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UCLA Division of Social Sciences Premieres “Community Engaged Scholarship” Video

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Here at UCLA, community engaged scholarship is not an option – it is an imperative. Los Angeles is a profoundly diverse, multicultural city and a gateway to the rest of the planet. In the Division of Social Sciences, we take our location and our embeddedness in Los Angeles very seriously. The findings that come out of our research are findings that can be applied to real world community problems. In this sense, we are engaging LA to change the world.

LA Social Science is pleased to share this video highlighting two researchers, Dr. Jason De León and Dr. Jessica Cattelino, and the important community engaged scholarship they are leading in the social sciences.

As a public institution, our work is ultimately in service of you, our community. By engaging LA, we are changing the world.

Michelle Caswell Honored with Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Scholars

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Michelle Caswell, UCLA associate professor of information studies, has been given the Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Scholars, which annually supports a cohort of UCLA faculty who will each design a new course to integrate undergraduates into their community-engaged projects, working with the UCLA Center for Community Engagement. Caswell, who arrived at UCLA in 2012, is the first awardee from the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

Caswell directs a team of graduate student researchers at the UCLA Community Archives Lab, and mentors MLIS students through funded internships at local community archives. She will create a course on “Digital Archives, Communities, and Memory” for UCLA undergraduates, and says that she looks forward to working with her UCLA colleagues across disciplines.

“I’m really excited to be in a cohort with other recipients across campus to be able to talk about the challenges, opportunities, and possibilities for teaching undergrads in community-engaged work,” she says.

Professor Caswell says that she hopes her community-engaged course will attract students from a wide variety of undergraduate majors, including ethnic studies, gender studies, and even more technically focused majors such as computer science. She also hopes that the course will in the future, help shape the University’s undergraduate minor in information studies.

“In the community archives class I’m teaching right now, I have two master’s students from Asian American studies and one from education, and they have been fantastic contributors to the class – they bring totally different and important perspectives,” notes Caswell. “The information studies students learn a lot from those students outside of our department. It really strengthens the conversation when you draw in students from across campus.”

Professor Caswell says that learning about community engaged research and community-based archives will provide useful tools and perspectives for students in all disciplines.

“This is something that the community-based archives students at the master’s level have learned – archival work is a balance of doing technical, practical work and relationship building, and those two aspects are equally as important,” she says. “It’s just as important to know how to listen as it is to know how to create a website.

“What I love about archival work it’s where those two things come together. In the humanities, there is often talk about the archive as an abstract principle or concept, without talking about actually existing archives. I think the class will also be an opportunity to expose undergraduate students to information studies more broadly and to archival studies specifically, where we talk about abstract principles, but we also have to make concrete decisions about actually existing archives. It’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of combining technical skills, relationship building, and more theoretical concepts as well.”

Caswell’s teaching and research includes archival theory and practice, information ethics, the  politics of accountability, ownership, and access; archival pedagogy, visual culture, and digital history. She is the co-founder and an Academic Council member of the South Asian American Digital Archive. Professor Caswell’s most recent book, “Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work,” was released in May by Routledge.

Social justice in the spotlight during UCLA Undergraduate Research Week

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Robin Migdol | June 16, 2021

An examination of how a museum exhibition that told the stories of HIV-positive people around the world through photographs they took of their daily lives affected people’s attitudes about HIV. An assessment of the effectiveness of a Los Angeles-area non-profit as it tries to empower Black and Latina girls to enact social change through research, training and community mobilization.

They were just two topics that UCLA students presented at Undergraduate Research Week, the largest undergraduate conference on campus. The conference was held virtually for the second consecutive year at the end of May. The event is produced by the undergraduate research centers in collaboration with UCLA Library, the division of undergraduate education and alumni affairs, and this year featured nearly 800 students who presented research posters, gave prerecorded talks about their projects, and participated in live presentation sessions.

The studies of the impact of the Fowler Museum at UCLA’s presentation of “Through Positive Eyes” and the Social Justice Learning Institute’s efforts in Inglewood were part of a new showcase for community-engaged and social justice research this year. Thirty-eight students presented their original research projects in live and prerecorded presentations as part of the community engagement and social justice showcase.

“UCLA students are doing research with community partners, through academic departments and the Center for Community Engagement, which results in a valuable co-creation of knowledge between students and community partners,” said Whitney Arnold, director of the Undergraduate Research Center – Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Arnold said that the event organizers wanted to leverage the work students are already doing with community partners and social justice.

“Many UCLA students’ research projects focus on social justice,” Arnold said, “and we wanted to highlight student projects and voices that identify and research social inequities and also propose ideas for change.”

In community-engaged research, students work with partners from local community organizations such as nonprofits to conduct research that will be helpful to the organization and the people they serve.

Senior world arts and cultures and political science major Karina Zysman worked with the UCLA Art and Global Health Center to research “Through Positive Eyes.” The exhibit ran from August 2019 through February 2020 with the intention of destigmatizing HIV and AIDS by providing a humanizing look at people living with the disease.

Zysman studied the comments people wrote down after viewing the exhibit to determine what kind of impact the exhibit had on them. She found that people felt compassion and a common humanity toward the individuals in the exhibit, demonstrating how powerful the arts can be in inspiring empathy.

“The emerging findings show this cathartic process, where people are able to relate and some sort of preconceived HIV-related stigma that they might have had is starting to decrease,” she said. “We can leverage the arts and use the community and provide a space for them to amplify their own voices in the research that’s emerging.”

Zysman said that community-engaged research should be the model for most research.

“This is inviting the community to be active participants in the research that’s emerging about themselves. It’s removing that power dynamic that exists in research,” Zysman said. “It’s removing the sterility that exists in research, and instead it’s replacing it with humanity.”

At the showcase, every student from the community engagement and social change minor capstone research course presented his or her research. The two-quarter course was taught by Bemmy Maharramli, associate director of strategic initiatives at the Center for Community Engagement. Working with community organizations for two quarters on a research project gives students valuable professional experience, Maharramli said, such as participating in strategy sessions, learning to communicate professionally with colleagues, and listening to their needs.

One of Maharramli’s students was senior world arts and cultures major Hanna Young, who worked with the Social Justice Learning Institute in Inglewood. The institute, which was founded by alumnus D’Artagnan Scorza, is looking to expand its programming to support young women of color in addition to men, so Young did an analysis of other female empowerment programs, researched mental health interventions for women of color, and developed interview questions for engaging with community members.

Young said her goal was not to tell the people at the institute what steps they should take, but rather listen to the perspectives of the community members about what they want and provide staff the information to make their own decisions about what would work best for them.

“Central to this research is making sure that community members are asserting themselves, engaging with personal agency and deciding what would suit them best,” Young said. “The success of this kind of program really comes from, are the community members eager and participating in it? Ultimately, they make that decision, not me.”

When we study today’s most critical issues, from global health to climate change, research needs to be in partnership with the communities most affected, Maharramli and the students said.

“To have more effective solutions to these challenges we have to be in conversation with the people who are most impacted,” Maharramli said. “That’s how we’ll contribute as a university to the most innovative and effective solutions.”

Trilingual Zoom class inspires next generation of migrant justice leaders at UCLA

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Elizabeth Kivowitz | 

Growing up outside San Diego, California, about 20 miles from Mexico, Sebastian Aguilar’s parents always got nervous when they went shopping near the border and U.S. Border Patrol vehicles drove by. This was what life was like with parents who were undocumented.

For much of his childhood, Aguilar experienced daily life through what seemed like inconveniences, like driving to Los Angeles to visit family at 4 a.m. to avoid checkpoints. At 17, though, he finally comprehended the magnitude of the constant threat of deportation when he went to his mom’s permanent residency hearing. Green border patrol vehicles were parked right outside the open doors to the courtroom, ready to immediately deport anyone who was denied status.

“When she got her status, she got a work permit and 17 years of living in the shadows ended. I could see all the ways the family was better because of it. It made me realize how important it is for everyone to be free from the shadows,” said Aguilar, 20, who is scheduled to graduate from UCLA with degree in political science and labor studies spring 2022. Aguilar’s parents, like many, had crossed the border from Mexico, overstayed their visas, and then applied for asylum.

Aguilar notes that being granted legal status is not guaranteed for the many migrants who come to the United States every year from Central and South America. Informed by his family’s experiences and knowing that other families have had to endure much worse even before crossing the border, Aguilar joined 50 undergraduates, graduates and migrant justice activists in this year’s UCLA Community Scholars Program course called “Cross-Border Solidarity for Transborder Migrant Justice.”

A class that unites students and activists

Housed within the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, or IRLE, and co-sponsored by the UCLA Labor Center, in partnership with the Center for Community Engagement and labor studies, each year the Community Scholars Program provides an opportunity for students, advocates, community partners and organizers to jointly work on an applied research project that furthers the goals of progressive community partnerships in Los Angeles. This year’s class, which met weekly in winter and spring quarters, also is presented in partnership with the Chicana, Chicano and Central American studies department.

The main goal of the class, said Saul Sarabia, one of the course instructors who is part of the Institute for Research of Labor and Employment and a social justice activist, is for students to work with community-based participants to strengthen the work of those working across borders to support migrants and any migrant-led institutions or programs that are fighting for asylum seekers.

The participants this year are UCLA students — spread across the country because of the COVID-19 pandemic — along with community advocates in border areas including Tijuana and Tapachula, Mexico, which is considered “ground zero” in the migrant crisis. The course is translated by live interpreters over Zoom into English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to make certain there is shared understanding.

“The Community Scholars Program is an affirmation of the wisdom of those in the community who are racial justice leaders, race equity workers, and people who are doing racial justice work in various domains. The class gives them a chance to be scholars, in various different roles,” said Sarabia, who holds both undergraduate and law degrees from UCLA.

Recognizing the diversity within the migrant population, the course specifically addresses some of the challenges faced by Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ migrants.

Josue Castañeda, a class participant who fled persecution in Honduras and experienced firsthand the inadequate housing, tear gas, fraud, lack of legal information and other challenges migrants in caravans faced on the road to seek asylum in the United States, works for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, and spends time at the Guatemala-Mexico and U.S.-Mexico borders supporting migrants and helping them understand the legality of the various options for entering the United States.

Castañeda has said that in his work he has encountered Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ migrants, but was not familiar enough with their experiences to be able to adequately support and advocate for them. He saw African migrants singled out by Mexican officials and put into deplorable holding conditions, and also has seen Indigenous migrants who had no access to interpreters and therefore no ability to access the support he offered. He knew little of gender discrimination and felt he was unable to help LGBT migrants who were denied access to shelters due to their gender identity or sexual orientation.

“The course is helping raise awareness for me and others that if we address the needs of the more marginalized groups of migrants, we can help to produce a more meaningful definition of solidarity and assistance,” Castañeda said.

Expanding the class because of Zoom

An upside of the pandemic is that this virtual classroom has provided an opportunity that would not have existed otherwise. Zoom allows for participants from the United States, Mexico and Guatemala to learn from each other and develop new approaches to support migrants.

“The course has been an important cross border space where we can all problem solve together to help some of the most vulnerable migrants,” Castañeda said. “Had it not been for this virtual course, I never would have been able to participate.”

Instructor Kendy Rivera, who earned both a masters and Ph.D. from UCLA, describes herself as a Tijuana-San Diego transfronteriza, U.S.-México transborder student, first-generation Mexican immigrant, first-generation college educated, first-generation graduate-educated and queer mujer. Rivera, a lecturer in the Chicana, Chicano and Central American studies department, has experience setting up legal clinics, humane encampments, laundromats and kitchens for migrants, and has worked with many of the advocates taking part in the course.

“There is a lot of beauty and power and resistance and resilience to overcome the trauma that migrants go through,” Rivera said. “The voices that you hear in the course are those leaders and those voices that are fighting every day to not give up and give dignified experiences to migrants, north and south.”

According to Abel Valenzuela, professor of Chicana, Chicano and Central American studies and director of IRLE, there is high demand for these types of community-engaged courses among undergraduates.

“The Community Scholars Program is a unique opportunity for undergrads at UCLA to not only engage with community partners doing important work, but also to work with graduate students and faculty to assess what’s going on, and focus on solutions,” Valenzuela said. “The word has gotten out to students about these courses that teach and engage, and the students really appreciate it.”

In many cases, students have seen firsthand the struggles of migrants and migrant families in the U.S., and the course is informing the life and career paths they will embark upon after UCLA.

“This course has further inspired me to want to go to law school and possibly become an immigration attorney,” Aguilar said, “so I can help others come out of the shadows just like my mom was able to with the help of her lawyer.”

UCLA professor launches digital Archive of Healing™ The massive archive aims to democratize knowledge about wellness and health, while safeguarding indigenous traditions

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LOS ANGELES, CA – (March 15, 2021) A project more than forty years in the making, The Archive of Healing™ is one of the largest databases of medicinal folklore from around the world. On March 21, 2021, UCLA professor Dr. David Shorter will launch an interactive, searchable website featuring over one million entries that spans over 200 years, and draws from seven continents, six university archives, 3,200 published sources, and both first and second-hand information from folkloric fieldnotes.

 

The entries address a broad range of health-related topics including everything from midwifery and menopause to common colds and flus. The site aims to preserve indigenous knowledge about healing practices, while preventing that data from being exploited for profit.

 

“The whole goal here is to democratize what we think of as healing and knowledge about healing, and take it across cultures in a way that’s respectful and gives attention to intellectual property rights,” said Shorter, the director of the archive and a professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.

 

Of particular concern is making sure pharmaceutical companies can’t mine the data and profit from indigenous knowledge. The archive “doesn’t mention particular plant names or combinations that someone can make a lot of money off of, unless of course that information is generally known already or there’s no way to locate where that information came from,” Shorter said.

 

The bulk of the archive was collected over more than forty years by former UCLA professors Wayland D. Hand and Michael Owen Jones, who developed a taxonomic record for cures and treatments that they and their students found in books, scholarly articles, anthropologists’ field notes, and contributions from students in their classes who were adding data from their own families and research projects. By the late 1990s, they had amassed over a million notecards. After digitizing those notecards, the “Archive of Traditional Medicine” was made public, receiving praise from the mayor of Los Angeles and the U.S. Surgeon General. However, the archive was neither advertised widely nor prioritized as a research resource, and received few visitors.

 

In 2012, the UCLA Library asked Shorter whether the archive – now digitized, but with very limited searchability – should be preserved, and if so, in what form? Over the next nine years, Shorter and his team of students developed a strategy for providing public access to the materials in the database while protecting community interests. They re-coded all the data and developed a web-based interface that shows visitors differing results based on their user roles, e.g. general user, librarian/researcher, or healer/doctor. Visitors can now search the archive by healing modalities, and can further refine search results by treatment types, e.g. those that are worn, consumed, plant-based, or performed.

 

The new site, renamed The Archive of Healing™, will be able to accept new data submissions, enable users to connect with each other, and eventually will  provide local recommendations for service providers. In order to protect communities from a resource-extraction model of knowledge sharing, not all the data that was originally collected can be seen. Licensing and accessibility rights remain in the hands of the archive’s director. The archive has already been a useful pedagogical tool, helping students learn how various cultures understand the body, wellness, and community health.

 

Stephanie Vargas, a junior gender studies major, who was enrolled in Shorter’s class on healing, said the class and experience with the Archive “has helped ignite my motivation to continue to strengthen my knowledge and share with my family and community.” She is particularly interested in considering “how practicing our indigenous languages and building relations with plants are part of healing ancestral trauma.”

 

Shorter’s newly designated community engagement course partners students with the archive, as well as with midwives, herbalists, healers, Indigenous leaders, and community wellness organizations around the region. As in other courses, Shorter aims for students to learn democratically, with others, not simply about others.

 

“Whether in the classroom, in a wiki site, or like the archive itself, my impulse has been to find ways that we can make knowledge together in a shared process of creativity, challenge, and inspiration,” Shorter said.

 

To learn more, visit the archive at www.archiveofhealing.com

 

5 professors receive Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Research

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Robin Migdol | 

Undergraduates will soon have the chance to study California Indian dances, interview migrants at the border, work with social welfare groups and more, thanks to the second annual Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Research.

The awards program, which is supported by the UCLA Center for Community Learning and the Chancellor’s office, provides faculty members with individual grants of $10,000 to develop courses that enable students to carry out research projects in conjunction with community partners.

The five 2020 award receipients and the courses they will develop are:

  • Tria Blu Wakpa, assistant professor of world arts and cultures/dance. In Wakpa’s course, students will gather primary and secondary documents related to California Indian dances and write annotated bibliographies. They’ll share their findings with representatives of the Tongva, Chumash, Ohlone and Winnemem Wintu nations, who will draw on the research to revitalize their dances.
  • Rachel Lee, professor of English and gender studies and a faculty member at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. Students in Lee’s course will examine the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s collection of oral histories of women who have experienced illness as a result of chemical and environmental toxins. They will then prepare analytical materials, working with community organizations that are addressing these environmental issues.
  • Jennifer Chun, associate professor of Asian American studies. Chun will work in conjunction with the Asian American and Pacific Islander Leadership Development Project to instruct students on developing relationships and practices of accountability, transparency and reciprocity in the writing of organizational case studies and movement histories. She will also incorporate a community engagement component into existing courses on Asian and Latina women workers in the domestic, care and garment industries.
  • Gaye Theresa Johnson, associate professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies and of African American studies. Students in Johnson’s course will be assigned to different local social welfare organizations, such as Hunger Action Los Angeles, where they will complete a project for the group and identify the intersecting social justice issues that determine the organization’s central organizing principles.
  • Jason De León, professor of anthropology and of Chicana/o and Central American studies. In De León’s course, students will connect with community organizations to interview and conduct focus groups with migrants who have been held in federal detention centers along the United States–Mexico border, as well as with detention center workers and local residents. Their work will be incorporated into an art exhibition called Hostile Terrain 94, part of the Undocumented Migration Project.

The cohort will spend the 2020–21 academic year developing their courses and will begin offering them to undergraduates in 2021–21 or 2022–23.

“In these tumultuous times, it is more important than ever for students to be actively engaged in the world around them,” Chancellor Gene Block said. “The Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Research recognizes and supports those faculty who are providing exceptional undergraduate learning opportunities, empowering students to conduct research that will benefit the community and amplify voices that are often silenced. I look forward to seeing the positive impact the courses will have on both the Bruins who take part and the communities they will serve.”