leavitt’s work “embodied her deep commitment to participatory planning, and both brought the university into the community and brought the community into the university,” said Chris Tilly, IRLE Director and Professor of Urban Planning.

The impact of her research and practice was far reaching. She served as a consultant to nonprofit resident groups, the Swedish Council for Building Research, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the New York City Housing Preservation and Development Agency. She also served on the Nickerson Gardens Community Development Corporation, which was formed to assist one of the largest public housing projects in Los Angeles.

“Jackie Leavitt was a fierce and stalwart critic of the systems and forces that marginalized so many. She was strong willed and articulate, and creative and innovative. That combination of fierceness and creativity is how I will remember her. She was one in a million,” said Luskin Interim Dean Lois Takahashi.

“Jackie was a long time Urban Planning colleague whose passionate commitment to social justice touched every aspect of her research and teaching on housing, gender, labor, and community development. She will be greatly missed by many of us,” said Evelyn Blumenberg, Professor and Chair of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning.

Professor Leavitt is survived by her brother Howard Leavitt and his family. A celebration of her life will be held in Los Angeles and New York (locations to be determined), where her ashes will be distributed. The UCLA Department of Urban Planning will hold a gathering in celebration of her life on Sunday, March 6 at UCLA.

ITS Partners with Caltrans to Deliver California Transportation Planning Conference 200 attendees meet in Downtown Los Angeles to discuss the future of transportation planning in California

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The last time Caltrans hosted a statewide transportation planning conference, in 2008, transportation in California was very different. Fastforwarding a short seven years later, California is hosting the first cap-and-trade system in the U.S., all of the state’s regions have Sustainable Communities Strategies linking transportation and land use, and public health at the center of the conversation. These changes, among others, are what bring together over 200 transportation professionals to the 2015 California Transportation Planning Conference hosted in Downtown Los Angeles December 2 through 4.

The conference covers various topics. Wednesday begins with a discussion on how transportation planning must evolve in order to maintain an effective transportation system for everyone. Questions of funding and aging infrastructure are on the agenda, including a discussion of system preservation featuring speakers from the Federal Highway Administration, the City of Los Angeles, Southern California Association of Governments and Caltrans.

“At the conference, transportation stakeholders and decision-makers will exchange ideas and learn about the latest developments in transportation planning from a national, state, and local perspective,” said UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) Associate Director Juan Matute. “We are grateful to have partnerships between research centers like UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and state and local agencies. These are essential opportunities for knowledge transfer.”

Matute will be moderating the session titled “Planning for Accelerating Transportation Change” on Thursday morning. UCLA ITS Director Brian Taylor will present during the Friday morning panel about the future of transportation. Director Taylor is joined by LADOT General Manager and UCLA ITS advisory board member, Seleta Reynolds, as well as Daniel Witt, Manager at Tesla Motors and two notable consultants, Jeffrey Tumlin of Nelson/Nygaard and Alan Clelland of Iteris.

UCLA ITS would like to thank the event co-presenters and sponsors: Caltrans, Southern California Association of Governments, Lyft, SoCalGas, Metro, Green Dot Transportation Solutions and Cambridge Systematics.

For live coverage of the event, follow tweets with the #2015ctpc hashtag.

 

 

Social Welfare professor receives grant to create center in Watts Jorja Leap awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment

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Social Welfare professor Dr. Jorja Leap has been awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment from the California Wellness Foundation to create the UCLA Luskin Watts Center for Nonprofit Management. This funding will support the first phase of a ten‐year initiative designed to respond to a critical need for leadership expansion and support within nonprofit agencies. In response to the UCLA Luskin 2013 report, “Spread Thin: Human Services Organizations in Poor Neighborhoods,” the Center represents an effort to develop leadership, fundraising capacity, policy advocacy and communication technology among the small and struggling nonprofit agencies of Watts.

What differentiates the Center’s approach from similar programs is its unique integration of adapted training, mentoring and resource provision through re‐granting. The Center will offer active, ongoing leadership development, focusing on the use of communication technology, fundraising diversification and strategy, as well as expanding knowledge and skills in policy advocacy.

The Center will pair each nonprofit agency participant with a dedicated UCLA coach‐mentor. The coach‐mentor will provide organizational case management and support, along with reinforcing what is learned through trainings and communicated throughout group sessions. The role of the coach‐mentors will include problem‐solving, consultation on adaptation and application to ensure learnings truly apply both to needs and programming in Watts and within the scope of the work the participant is engaged in, along with general support and accountability. In addition, to foster sustainability, coach‐mentors will be building skills in the first cohort of selected individuals, preparing them to mentor subsequent cohorts composed of the next generation of Watts nonprofit leaders.

The Watts Center for Nonprofit Management will launch in January 2016.

 

My neighborhood: the Friday the 13th Paris Massacres Urban Planning professor Michael Storper’s first-hand account of the Paris attacks

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By Urban Planning professor Michael Storper

The massacres occurred in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, for the most part.  I moved to the 10th in 1990.  At that time, there was a housing shortage in Paris and, desperate to find a place, I took one in a neighborhood I knew nothing about.  It turned out to be a down-and-out, but central part of Paris.  It was a declining area of small artisanal industries in metal-cutting, paper manufacture, and such.  It had a lovely but abandoned 19th century barge canal, known as the Canal St. Martin, running through it.  It had lots of poor people, public housing and drug traffic.  Parisians called it la zone.   Over the years, it gentrified.  Capitalizing on the extraordinary beauty of the canal, with its art nouveau bridges and locks, and some good industrial but also bourgeois architecture, it very slowly attracted young people, hipster families and such.  Cafes opened on the canal, and then the whole area became slowly converted into interesting new boutiques and restaurants and other attractions, driven in part by the rising rents in the nearby Marais and 3rd, just on the other side of the Place de la République.  I have a deep attachment to the neighborhood because I’m not a latecomer, here just for the coolness; I was here when it wasn’t cool and when I often came home at night to semi-hostile youth hanging out in front of my building, playing music, smoking joints, sometimes teasing the residents (especially the women).  We’ve had various rounds of negotiation with them, sometimes their parents, and so on, to resolve these issues, and sometimes there has been police intervention.  With gentrification, most of that is gone, and now it seems almost too clean, a bit boring.

My building has two floors of offices.  On the ground floor is an unemployment office and a center where migrants seeking  political asylum can apply.  The lines that snake in front of the building have changed composition in the past few years, from heavily East Asian to South Asian and of course, Syrian and Iraqi.  I see and, sometimes, speak to these people.  I know the security guard who keeps the line orderly.  The office is closing now, as the application process is being consolidated into another center in another place.

From my living room window, on the 4th floor, I look down on a primary school.  The parents bring the kids promptly at 8:30 am, and the school yard can be seen from my window, filled with raucous happy kids at recreation time.  The population seems to be a balanced mix of people with Asian, African and European heritage.

This area of Paris is now one of the liveliest.  The killers hit this neighborhood in order to target this young France, a world city’s pleasure and freedom zone.  Rather than going after the Champs Elysées or the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, they wanted to get a generation in its territory.

On Friday evening, a friend had organized a get-together in a wine bar in the 1st arrondissement, between Châtelet and Louvre.  On the ground floor is a bar with one table, and then a subterranean wine cellar, where we gathered to drink red wines and – yes – eat cheese and charcuterie.  At about 10 pm my godson called to inform me.  As the evening wore on, we were told not to go out, and there were rumors of attacks spreading, some (falsely it turned out) said to be at Châtelet or Les Halles or City Hall.  We lowered the steel shutters and the two young bartenders poured champagne and then we moved on to Japanese whisky.  At 2, it was decided that we needed more comfort, so the friends who had organized the evening, who lived nearby, invited everyone to their place, about 500 m away.  The other patrons were mostly very young, in their early 20s, and afraid to walk anywhere.  We had to reassure them, as they were shaking.  All of us, about 20 or so, including bartenders and other patrons, ended up at my friends’ apartment, where a large bowl of pasta and more wine and whisky were prepared for a nice 3 am dinner.  Then we waited it out, checking media.

The atmosphere was a strange mix of jolly and other-worldly.  But the camaraderie was really nice.  A dinner of semi-strangers mixed with a group of friends, and different age groups.  Too much was drunk.  As it turned out, that was the pattern for the night, what was called open doors, portes ouvertes, all over the city as we waited it out.

At about 5 am, some people decided to bed down, but some of us wanted to go home.  So, we almost immediately found Ubers. The Ubers and taxi drivers came out en masse, as a public service, as metro lines had been shut down.

The next day, I had an appointment, and decided to keep it, in the Marais.  An eerie normality prevailed.  Quieter than usual, but with a fair number of people quietly shopping.  On the way home, I rode my bicycle first through the Place de la République, and there was a crowd lighting candles at the base of the statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, and the tears were flowing.  From there, I went by the restaurant just across the canal from my place, Le Petit Cambodge, where I have eaten dozens of times and where 15 died.  There, too, a stunned crowd, candles, notes and flowers, and the Mayor, Anne Hidalgo.

Sunday was in some ways worse for most people, as the shock of this new situation set in.  The uncertainties and the gravity of a new form of urban guerilla warfare, organized and planned.

Sunday night, I went to friends’ for a dinner on the rue de la Fontaine au Roi, less than 15 minutes by foot. The city was more deserted than in August.  As I reached the intersection, there it was:  the two cafes and laundromat that had been shot up on Friday night, with 19 deaths. A big crowd, flowers, candles, poems, tears. These friends had whats-apped me Friday night, with Céline telling me that they could hear shots.  That’s one thing for adults, but they have three kids.  What do you tell your kids, who already lived through the January massacre, also in the 11th arrondissement, when your teenage daughter asks:  why do they keep shooting people in our neighborhood?  When Gaspard, who is six, asks: why are all those people crying in the street?

In Memoriam: Edward Soja (1940-2015), Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Edward Soja, UCLA scholar and Urban Planning faculty member, passed away

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By Stan Paul

Edward Soja, longtime UCLA scholar and Urban Planning faculty member, passed away Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015 in Los Angeles at the age of 75.

Dr. Soja was born in New York in 1940. He earned his Ph.D. in Geography from Syracuse University and began his career as a specialist on Africa at Northwestern University. After being recruited to UCLA in 1972, he began focusing his research on urban restructuring in Los Angeles, as well as the critical study of cities and regions. His interests were wide-ranging, including questions of regional development, planning and governance, and the spatiality of social life.

“Ed was a towering figure in the fields of urban planning and the social sciences and a strong force in the Department of Urban Planning for almost 40 years,” said Evelyn Blumenberg, Professor and Chair of Urban Planning. “His insight, wit and leadership will be greatly missed.”

His numerous publications, as writer, editor and collaborator — with fellow UCLA Urban Planning faculty, scholars from across the United States and around the world — include, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996), The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (1996, co-edited with Allen J. Scott), Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000), and Seeking Spatial Justice (2010).

His most recent book, My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanization (2014), covered more than four decades of urban development in Los Angeles as well as other urban regions. In his introduction, Soja wrote of Los Angeles:

“Its iconic imagery provokes exaggeration, fomenting emotionally excessive repulsion as well as unbridled attraction….Further complicating any understanding of the actual place, Los Angeles for the past century has been a fountainhead of imaginative fantasy, emitting a mesmerizing force that obscures reality by eroding the difference between the real and the imagined, fact and fiction.”

“Ed Soja was respected globally for his innovation in conceptualizing ‘the urban’ and his teaching and mentoring of scholars,” said Lois Takahashi, Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “But I will remember him most for his enthusiastic greetings, his incisive humor and his inspiring curiosity. I will miss him terribly.”

During his long and distinguished career as a scholar at UCLA, Dr. Soja also devoted himself to teaching both graduate and undergraduate students and serving as doctoral academic advisor to numerous Ph.D. candidates from the Department of Urban Planning. In addition to courses on regional and international development, he also taught courses in urban political economy and planning theory. He was also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, in The Cities Program, an international center for architects, engineers, city planners, social scientists, community groups, public servants and leaders in the private sector.

Most recently, Dr. Soja received the Vautrin-Lud International Prize for Geography for 2015. This award, often known as the ‘Nobel Prize of Geography’, was announced during the 26th International Festival of Geography. This prize honors the career of a distinguished geographer whose work has been very influential within and beyond the discipline. Unfortunately, Dr. Soja was unable to be present at the event in Saint-Dié, France and could not deliver the customary plenary lecture. Instead, his work was explored in an effective round table discussion between many of his international peers.

“Ed Soja’s passing is a great loss to the Urban Planning department,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Professor of Urban Planning and Associate Dean of the School of Public Affairs. “He was a giant in the field of social sciences, someone whose work has inspired and will continue to inspire us for generations. His recent award of the Vautrin Lud Prize or ‘Geography’s Nobel Prize’ underlined the enormity of his contributions to our field.”

As his friend and former UCLA graduate student, Costis Hadjimichalis, recently said, “Edward Soja has now gone to his own personal ‘Third Space.’”

A gathering in celebration of his life will be held Monday, January 25 from 4:00PM-6:00PM at the UCLA Faculty Center, Sequoia Room.

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs will establish the Edward Soja Memorial Fellowship in his memory.

Urban Planning Alum Patrick Horton Receives Honor Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public

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Patrick Horton MA Urban Planning ’01 was recently honored for dual civilian and U.S. Coast Guard service at the Chamber of Commerce in his hometown of Temple City. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public both within the Coast Guard and as a Los Angeles City employee. As a member of the Coast Guard, Lt. Horton serves in maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and marine wildlife protection as an Executive Officer based in Long Beach. Horton has served three terms as a Temple City Planning Commissioner.

Meet the 2015-2016 class of Luskin Senior Fellows Students and faculty met with Senior Fellows, members of the community that serve as mentors and advisors to UCLA Luskin.

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Each year a distinguished group of leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors is invited to become part of the Luskin School of Public Affairs community.  The Senior Fellows represent a bridge connecting Luskin’s problem-solving academic departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning to the real world challenges being faced by community, policy and political leaders at local, regional, and national levels.

“VC actually matched me with my mentor, Stan Hoffman,” said first-year Urban Planning student Riddhi Chakraborty, who looks to enter the field of real estate analysis policy. “His job is so related to what I wanted to do [in the future] that it was perfect.”

In addition, Senior Fellows have been asked to enhance their participation as leadership role models, providing students with a career meeting, a networking experience that includes arranging informational interviews with colleagues, and an invitation to spend a half-day at the business location of each Fellow.

First year Public Policy/ School of Medicine student Adia Scrubb was a former student of her mentor, Dr. David Carlisle. Encouraged by Dr. Carlisle to apply, she hopes to gain more knowledge of the healthcare policy field through the program. “I wanted to gain insider information on the work of a physician in the public policy setting,” said Scrubb.

This year’s annual Senior Fellows breakfast was held on October 29, 2015. The guest speaker was Michele Prichard, Director of Common Agenda for the Liberty Hill Foundation and a graduate of UCLA’s Urban Planning program. In her keynote, Prichard addressed the current issues new policymakers would face once they graduate, but encouraged the Senior Fellows with her three main points: There is no better time than now, no better place than Los Angeles and no better program than Luskin Senior Fellows to prepare students for a future in public affairs.

For photos of the event click here.

Senior Fellows Leadership Program

2015-2016

Randy Barth — Founder and CEO of THINK Together and the Executive Chairman of the Principal’s Exchange.

Kafi Blumenfield — Founding executive director of the Discovery Cube Los Angeles science museum and former Executive Director of Liberty Hill Foundation.

Danielle Brazell — General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Carol Chodroff — Opportunity Youth Director for the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

Rima Cohen — Managing Director for Aspen Health Innovators Fellowship.

Melissa Martinez — U.S. Diplomat in Residence at UCLA (serving Southern California).

Steve Nissen — Senior Vice President of Legal & Government Affairs at NBC Universal.

 

Urban Planner Susanna Hecht Among Experts on Climate Change “Bending the Curve,” was released at the UC Climate Neutrality Initiative Summit

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Professor of Urban Planning Susanna Hecht is part of a team of 50 UC researchers and scientists who authored a report on climate change released Oct. 27.

“Bending the Curve,” was released at the UC Climate Neutrality Initiative Summit held in San Diego and includes 10 scalable solutions to reduce global greenhouse emissions such as methane, black carbon, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and ozone. The report’s title refers to “flattening the upward trajectory of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and consequent global climate change.”

Hecht, who focuses on political ecology, also was among UC scholars cited for providing “critical analyses and some of the quantitative estimates mentioned in the executive summary.”

Read the full UCLA story: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-uc-experts-release-report-with-solutions-to-slow-climate-change

Read the report “Bending the Curve”: http://uc-carbonneutralitysummit2015.ucsd.edu/_files/Bending-the-Curve.pdf

 

UCLA Luskin Report on Recruiting Homes for Foster Children The report focuses on the dual foster care recruitment system used to develop resource families

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The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has released a report on their analysis of the current process used to recruit and train new families for fostering and adopting children.  These families are referred to as “resource families.”  The report focuses on the dual foster care recruitment system used to develop resource families, one being the system used by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the other being the system used by private state-licensed foster family agencies (FFAs).  By and large, the families recruited by DCFS become independent state-licensed foster homes, while those recruited by FFAs become certified foster homes providing care under the FFA’s management.  Patricia Curry, a Commissioner on the Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families, remarks, “This report comes at a crucial time when L.A County is facing a serious shortage of foster homes. Hopefully we can take some of the key findings in the report and use them to guide us in developing a strategy for increasing the number of caring foster parents for children in the child welfare system.”

Seventeen of the 46 FFAs contracted by Los Angeles County agreed to participate in the study, along with DCFS managers involved in the resource family recruitment and training process.  The researchers used surveys and interviews of FFA and DCFS managers to gather their primary data.  Although many families expressed initial interest in participating, only two families fully participated, thus their insights were helpful, but could not be considered representative.  The data collection and analysis approaches were designed to describe each of the major points of the recruitment process and to document the impact of each part of the dual system, with emphasis on identifying areas of need and potential solutions.  The report notes positive aspects of the dual approaches, including the breadth of child-specific recruitment conducted by the County that is consistent with recruitment strategies recommended nationally and implemented in many counties and states.  These approaches include the weekly Wednesday’s Child TV feature on Fox 11 and the traveling and online Heart Gallery LA photo exhibits of children in foster care waiting for adoptive homes.  Like DCFS, FFAs are involved in a number of media campaigns (including television, radio, print and internet) to attract new resource families.  The report also highlights challenges presented by the dual system, including inconsistent information given to resource families regarding approval requirements and benefits.  According to the UCLA researchers, “The Resource Family Recruitment report highlights that there are many opportunities to overcome the challenges of the dual foster care recruitment system, including increased coordination and collaboration among agencies, more consistent quality foster parent training standards, and the creation of information systems capable of identifying and driving system improvements.”

The report was made possible through the financial support of the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation. “Our foundation is committed to supporting LA County and all its partners in ensuring that every child who enters foster care can look forward to being placed with a loving and supportive caregiver,” noted Winnie Wechsler, the foundation’s executive director, “UCLA Luskin School’s report offers some concrete proposals to help ensure that happens.”

Along with helpful charts and graphs representing the effectiveness of outreach efforts, the level of need for foster homes and the demographics of prospective resource parents, the report includes a number of recommendations related to each stage of becoming a resource parent (such as recruitment, training, assessment and approval).  Recommendations include exploring the use of online foster parent orientation, increasing transparency of the assessment and approval process, and improving interagency communication and collaboration.  Philip Browning, Director of DCFS, gives the report positive reviews, stating, “I am thankful to the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation for funding this report and to the UCLA researchers for their insights and recommendations, which will help us as we move forward with our FFAs to recruit even more high quality families to meet the needs of the children we both serve.”

The full report can be found here.

For additional information, please contact:
Armand Montiel or Neil Zanville, DCFS Public Affairs
(213) 351-5886
amontiel@dcfs.lacounty.gov or zanvin@dcfs.lacounty.gov

Dr. Todd Franke, Professor
Department of Social Welfare
UCLA – Luskin School of Public Affairs
tfranke@ucla.edu

Dr. Robert Blagg, Director of Evaluation
University Consortium for Children & Families (UCCF)
UCLA – Luskin School of Public Affairs
rblagg@luskin.ucla.edu

Reagan Fellowship recipient Sydney Ganon MPP ’17 Leadership, integrity, drive, and citizenship are qualities that leaders should have

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By Breanna Ramos
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Leadership, integrity, drive, and citizenship are qualities that leaders should have —  Sydney Ganon (MPP ’17) has them all.

Ganon is the second recipient of the Ronald Reagan Public Policy Fellowship, an annual award. Through the support of The Reagan Presidential Foundation and The Draine Family Charitable Foundation, UCLA Luskin students apply to receive up to $30,000 for the two-year Fellowship. Upon hearing the news, Ganon declined offers to other schools.

As a Fellow, there are a number of requirements the recipient must uphold, academic strength being one of them.  Ganon, who graduated from the University of Vermont (cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology and English is pursuing her MPP with a focus on educational policy and quantitative analysis.

“I’m interested in learning about the cross-sections between education and other policy, such as education and health, education and environment,” Ganon said. “I like that the broad program at UCLA lets me look at those other factors.”

Recipients also must have a keen interest in public policy and assisting in the local community. At the Knowledge is Power Program New York City (KIPP NYC), which is a national network of public charter schools, Ganon was heavily involved: from organizing volunteers to connecting students’ families with local officials through lobbying.

“I’m really happy that I worked before going to grad school,” Ganon said. “If I hadn’t worked at KIPP, I would have never known that education was what I wanted to have as my career. The experience totally shaped where I wanted to go.”

A key part of the Fellowship is access to Reagan’s Presidential Library. As a part of the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center’s internship program, Ganon must complete 100 internship hours at the library. Over the two-year Fellowship, the internship hours will give Ganon the time she wants to research Reagan’s educational policies.

“One of the incredible things about the Fellowship is that you get to see and learn about things from the politician’s side,” Ganon explained. “In order to create change, you have to understand what’s going on from both sides.”

Upon earning her MPP, Ganon plans on pursuing a career that provides opportunities to improve education for all.

“I would like to be working pretty specifically in education analytics, either with a school district or the state,” Ganon elaborated. “I want to be heavily involved in student data and test scores, using that information to make schools better.”