Leadership and Administration
Shalom Staub, Assistant Vice Provost and Executive Director
Bio
Shalom joined the Center staff in September 2018. He has been involved in collaborative, community-engaged program development, pedagogy and research over his multi-sector 42-year professional career in state government, the private non-profit sector, and higher education.
At the Center, Shalom is responsible for strategic leadership to advance community-engaged learning and research opportunities as a cornerstone of the UCLA undergraduate experience. He introduced the new community-engaged course framework in 2019 and secured the approval of the Undergraduate Council for this open, expansive approach. He led the re-design of the Community Engagement and Social Change (CESC) minor, which is now a flourishing free-standing minor with over 90 students. He redesigned the Engaging Los Angeles course, which now enrolls 120 students each quarter. Engaging Los Angeles serves as the gateway to the CESC minor, focusing social inequality in contemporary Los Angeles and strategies for social change. Students in that course are matched with one of nearly 40 nonprofit partners, working with those organizations and gaining insights into the core themes of the course. Shalom also developed a new online course on Intercultural Communication for the Global Workplace available to students participating in the new summer Global Internships program.
Shalom leads the implementation of Goal 1 of UCLA’s Strategic Plan: Deepening UCLA’s Engagement with Los Angeles, providing leadership across the university to build the institutional structures and policies that enable community-engaged scholarship to flourish at UCLA. His efforts have successfully increased recognition for community-engaged research and teaching in the academic personnel review process. His efforts have contributed to securing national recognition for UCLA faculty from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Engagement Scholarship Consortium: “Exemplary Work” recognition in 2020 for Million Dollar Hoods and the Kellogg Community-Engagement Scholarship Award in 2021 for Congo Basin Institute.
Prior to arriving to Los Angeles, Staub was Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Civic Engagement at Dickinson College. In his 14 years at Dickinson, he collaborated with faculty colleagues to develop a civic learning and community-engagement program that was embedded in the curriculum spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. While at Dickinson College, Staub was also a contributing faculty member to the departments of Religion, Sociology, Judaic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He created Dickinson’s Conflict Resolution Resource Services program, offering conflict coaching, mediation, group facilitation, and conflict skills education to the campus community. Prior to his work at Dickinson, Staub was the founding President/CEO of the Institute for Cultural Partnerships, a non-profit organization located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He had also served as the State Folklorist and later Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Heritage Affairs Commission, a state agency.
Staub’s publications include Yemenis in New York City: The Folklore of Ethnicity; Craft and Community: Traditional Arts in Contemporary Society; Conference Proceedings: Governor’s Conference on Ethnicity—Exploring the Impact of Pennsylvania’s Cultural Diversity on Public Policy, and numerous articles on Yemeni Jews in Israel, Yemeni Muslims in New York, folk culture and cultural conservation, and civic engagement work in higher education.
Staub received his BA and MA in Anthropology from Wesleyan University, and a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He holds practitioner certification in conflict mediation and as a conflict resolution educator.
Douglas Barrera, Senior Associate Director for Faculty and Community Engagement
Bio
Douglas (Doug) first joined the staff in 2008, as the coordinator for the Civic Engagement internship course. He became an assistant director with the Center in 2012. He has been involved in community engagement work for over 20 years.
At the Center, Doug works directly with faculty and community partners to develop community-engaged courses for undergraduates. He has developed and directs UCLA’s Collaboratory initiative, the Astin Community Engaged Scholars and the Changemaker Scholars programs. He also facilitates the Center’s Engaged Pedagogy Workshop series and course development for the Chancellor’s Award for Engaged Scholars initiative, and is currently developing a place-based initiative related to youth empowerment in west L.A. He serves as the Campus Champion for the center’s Jumpstart program. Doug teaches courses for the Community Engagement & Social Change minor, and is an adjunct instructor for Labor Studies.
Prior to working for the Center, Doug was a research analyst with the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships and the Higher Education Research Institute. Before coming to UCLA, he was a program director for the Consensus Organizing Institute in San Diego, and taught community-engaged courses at UC San Diego and the University of San Diego. Dr. Barrera has published scholarly articles on student development through service learning and the development of community-campus partnerships. He is co-author of the Council of Europe publication, Advancing Democratic Practice: A Self-Assessment Guide for Higher Education, and the Higher Education Research Institute’s publication, First in My Family: A Profile of First-Generation College Students at Four-Year Institutions Since 1971. He serves on the editorial board for Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice, and was previously a member of the program board of directors for a social service agency in Pacoima, CA. Doug received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Education from the University of California Los Angeles, and an M.A. and B.A. in History from San Diego State University.
Zack Ritter, Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives
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Dr. Zack Ritter is currently Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives at UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement, where he also teaches a senior capstone on research methods. Previously, he was Associate Dean of Students at Cal State Dominguez Hills, helping students facing housing and food insecurities. He was also the Associate Dean of Diversity at Harvey Mudd College and University of Redlands. He also spent several years in the nonprofit sector, building bridges between Muslim and Jewish communities. Dr. Ritter received his PhD from UCLA, focusing on East Asian international students, racial stereotypes, and American media promulgation of globalized race/class/gender hierarchies. He also has co-edited four books with the latest entitled: Restorative Justice and Practices in Higher Education.
Bio
Munia Bhaumik is the Program Director of Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives and an award-winning scholar of comparative literature, politics, and law. An alumna of UCLA, where she received her M.A. in Urban Planning, her research and teaching critiques racial and gender inequities as well as the multiple social factors impacting whose lives count before the law. Thus, as an academic researcher, she rethinks citizenship and democracy theory from the perspective of vulnerability, considering how marginalized noncitizen refugees, migrant workers, incarcerated persons, and undocumented (child) detainees are crucial social actors. Dr. Bhaumik received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta where she engaged with new Asian/Latinx immigrant and African American community voting rights alliances in the South, while also developing a vibrant undergraduate degree program in comparative literature and critical theory. Based on her research about noncitizens as the “uncounted,” data and democracy, as well as on poetry as political action across the Global South, she received the prestigious Stanford Humanities Center, Herman Melville Society, and Cornell Society for the Humanities faculty awards. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Bhaumik also spent a decade as a primarily Spanish-speaking labor/community organizer on the staff of leading progressive organizations in Los Angeles shaping national debates about social justice through direct action. Her academic book, In Liberty’s Shadow: The Noncitizen in American Letters and Law, deploys close literary and theoretical readings of seminal literary and philosophical texts defining American political culture before 1900 to argue for a new democratic ethos of recognition for our present. Equally motivated by the humanities as by social movements, particularly the ethical dilemmas communities-of-color are mobilizing in this global (post)metropolis, her work brings to attention research protocols in alliance with the demands for abolition and noncitizen citizenship as well as multilingual, queer, migrant, worker, healthcare, and Black equal rights.
Christina-Marie Santillan, Assistant Director for Community-Engaged Learning
Bio
Christina-Marie (or CM, for short) has worked at UCLA for nine years and joined the Center in June 2023. She brings with her experience in community education, higher education, communications, and business operations. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in women’s, gender, & sexuality studies from Cal State University, Long Beach. In 2017, she earned her MBA, with a concentration in project management, from Mount Saint Mary’s University.
At the Center, Christina-Marie is responsible for the coordination and management of undergraduate academic programs and initiatives, including the 195CE internship program and the Community Engagement and Social Change minor. She also oversees strategic communication and outreach.
Christina-Marie’s career at UCLA has afforded her the opportunity to work directly with academic policy, programs and services for UCLA students, as well as support faculty and staff. Previously, she served as the Manager for the Undergraduate Educations Initiatives unit, where she was responsible for operations across all programs. During her time as Communications Manager for the Department of Mathematics, Christina-Marie led the planning, coordination, and implementation of marketing programs to actively engage their 13,000 alumni and donor base.
Her community engagement experience falls mainly under community education, where she served as a national community organizer for a non-profit organization that focused on prevention education for youth dating violence. In this role, she helped to develop an online curriculum and trained over 500 youth and adults across the country to implement the program in their respective school districts. Locally, Christina-Marie taught a residency program at Animo Watts Charter High School and conducted several guest speaking engagements at various middle and high schools all throughout LA county. During this time, she worked with various populations and organizations serving Native American youth, LGBTQ youth, youth experiencing homelessness, and underrepresented youth in low-income areas.
Larissa Gurrola, Grants Manager
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Originally from Zacatecas, Mexico, I earned a BA in Secondary Education with a concentration in English as a Foreign Language. Relocating to the US in 2016, I have worked as a preschool teacher in various Montessori schools, developing a deep understanding of early childhood development. While pursuing an Early Childhood credential at UCI, my passion for educational leadership led to an M.Ed. in Education Policy and Leadership from American University, where I gained valuable research experience. My recent work in community outreach at an elementary school in Ventura County solidified my commitment to building strong school-community partnerships.
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Diana Alaberkyan is a Southern California native who began her career in pursuit of public service. Her past experience includes working for local city councils, Los Angeles county, and the California state government. Now, she has fully transitioned into supporting the University of California mission to serve society as a center of higher learning. Her work at UCLA began in August 2022 and she officially joined the Center for Community Engagement in January 2025.
As the CCE Manager, Diana oversees all general operations, including administrative, financial and HR processes. These tasks include but are not limited to: streamlining CCE operations, using her expertise to ensure that processes are run efficiently to best support the Center’s programs.
Diana graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology with a focus in Public Policy. Currently, she is pursuing a Master’s in Business Administration at Pepperdine University.
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Bio
Charlie is the Quarter in Washington and the UC Center Sacramento program coordinator. He has been working for UCLA since May of 2022. His previous role at UCLA was as the Undergraduate Counselor for the Political Science Department. Charlie became the Quarter in Washington and the UC Center Sacramento program coordinator in October 2023. He received his bachelor’s degree from Cal State Dominguez hills in Sociology and went on to obtain his Masters in Guidance and Counseling from Loyola Marymount University. He is passionate about supporting any and all students towards their personal and academic success.
195CE Internship Courses
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Suzannah Cady is the Senior TA Coordinator for the Center for Community Engagement’s 195CE Program. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the English Department who specializes in Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature and Culture. She has previously taught the English 195CE course.
CESC Lecturers
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Originally from Ukraine, Marina has a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She teaches courses in public speaking, intercultural and global communication, communication theory and public relations, among others. Marina’s research has focused on community activism to resist the changes of gentrification and how residents’ consumption of media, or lack thereof, might help or hinder resistance to profit-driven neighborhood change. She has worked with and conducted research in various Los Angeles communities to better understand the residents’ perspectives of gentrification and its social and cultural effects. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marina worked in communication for human rights organizations and nonprofits in Los Angeles, New York and Germany.
Bio
Dr. Rigoberto Marquez is a native of Los Angeles, first generation college student and a product of California’s three public school systems. Dr. Marquez is a higher education administrator, researcher, and educator at the intersections of inclusion, equity, access, and integrative learning. He has over two decades of experience working in the areas of program development and administrative leadership incorporating research, queer & critical race theoretical frameworks and anti-oppressive approaches to education, research, and policy development. Rigoberto has held teaching and research fellowships at Stanford, Columbia, Mills College, and the University of San Francisco. His work on the experiences of queer and LGBT Latine(a/o/x) families has been published in journals such as the Journal for Homosexuality, Equity and Excellence in Education, Curriculum Inquiry. Dr. Marquez holds a PhD from UCLA’s school of education and information studies, a master’s degree from the college of education at the University of Maryland, College Park, bachelor’s degrees from the UC-San Diego and earned a liberal arts degree from Santa Monica College.
Student Ambassadors
Vacant, Quarter in Washington Student Ambassador
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