Cindy C. Sangalang

Cindy C. Sangalang

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Cindy C. Sangalang, PhD, MSW is an assistant professor of Social Welfare within the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and is jointly appointed in Asian American Studies. Drawing on theory and knowledge across disciplines, her program of research examines how race, migration, and culture intersect to shape health and well-being in immigrant and refugee communities, with a focus on Southeast Asian youth and their families. A primary interest involves understanding developmental and health-related effects of racism and war- and migration-related traumas. These scholarly commitments are fueled by a broader goal of informing interventions that promote social justice and health equity.

Dr. Sangalang has been a principal investigator on research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). She earned her Ph.D. and Masters in Social Welfare from UCLA and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in health disparities research at Arizona State University. Previously she was on the faculty in Social Work at Arizona State University and California State University, Los Angeles.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Sangalang, C. C., Becerra, D., Mitchell, F. M., Lechuga-Pena, S., Lopez, K., & Kim, I. (2018). Trauma, post-migration stress, and mental health: A comparative analysis of Asian and Latino refugees and immigrants in the United States. Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health, 1-11.

 

Sangalang, C. C., Jager, J., & Harachi, T. W. (2017). Effects of maternal traumatic stress on family functioning and child mental health: An examination of Southeast Asian refugee families in the U.S. Social Science & Medicine, 184, 178-186.

 

Sangalang, C. C. & Vang, C. (2017) Intergenerational trauma in refugee families: A systematic review. Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health, 19(3), 745-754.

 

Sangalang, C. C., Tran, A.G.T.T., Ayers, S. L., & Marsiglia, F. F. (2016). Bullying among urban Mexican-heritage adolescents: Exploring risk for substance use by status as a bully, victim, and bully-victim. Children & Youth Services Review, 61, 216-221.

 

Tran, A.G.T.T. & Sangalang, C. C. (2016). Personal discrimination and satisfaction with life: Exploring perceived functional effects of Asian American race/ethnicity as a moderator. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22(1), 83-92.

 

Sangalang, C. C. & Gee, G. C. (2015). Racial discrimination and depression among Cambodian American adolescents: The role of gender. Journal of Community Psychology, 43(4), 447-465.

 

Sangalang, C. C., Ngouy, S., & Lau, A. S. (2015). Using community-based participatory research to identify health and service needs of Cambodian American adolescents. Families & Community Health, 38(1), 55-65.

 

Sangalang, C. C. & Chen, A.C.C., Kulis, S., & Yabiku, S. (2015). Development and validation of a discrimination measure for Cambodian American adolescents. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 6(1), 56-65.

 

Sangalang, C. C. & Gee, G. C. (2012). Depression and anxiety among Asian Americans: The effects of social support and strain. Social Work, 57(1), 49-60.

 

Kim, B. J., Sangalang, C. C., & Kihl, T. (2012). The role of acculturation and social network support in predicting depressive symptoms among elderly Korean immigrants. Aging and Mental Health,16(6), 787-794.

Lee Ann S. Wang

Lee Ann S. Wang

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Lee Ann S. Wang holds a split appointment as Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and Social Welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her current work is an ethnographic study of immigration law and enforcement at the site of gender and sexual violence, focusing on the work of service providers and legal advocates with Asian immigrant women and their communities.  She examines how the law writes and maintains the meaning of protection under the Violence Against Women Act’s immigration provisions, the enlistment of the non-citizen legal subject towards policing, accumulative cooperation, and the visa petition’s role in neoliberal punishment practices.  At its core, the work strives to take up the already gendered and racialized task of writing about people and life, without re-inscribing victimhood in legal evidence and the violences of legal archive.  Professor Wang is a former UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law, Chaired the Critical Ethnic Studies Association Board, and served on the Scripps College Board of Trustees.  She previously worked with non-profits and collectives on anti-violence, reentry, youth advocacy, busing and mass transit, voting rights in Los Angeles, Detroit, the SF Bay Area and held appointments in Law and Public Policy, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and visiting positions at the University of Hawai‘i Mānoa.

 

Publications:

Ron Avi Astor

Ron Avi Astor

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Ron Avi Astor holds the Marjory Crump Chair Professorship in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a joint appointment in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His work examines the role of the physical, social-organizational and cultural contexts in schools related to different kinds of bullying and school violence (e.g., sexual harassment, cyber bullying, discrimination hate acts, school fights, emotional abuse, weapon use, teacher/child violence). This work documents the ecological influences of the family, community, school and culture on different forms of bullying and school violence. This work has been used worldwide. Astor’s studies have included tens of thousands of schools and millions of students, teachers, parents and administrators. Over the past 20 years, findings from these studies have been published in more than 200 scholarly manuscripts.

Along with his colleague Rami Benbenishty, Astor developed a school mapping and monitoring procedure that is used “at scale” regionally and with local students and teachers to generate “grassroots” solutions to safety problems. The findings of these studies have been widely cited in the international media, in the United States, and Israel.

Astor’s work has won numerous international research awards from the Society for Social Work Research, the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the Military Child Educational Coalition and other research organizations. He has an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College. Astor is a fellow of APA, AERA, and an elected member of the National Academy of Education and American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

His work has been funded by the Department of Defense Educational Activity, National Institutes of Mental Health, H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Israeli Ministry of Education, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship, University of Michigan, USC and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other foundations.

Paloma Giottonini

Paloma Giottonini

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Paloma Giottonini is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the UCLA Luskin Latin American Cities Initiative, and an instructor in the Department of Urban Planning and the Institute of the Environment at UCLA.

Dr. Giottonini’s research analyzes energy efficiency policy and housing equity under the lens of urban sustainability. She specializes in policy and program evaluation, and has published on the relevance and success rates of other urban policies such as the Urban Containment Perimeters in Mexico. She is currently examining the practice of urban planning in Mexican cities.

Dr. Giottonini earned her doctorate in Urban Planning from University of California Los Angeles. She holds a Master in Urban and Environmental Planning from Arizona State University, and a degree in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM, Mexico).

Kevin de León

Kevin de León

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Kevin de León is President pro Tempore Emeritus of the California State Senate. He is the son of a single immigrant mother with a third grade education who worked as a housekeeper and held other jobs to support her family. After becoming the first and only in his family to graduate from high school and college, Senator de León rose from the San Diego barrio of Logan Heights to lead the California State Senate, the first Latino to do so in more than a century.

As leader of the California State Senate, he led the nation to establish landmark gun-safety legislation, clean-energy mandates, climate and environmental protections, and immigration reforms. Most recently, Senator de León authored and passed Senate Bill 100 which legally mandates California, the figure largest economy in the world, to achieve 100 percent clean-energy by the year 2045. He is also the author of Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, also known as the Sanctuary State Bill. Despite a lawsuit brought by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration, a federal judge ruled that Senator de León’s California Values Act is constitutional and the law of the land in California. Senator de Leon established that largest expansion of retirement security since the Social Security Act with the newly established CalSavers program. Starting in 2019, every Californian without a defined benefit or defined contribution plan at their workplace will be automatically be enrolled in Senator de León’s retirement savings program.

Before entering into politics, Senator de León served the public as a community organizer, taught U.S.citizenship courses and English as a second language, and advocated for public schools. He graduated with honors from Pitzer College at the Claremont Colleges. Senator de León is a Rodel Fellow at The Aspen Institute and lecturer at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, and USC. He has one daughter and a dog named Popeye.

James Lubben

James Lubben

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James Lubben is Professor Emeritus at UCLA where he taught for 20 years and was Associate Dean and Department Chair. He is also Professor Emeritus at Boston College where he was the Louise McMahon Ahearn Endowed Professor in Social Work for 15 years. During his 35 years in the academy, Dr. Lubben mentored over 200 doctoral students and junior faculty. He served on over 50 doctoral dissertation committees and secured dissertation research funding for over 150 doctoral students. He has published over 125 peer reviewed articles and chapters and edited 7 books. He has been a principal investigator or collaborator on over $35 million (direct costs) of research and training grants.

The primary aim of his research examines social isolation as a behavioral health risk among older populations. To carry out this research, he developed the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS), an abbreviated measure designed for both research and clinical use among older populations. The LSNS has been translated into many languages and employed in studies throughout the world. Scores on the LSNS have been associated with a wide array of health indicators including mortality, morbidity, psychological distress and loneliness, cognitive impairment, and health care use.

Dr. Lubben served many years as a consultant to the World Health Organization regarding health and welfare systems development for aging societies.  He also served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist to Chile. Dr. Lubben served four terms (12 years) on the congressionally mandated Gerontology and Geriatrics Advisory Committee for the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He was elected to three different national boards for social work education: Society for Social Work and Research, Council on Social Work Education, and the Group to Advance Doctoral Education. He also served two terms (6 years) on the Executive Committee for the Grand Challenges in Social Work Initiative sponsored by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. Dr. Lubben is a Fellow in the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and also a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Selected Publications

Chi, I., Chappell, N. L., & Lubben, J.   (2001). Elderly Chinese in Pacific Rim Countries – Social Support and Integration.  Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Lubben, JE, Blozik, E, Gillmann, G, Iliffe, S, Kruse, WR, Beck, JC, Stuck, AE. (2006). Performance of an Abbreviated Version of the Lubben Social Network Scale among Three European Community-Dwelling Older Adult Populations. The Gerontologist, 46(4):503–513.

Crooks, VC, Lubben, JE, Petti, DB, Little, D & Chiu, V. (2008). Social Network, Cognitive Function and Dementia Incidence in Elderly Women. American Journal of Public Health. 98:1221-1227.  PMCID: PMC2424087

Lubben, JE. (2009). Cultivating a New Generation of Scholars: The Hartford Doctoral Fellows Program.  In NR Hooyman (Ed.), Transforming Social Work Education: The First Decade of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative. (pp. 79-97). Alexandria, VA: Council on Social Work Education Press.

Sabbath, EL, Lubben, JE, Goldberg, M, Berkman, LF (2015). Social engagement across the retirement transition among young-old adults in the French GAZEL cohort. European Journal of Ageing 12(4): 311-320.  PMCID: PMC5549155

Lubben, J. (2017).  Addressing social isolation as a potent killer! Public Policy & Aging Report. 27(4):136-138.

Fong, R., Lubben, J. & R. Barth, R.P. (Eds.). (2018). Grand Challenges for social work and society: Social progress powered by science. New York and Washington, DC: Oxford University Press.

Vilar-Compte, M; Vargas-Bustamante, A & Lubben, J. (2018). Validation study of the abbreviated version of the Lubben Social Network Scale Spanish translation among Mexican and Mexican-American older adults. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology. 33:83-99.

Lachman, M. E., Lipsitz, L., Lubben, J., Castaneda-Sceppa, C., & Jette, A. M. (2018). When Adults Don’t Exercise: Behavioral Strategies to Increase Physical Activity in Sedentary Middle-Aged and Older Adults. Innovation in Aging, 2(1), gy007. http://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igy007. PMCID: PMC6037047

Gary Orren

Gary Orren

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Gary Orren is a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. He teaches and writes on public opinion, politics, and persuasion. He has worked in the United States and abroad as a pollster and strategist for government agencies, corporations, non-profits, candidates, and news organizations, including the Washington Post and the New York Times.  He took a leading roll in creating the first national media poll, The New York Times/CBS News Poll. He helped draft the rules for the U.S. presidential nomination process and has assisted ABC News in its election night forecasting. On leave from Harvard, he worked for three years at the youth corps program City Year as a team leader and director of national policy and planning, and he served for 10 years on City Year’s National Board of Trustees.   His books include Equality in America: The View from the Top; Media and Momentum: The New Hampshire Primary and Nomination Politics; The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics; and Media Polls in American Politics. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Oberlin and his Ph.D. from Harvard. String instruments are his thing: playing some (violin, guitar) and playing with others (a tennis racket).

Steven H. Nemerovski

Steven H. Nemerovski

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Steven H. Nemerovski is a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is currently teaching “Advocacy and The Legislative Process”, a course designed to provide students with an understanding of the legislative process, the role of advocacy and the tools needed to navigate successful outcomes.

Professor Nemerovski has spent the greater part of his career in law, government and politics. He was the Parliamentarian for the Illinois House of Representatives (1995-96) and is an expert in legislative process. As an attorney in government service, Professor Nemerovski was General Counsel to the Illinois Housing Development Authority (1986-92), Special Counsel to The Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives (1996-97) and outside general counsel to various state agencies in Illinois. He also served as Special Counsel to the Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools (1997-2000). His political experience includes serving as campaign manager for three campaigns for candidates seeking election to the Illinois House of Representatives and he has consulted on many other campaigns.

He is currently the President of Knell Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in advocacy at the state level in Illinois and at the Federal level in D.C. Professor Nemerovski has represented a wide variety of clients while generally specializing in healthcare. He is best known for his work representing hospitals that disproportionately serve Medicaid patients, including the Association of Safety-net Community Hospitals, an organization that he created and has represented since 2004.

Professor Nemerovski is actively engaged in efforts to confront and develop solutions for political dysfunction and polarization in the American political system. He produces the “None of The Above” television programming on Grassroots TV in Aspen, CO. He also produces the None of the Above website. Finally, he is the author of the “Third Party” series of political novels.

V. Kelly Turner

V. Kelly Turner

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V. Kelly Turner’s research addresses the relationship between institutions, urban design, and the environment through two interrelated questions: (1) How does urban design relate to ecosystem services in cities? and (2) To what extent do social institutions have the capacity to deliver those services? Her approach draws from social-ecological systems frameworks to address urban planning and design problem domains. In recent work she has used this approach to investigate microclimate regulation through New Urbanist design, water and biodiversity management through Homeowners Associations, and stormwater management through green infrastructure interventions.

Dr. Turner’s training is highly interdisciplinary. She received a Ph.D. in geography from the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, where she was an IGERT Fellow in urban ecology. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the interdisciplinary National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. She recently chaired the Human Dimensions of Global Change specialty group of the American Association of Geographers. Dr. Turner deploys interdisciplinary pedagogy in the classroom and teaches courses in environmentalisms, urban sustainability, and urban ecology.

Publications

Ye, X., Turner, VK., and She, B. 2018. Automating land subdivision database cleaning and merging for neighborhood-scale urban analysis. International Journal of Digital Earth: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2018.1502370

Turner, V.K. and Kaplan, DH. 2018. Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability: Past, Current, and Future Research Trajectories. Urban Geography. Online: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2018.1475545

Mapes, J., Kaplan, D., Turner, VK., and Willer, C. 2017. Building ‘College Town’: Economic Redevelopment and the Construction of Community. Local Economy, 32(7).

Turner, V.K. and Galletti, C. May 24, 2017. Addressing Climate Change through Design: A Land Systems Science Approach to Assessing Microclimate Regulation in New Urbanist Developments. Public Square: A CNU Journal. Available Online: https://www.cnu.org/sites/default/files/2017_NewUrbanResearch_AddressingClimateChangeThroughDesign_TurnerGalletti.pdf

Turner, V.K. 2017. Developing Sustainable Cities: The Real Estate Rigidity Trap. Ecology and Society, 22(2):1.

Turner, V.K., Jarden, K.*, and Jefferson, A. 2016. Resident perspectives on green infrastructure in an experimental suburban stormwater management program. Cities & the Environment, 9(1): 4.

Turner, V.K. 2016. How do conventional master planning processes facilitate or constrain sustainable urbanism? An environmental management perspective. Society & Natural Resources, 29(12):1483-1500.

Shook, E. and Turner, V.K. 2016. The Socio-Environmental Data Explorer (SEDE): A Social Media Enhanced Decision Support System to Explore Risk Perception to Hazard Events. 2016. Cartography and GIS. DOI:10.1080/15230406.2015.1131627

Minn, M., Cutts, BB., Greenberg, JA., Fraterrigo, JM., and Turner, VK. 2015. Detection of Foreclosure-related Landscape Management Changes Using Landsat. Applied Geography, 62: 217-224.

Turner, V.K. and C.S. Galletti. 2015. Do sustainable urban designs generate more ecosystem services? A Case Study of Civano, Tucson, Arizona, USA. The Professional Geographer, 67(2):204-217.

Turner, V.K., K. Benessaiah, S. Warren, and D. Iwaneic. 2015. Essential Tensions in Interdisciplinary Environment-Society Research Centers. Higher Education, 70 (4):649-665.

Turner, V.K. 2014. Institutional Barriers to Sustainable Urban Development: A Case Study of Civano in Tucson, Arizona. Cities and the Environment, 7(2): 5.

Lerman, S.B., V.K. Turner, and C. Bang. 2012. Biodiversity in suburban developments: Homeowners Associations as a vehicle for promoting urban biodiversity. Ecology and Society, 17(4):45.

Turner, V.K. and D.C. Ibes. 2011. The Impact of Homeowners Associations on Residential Water Demand Management in Phoenix, AZ. Urban Geography, 32(8):1167-1188.

Elin, N. and V.K. Turner. 2010. Recycling the City: Darning Downtown Phoenix. Critical Planning, 17:155-173.

 

Liz Koslov

Liz Koslov

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Liz Koslov is assistant professor of Urban Planning and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, where she studies the social, cultural, and political dimensions of urban climate change adaptation.

Her current book project, “Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City,” is an ethnographic account of “managed retreat,” the process of relocating people and unbuilding land exposed to extreme weather and sea level rise. The book is based on fieldwork in the New York City borough of Staten Island, where residents organized in favor of home buyouts after Hurricane Sandy. A related article, The Case for Retreat, appears in Public Culture. Koslov has spoken about this research in outlets that include The New Yorker, WWNO New Orleans Public Radio, and Scientific American.

Prior to coming to UCLA, Koslov was a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the humanities at MIT.