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Turner on How to Protect Children From Extreme Heat

V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times calling for action to protect California’s schoolchildren from extreme heat. “Schools are some of the hottest places in our region,” Turner wrote. “Single-story buildings surrounded by open, asphalt-dominated play yards with few trees provide little opportunity for cooling shade.” She identified a number of equity-minded funding opportunities, legislative actions and policy recommendations to help schools adapt to rising temperatures. Turner’s research into urban planning and design approaches that can make communities more resilient to climate change has made her a sought-after commentator this summer. CNN and KCRW spoke with Turner about adaptation strategies including planting shade trees and covering streets with cooling paint. And Ethnic Media Services covered a news briefing on coping strategies featuring Marta Segura, chief heat officer in the city of Los Angeles, Turner and other leaders.


 

Sweltering Temperatures Take Toll on the Most Vulnerable

V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to NBC4 News about the impact of Southern California’s heat wave on groups that are particularly vulnerable due to age, disability, low income and access to transportation. “I think about the sensitive populations who lack the resources or capacity to adapt when it gets really hot,” said Turner, who leads a research group focusing on policy approaches to protect people from extreme heat. “But I also think about people who are spending a lot of their time in settings where they’re exposed to too much heat. So that could be something like taking public transportation and being at a bus stop with no shelter.” In sweltering temperatures, she said, “we know that women are more likely to have preterm births. We know that children’s learning outcomes are degraded. We know that elderly are more likely to fall down.”


 

Turner Says Regulations Hinder Heat Mitigation Efforts Like ‘La Sombrita’


 

A Time of Transition

By Les Dunseith

What’s new, you ask?

  • There’s a new dean.
  • Two new master’s degrees are  working their way through the  faculty approval process.
  • Next fall, three of four department chairs will be new in the role, and  one of them is new to UCLA.
  • One of our prestigious academic research centers has a new faculty director.
  • We have several new or almost-new  staff members, including two whose  jobs focus on alumni.
  • Newly renovated public areas are  now open in the Public Affairs  Building after the completion of   an 18-month seismic retrofit.
  • And, as you may have heard, a  historic 40-day strike ended with  a new labor agreement that will  boost the pay of graduate student workers and postdocs at all 10 University of California campuses.

In this story, we delve into these changes in detail, starting with a familiar face in a new role — Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. (Note that each subhead below links to other, often-more-detailed content online, including some photos.)

A NEW DEAN

On Jan. 1, Loukaitou-Sideris took over for Professor Gary Segura, who chose to step down as dean after six years to focus on his teaching and research. Loukaitou-Sideris is a longtime distinguished professor of urban planning who had served as associate dean for 12 years. She will lead the Luskin School for at least two-and-a-half years, while a permanent dean is being sought.

A widely published scholar who joined the UCLA faculty in 1990, Loukaitou-Sideris helped lead a strategic planning effort to redefine the future of the School after Meyer and Renee Luskin’s naming gift in 2004. She later drew on that experience to lead a campuswide task force to create UCLA’s strategic plan.

After 33 years at UCLA, Loukaitou-Sideris felt comfortable diving right in  as dean.

“I love the School,” she said shortly after moving into the dean’s office. “I know the School inside and out, and I have served the university in different capacities. I know the deans. I know the vice chancellors. There is an element of familiarity. And I feel that I’m giving something back to a School that has been extremely good to me all these years.”

Loukaitou-Sideris doesn’t plan to simply be a caretaker. “I’m going to continue some activities, and start new initiatives,” she said. “I feel I owe it to the School and its people.”

The foundation of the Luskin School with its unique integration of public policy, social welfare and urban planning remains strong, she said. “The common thread is social justice and a desire to make cities and society better — to improve things.”

She plans to build on the successes of her predecessor, who increased the footprint and reputation of the Luskin School. Segura also successfully advanced student and faculty diversity. Women and people of color now constitute roughly half of UCLA Luskin’s full-time and ladder faculty.

The number of research grants has also grown substantially, and the Luskin School expects to exceed last fiscal year’s record total of more than $20 million in extramural research grants and contracts.

“All of this is very, very good,” Loukaitou- Sideris said. “We have reached a level of stability now.”

PROPOSED NEW DEGREES

Loukaitou-Sideris hopes to bring to fruition efforts initiated by previous deans to create two additional master’s degrees.

The UCLA Graduate Council gave a thumbs-up in mid-April for a Master of Real Estate Development, or MRED, degree. Pending further reviews, including approval by the University of California Office of the President and the UC Regents, the first cohort would likely  enroll in fall 2025.

Led by Vinit Mukhija, a professor and former chair of urban planning,  the program is envisioned as a one-year, full-time, self-supporting degree program in which enrollment is matched to costs.

Documentation for the new degree stresses instruction on the ethical underpinnings of a growing profession and the training of real estate developers to have a social conscience. Coursework would be led by faculty experts from UCLA Urban Planning, the Anderson School of Management and UCLA Law.

The second new degree, a Master of Global Public Affairs, is envisioned as an interdepartmental degree providing intellectual preparation to future experts who plan to work within the realm of global public affairs. The program description is being developed by Professor Michael Storper and lecturer  Steve Commins, members of  the urban planning faculty who  have led UCLA’s Global Public  Affairs certificate program since  its inception in 2015.

“We need to educate global citizens,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

In the discussion stage of development is a third initiative — a new revenue-producing certificate program around e-governance and the impact  of emerging technologies.

Loukaitou-Sideris hopes to create an opportunity for working professionals, including alumni, to pursue coursework at UCLA that would help them stay current in an era of rapidly changing technology.

NEW DEPARTMENT CHAIRS

Helping to guide the future of the Luskin School will be three new department chairs for the 2023-24 academic year:

  • Professor Michael Lens will become the new chair of the undergraduate major, succeeding Meredith Phillips, who since 2018 successfully built from scratch the Bachelor of Arts in Public Affairs.
  • Professor Michael Manville will become the new chair of Urban Planning, following a three-year term by Professor Chris Tilly.
  • Professor Laura Abrams will remain as a department chair for one additional year, extending to seven years a term as leader of Social Welfare that began in the summer of 2017.
  • After a year as interim department chair of Public Policy, Mark Peterson will step aside for a new chair, Robert Fairlie, who will move to UCLA this summer from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Fairlie was a professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz and is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Areas of his research, published in leading economic and policy-related journals, include public policy, entrepreneurship, education, racial and gender inequality, information technology, labor economics, developing countries and immigration.

He has strong ties to the state, arriving in California at age 2 and growing up near 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.

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.

NEW FACULTY DIRECTOR AT LCI

Fairlie is the second professor recently hired into a leadership position in UCLA Luskin Public Policy.

Megan Mullin also joined UCLA Luskin, as both a professor and the new faculty director of the Luskin Center for Innovation. Formerly a professor at Duke University, Mullin has been getting to know the people and programs at UCLA since her arrival in January.

“I had an idea of what the center was doing. It impressed me, and everything I’ve learned in the last months has assured me that my impression was correct,” said Mullin about the center and the strength of its work. “The people doing it are so committed to the mission of bringing good research and good analytics to responsible environmental decision-making,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see.”

Mullin is a scholar of American political institutions and behavior, with a focus on environmental politics. In addition to her center appointment, she is also the Meyer and Renee Luskin Endowed Professor of Innovation and Sustainability in the department of Public Policy.

In spring quarter, Mullin taught an undergraduate course in U.S. environmental politics designed to help “students gain competency in identifying political opportunities for advancing environmental policy goals,” she said.

Her arrival happened to coincide with one of California’s rainiest seasons to date, and Mullin said the growing uncertainties surrounding the impact of climate change will persist as a concern in California and the country.

Mullin cited risks associated with overabundance, including rainfall, and cautioned about complacency and thinking that California’s drought is over thanks to winter rains, “because it’s not.” Managing water resources and water accessibility are problems during both severe storms and drought, she said, particularly as it relates to what happens to floodwater.

She wrote a recent article in Nature on why Americans have been slow to respond to the climate crisis. “It is time to bring political knowledge to bear on decisions about protecting people from its consequences,” Mullin wrote.

“And so that’s going to be part of the portfolio for the center going forward, too.”

NEW STAFF WITH AN ALUMNI FOCUS

This academic year started with Karina Mascorro, Ph.D. as the School’s new alumni engagement director. She works with the departments to manage and promote alumni-related activities such as the regional alumni receptions that have resumed after the pandemic.

“I am responsible for ensuring that we catch every opportunity to highlight the outstanding accomplishments of our alumni,” Mascorro wrote in an email to staff and faculty last fall.

In March, the Luskin School added another staff member with an alumni-related role, Vishal Hira, who will oversee the annual giving program as associate director of development for the School

NEWLY RENOVATED FACILITIES

After making the building safer in the event of a major earthquake, construction crews have departed the Public Affairs Building.

The project also involved refurbishing the notoriously unreliable elevators, and all four have been upgraded. Restrooms were modernized with an eye toward sustainability and inclusivity — non-gendered options are now available. And some shared-use areas, including a lounge on  the 5th floor with cooking appliances, have  been remodeled.

NEW CHALLENGES

There’s been plenty of upbeat news, but the path ahead has also been complicated by what Loukaitou-Sideris refers to as a “triple whammy” — the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UC strike and the unexpected resignation of a dean.

“Morale is very important, as you know, in an organization,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

She’s a believer in open communication and transparency, so she began her tenure by immediately hosting a town hall with faculty and staff, and another with students. Loukaitou-Sideris spoke frankly about some of the challenges ahead.

With inflation spiking in the wake of the pandemic and a continued decline in the percentage of operating costs in higher education being funded by the state, a time of budget austerity looms.

One hurdle relates to the increased labor costs resulting from the strike settlement agreement. Unless the state and University of California Office of the President unexpectedly shift money to individual units, it appears that it will be up to the faculty and staff leaders to find the necessary dollars to pay the higher wages of student workers and other union-represented employees at the Luskin School.

Some trims in budget areas controlled by the dean have been made, with more likely to follow. And staff who leave UCLA for another job or retire may not be replaced, with remaining staffers’ duties likely changing as a result.

Already, two associate dean positions have been combined into one, with Professor David Cohen adding responsibilities that he formerly shared with Loukaitou-Sideris. Her other former duties have been parceled out to staff members in the dean’s office or the departments.

Loukaitou-Sideris said departments have been asked to share more of their funds with the dean’s office for one year, “and then we will reevaluate once we have a better sense of the overall budget situation at UCLA and [the University of California].”

So far, she said, everyone has been responsive, understanding that reducing the budget is a collective effort.

A Call for Heat Preparedness at California Schools

A California Healthline article on how to help schools become more heat-resilient in the face of global warming cited recommendations laid out in a policy brief from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, including setting an indoor temperature limit and investing in shade and greenery for play areas. Two of the policy brief’s co-authors, Associate Professor of Urban Planning V. Kelly Turner and graduate student Lauren Dunlap, are currently modeling how increasing the tree canopy to 30% can affect heat stress and researching the different benefits of dispersed or clustered tree configurations. “Obviously, the California Education Board wasn’t set up to think about climate change. But now that climate change is a reality, virtually every sector is going to have to think about it,” Turner said. The article, which appeared in the Sacramento Bee, LAist and other outlets, noted that legislative action includes a bill by State Sen. Caroline Menjivar MSW ’18 that would require schools to have heat plans by 2027.


 

Their Luskin Connection Extends to Sacramento

LUSKIN UP-CLOSE

For three 2018 alumni, a friendship that started at UCLA Luskin has led to legislation under consideration by the California Legislature.

Parshan Khosravi is a policy advocate. Isaac Bryan is an assemblyman. Caleb Rabinowitz is Bryan’s chief of staff. They’ve known each other since the 2016 new student orientation for their public policy master’s cohort at UCLA. Now, they are working to pass Assembly Bill 274 and benefit lower income graduate students.

Because MPP cohorts are relatively small, classmates get to know each other even if they take different paths through graduate school. Bryan has always been politically astute, Khosravi said, and he was already influencing policy change at the local level while at UCLA.

“And then we have somebody like Caleb … who was  both a genius and genuinely kind person, one of the most exemplary students in our class,” Khosravi said. “Meanwhile, I would probably say I was one of the worst students,” Khosravi joked.

A self-described student government junkie, Khosravi’s world at the time revolved around the UCLA Graduate Student Association and advancing campus-related issues.

“So, each of us took a different route. One was a scholar who worked on developing policies, one went on to do grassroots and civil rights organizing and ultimately getting elected to office, and one went on to become a lobbyist and education advocate. And it all ended up coming back and working in collaboration,” he said.

A bonding experience, Khosravi said, was the 2016 presidential election. Like most classmates, they opposed Donald Trump, and the election result was a shock.

“We all realized that the expectations we came in with were not going to be our experience,” Khosravi said. Their bond was strengthened by “the collective need to do something about it.”

After graduation, Khosravi stayed in touch as Bryan won a seat in the California Assembly in 2021 with Rabinowitz as his campaign manager and then chief of staff. Meanwhile, Khosravi’s student government experience had led to work that included lobbying in Sacramento. Today, he is California policy director for uAspire, a nonprofit that focuses on removing financial barriers to higher education.

He is often among the first to hear about policy issues in higher education, including a situation involving the eligibility determination for student recipients of two assistance programs — CalFresh, which provides healthy, nutritious food for qualified households, and CalWORKS, which provides cash aid and services for low-income families with a child in the home.

If student recipients get a scholarship, grant or other financial award, it counts as income when determining future eligibility.

“You would think that we shouldn’t tax folks who are low income for going out of their way and getting an award or a scholarship of merit,” Khosravi said.

He knew of an effort in Massachusetts to address this situation, so he raised the issue over coffee with Rabinowitz in Sacramento. Soon, Bryan was sponsoring similar legislation for California.

At press time, AB-274 was still going through the legislative process, but Khosravi said its prospects for passage are strong.

“We expect the bill to be heard in committee soon, and we have a broad coalition of education, welfare and basic needs organizations supporting it. This may be a wonky and technical bill, but its impact will be deeply felt for a lot of grad students who don’t have a big income stream,” Khosravi said. “And we would have never been able to work on this if it wasn’t for Luskin bringing us together.”

 

 

Pierce on Growing Threats to Clean Water

Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to media outlets across the country about vulnerable infrastructure threatening access to clean water. A CalMatters article on questionable state oversight of mobile home parks in California cited Pierce’s research showing a high level of dirty drinking water, particularly at parks that run their own water systems. “I can tell you, especially from talking to people who are supposed to be overseeing and trying to fix issues where people don’t have clean water in the state, mobile home park-run water systems stand out,” he said. Pierce also spoke with WHYY in Philadelphia about the impact of climate change, including drought and sea level rise, on water safety. “I think every utility is going to have to make adaptations to climate impacts,” he said. “Precipitation patterns … are changing, and they’re changing even faster than we expected.”


 

Peterson on Complications Surrounding ‘Buy American’ Policies

Public policy professor Mark Peterson was interviewed on LAist’s Airtalk about the possibility of creating policies to encourage buying products made in America. “It’s complicated because we have entered a globalized world in which the United States is one of the most advanced economies and therefore also one of the most expensive workforces in the world, and also a country that has been trying to lead on things like climate change and environmental interventions,” he said. If businesses move their operations to places where the cost of labor is low but employee health and environmental concerns are not a priority, this would be to the detriment of workers in the United States. Peterson supported the idea of organizing the global system in a different way in order to reap the benefits of free trade.


 

Pierce on Long-Term Impact of State’s Wet Winter

As California’s wet winter continues, Gregory Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, has helped news outlets make sense of the long-term impact on the state’s water woes. Pierce told the Los Angeles Times that, while water conservation measures should continue indefinitely, some of the most extreme restrictions could be lifted. “We bought ourselves some more time so we don’t need to be in that hyper-emergency, but we’re always in a drought,” he said. Pierce, director of the center’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, also appeared on the podcast Water Talk to share information about green infrastructure, wastewater equity and the intersection of two of the state’s most pressing needs: clean water and adequate housing. “The biggest issue in the water-housing nexus is how can we build more affordable housing supply in California, which we absolutely need, but do it in places that have enough water and also don’t have too much fire,” he said.


 

Pierce on Climate Change, Drought and L.A.’s Epic Storm

London’s Guardian newspaper carried news of blizzard conditions that sparked wonder and delight among Southern Californians unaccustomed to winter weather — along with vast power outages, closed highways and other hazards. Greg Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, put the extreme weather event in context, noting that more research is required to determine the role of the climate crisis in setting the stage for the storm. California’s wet winter has created a robust snowpack and higher reservoir levels that will relieve some drought pressures, but “we can’t let up,” Pierce said. “This storm is helping us stay ahead of pace — way ahead of pace than in recent years — but I still think we really need to see more,” he said. “We were in a really extreme place and this [storm] just gets us back to buying a little more time as we make other major investments and continue to harden conservation.”