Our Impact
2024-2025 Director’s letter
Since the launch of the Institute seven years ago, Founding Faculty Director Chris Benner has led the Institute’s staff in building an amazing network of faculty, students, community partners, and donors—all working toward advancing social and environmental justice in California and globally. The impact of this work was on full display during the 2024-25 academic year, Benner’s final year of leadership, when I had the great privilege of his mentorship as I prepared to assume the faculty director role at the end of the year.
Looking back at all that we accomplished together last year feels especially heartening within the current social and political context. Today, we operate in an environment of heightened social divides and fragile democratic institutions. Trust in academic institutions has diminished. And the effects of climate change on our communities are increasingly obvious. Rather than be intimidated by these challenges, the Institute’s team of community-engaged experts recognizes that our work connecting community, researchers, and students around world-changing projects is more important than ever.
Over the last decade, I learned from many friends and colleagues that global change happens when individuals work collectively. At the Institute, our community network is exceptionally strong. Together, we dedicate time, talents, and resources to projects that result in real change. Let’s continue growing our community—and our impact. Right now, the possibilities for transformational change are profound. As humanity faces a significant turning point, the Institute’s success depends on the support of like-minded people—like you.
Galina Hale, Faculty Director, Institute for Social Transformation
Funding transformative scholarship
We’re conducting research with tangible benefits for communities near and far. Faculty in the Social Sciences Division at UC Santa Cruz are innovative scholars and researchers who are addressing the biggest, most complex social and environmental challenges of our time. Yet social sciences scholarship remains chronically underfunded worldwide, creating financial barriers to the transformative work our faculty want to pursue. That’s why the Institute for Social Transformation provides grant funding to support our faculty members through key stages of the scholarly process. Since our founding in 2018, our grant programs have distributed $709,763 in internal funding to 100 projects that have leveraged this into $4.0 million in external funding.
Our Catalyze Awards grant program funds the development and exploration of new ideas and research concepts through interdisciplinary collaboration. The program offers Seed Grants to advance promising research by supporting pilots, Sprout Grants to fund initial data collection for external funding proposals, and Harvest Grants to help share research findings with key decision-makers, stakeholders, and the public. And our Emerging Scholar Support grants accelerate manuscript publication and the completion of other significant research outputs for early-career faculty.
Impacts by the numbers: 2024-2025
24
faculty members received funding from the Institute in spring 2025
$160,836
in Catalyze Award funding awarded
$742k
in external funding proposals resulting from these awards
$18,000
in Emerging Scholar Support funding awarded
Impact stories
History of antivenom informs future of public health
Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies Lily Balloffet won a 2024 Catalyze Award grant to study early antivenom production efforts in Latin America. She found that, throughout Latin American history, people without formal scientific training have often made key contributions to public health, helping the region become “pharmaceutically autonomous” for antivenom production. Her initial publication from this research shows the success of democratized approaches to public health and has implications for modern neglected tropical diseases like snakebite and Chagas disease.
Addressing inequities in public school funding
Assistant Professor of Education René Kissell won a 2024 Catalyze Award grant to study how public school “takeovers” by the state audit agency are affecting financially struggling California school districts and how a statewide coalition is pushing back against the resulting inequitable accountability standards that disproportionately harm schools in working-class Black and Brown communities. Kissel has since received high-profile media attention for this work and won an additional 2025 Emerging Scholar Support grant to support the production of research-based, public resources on school finance inequities.
Revealing ties between immigration status and health
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global and Community Health Alicia Riley won a 2025 Catalyze Award grant to study health inequities that arise from immigration status. Riley recently developed a new method for studying mortality trends by legal status in California and applied it to show markedly increased pandemic death rates for undocumented immigrants. Catalyze funding will allow her to expand her focus to other forms of mortality, showing how undocumented immigrants face greater risk of premature death and death from treatable causes and how more inclusive policy could help.
See past years’ stories: 2023-2024
Empowering student changemakers
Systemic social transformation can happen either slowly or suddenly, but it is often the result of intergenerational efforts to dream up, advocate for, and build a better world. UC Santa Cruz students are our next generation of leaders, and the Institute for Social Transformation supports their exploration of multiple impact pathways for building a more just and sustainable future.
Building Belonging scholarships provide funding for undergraduate students to participate in high-impact research alongside faculty mentors. Students find belonging within the university and build identities as knowledge-producers and problem-solvers.
Transforming Futures scholarships provide funding for first-generation and low-income students to participate in summer internships that help them to discover their potential as changemakers within nonprofits, businesses, and governmental organizations.
Impacts by the numbers: 2024-2025
$154,500
in Building Belonging funding disbursed to support student research and mentorship experiences
56
students received Building Belonging scholarships for one or more quarters
34
faculty research projects supported by Building Belonging students
$160,000
in scholarships awarded for Transforming Futures internship experiences
20
Transforming Futures students interned
with organizations
around the world
Impact stories
Healing communities through youth arts education
Sociology major Bunky Hernandez received a Transforming Futures scholarship to spend the summer of 2025 interning with ArtReach, a San Diego nonprofit that offers free art experiences for youth. Hernandez gained valuable classroom experience, developed strong professional relationships, and saw firsthand how “in the process of making art, individuals are able to build a sense of identity, find community, and use art as an outlet for processing emotions.” The experience solidified Hernandez’s desire to become a creative arts teacher or music therapist assisting youth with trauma and anxiety.
Critically examining tech impacts through research
Alyssa Merced Lugtu, a cognitive science and intensive psychology double major, worked alongside faculty mentor Zoe Zhao on a 2024-2025 Building Belonging project studying ethical concerns around decentralized “play to earn” online games. The project allowed her to combine her interests in psychology, digital culture, and social justice and challenged her to think critically. “Building Belonging has given me the support and inspiration I needed to pursue research that feels meaningful,” she said. “It’s helped me find my voice and has supported me as a researcher, and I’m immensely grateful for that.”
Can oil extraction and sustainability coexist?
As part of an award winning 2024-2025 Building Belonging project with faculty mentor Flora Lu, environmental studies and Latin American and Latino studies double major Chris Mathura spent three months in Guyana to uncover the possible environmental, social, and economic impacts of a large oil discovery off the country’s coast. “It is so complicated and nuanced, the conversation of natural resource extractions like oil,” Mathura said. “It belongs to Guyanese people, and we can only hope that, through their work and their love for the land, they are going to go about it the right way.”
Bolstering impact capacity and public benefit
We’re leveraging our resources and expertise to enhance the public benefit of transformative projects led by our many valued partners. We do this by fostering shared learning, meaningful partnerships, engaging with communities, and taking strategic action informed by a deep understanding of structural inequalities. The impacts of this work have reached far beyond our home in the Social Sciences Division at UC Santa Cruz, influencing policy dialogues and empowering movements from local to global levels.
At the Institute for Social Transformation, one of our greatest strengths is our knowledgeable and experienced staff. With expertise ranging from grant management to community engagement, our staff apply their skills in partnership with mission-aligned projects across campus and in the community to advance their transformative potential. We support research centers, large scale or interdisciplinary research projects, program-building efforts, and public events—all with the goal of increasing public benefit.
Impacts by the numbers: 2024-2025
20
campus research centers and initiatives supported
50+
events hosted/sponsored
7,000+
event attendees
Impact stories
Ensuring workplace safety and rights
The Institute-supported Center for Labor and Community, led by Sociology Professor Steve McKay, received a state grant this past academic year that will support a multi-year partnership with regional union leaders to educate workers on labor rights and health and safety measures and to study worker needs. The effort covers all of California’s Central Coast and will focus on protecting the region’s most vulnerable workers. Research support from the Institute also helped the center release multiple reports on unionization interest among young workers and the local labor trends that may be driving it.
Addressing racial inequities in air pollution impacts
This past academic year, we’ve been working with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to improve how environmental justice and racial equity are incorporated into the state’s efforts to fight air pollution. Our team is inventorying programs, identifying barriers, and providing an action plan to protect communities of color that face the worst air quality challenges. We also won a second grant from CARB to facilitate public outreach and engagement on tools and methods for estimating emission reductions and other co-benefits from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
Advancing ethical, high-impact research practices
Sociology Professor Rebecca London receives Institute support for her work with Campus + Community, a research center dedicated to community-engaged scholarship. The center provides resources for ethical and mutually beneficial research partnerships that engage community members in tackling issues that matter most to them. This past academic year, Institute staff coauthored a report with Campus + Community that documented 146 community-engaged projects at UC Santa Cruz with at least 236 unique community partners and identified ways to support this work.
Funding and partnerships
The Institute for Social Transformation is a collaborative of scholars and community leaders committed to research-based solutions addressing the most complex and urgent social and environmental challenges of our time. Social transformation only happens through deep collaboration. We thank our valued community partners, research collaborators, and funders for their collective support, which makes our work possible and ensures public benefit.
Impacts by the numbers: 2024-2025
166
community and agency partners engaged by core programs and faculty supported initiatives
16
major donors and funders
$538k
in funding procured for Institute programs that stimulate research and equitable student opportunities
$5.1M
in overall funding for projects led or supported by the Institute
Join our community
We invite you to join our network of scholars and organizers to make a difference with your community. Stay connected through our newsletter, engage with us at our events, donate to our programs, and partner with us to shape the future of research and scholarship.