2018-2023 Impact Report

---

Our First Five Years

NETWORKS FOR CHANGE

Research institutes are often thought of with an umbrella analogy, pulling together allied research and scholars under one roof. The Institute for Social Transformation, in contrast, is best understood with the analogy of a network. Our goal is to be a valued hub, supporting, strengthening and learning from multiple networks of scholars and changemakers. Our honeycomb logo and design theme is specifically intended to reflect this approach to achieving our mission and vision.

This network approach starts from our governance structure. The Executive Board of the institute was specifically designed to include one representative from each of the departments within the Social Sciences Division, and one representative from each of the other four divisions across campus. Members of the board have played an invaluable role, especially in the early days of the institute, in designing our funding programs, shaping our areas of work, and connecting the institute with important work in academic departments.

Based on our board’s advice, one of the first initiatives we developed is our Catalyze Program, launched in 2019 with the goal of supporting innovative strands of research, inquiry and/or application that contribute to efforts to foster more equitable and sustainable social futures. The 63 Faculty grants totalling $426,927 that we have given out in the first five years of this program have also been important for us in learning about faculty pursuing new frontiers of research–many of whom have gone on from our small grants to have major impacts. Sylvanna Falcón, for example, received a Sprout Grant in 2019 to help launch the Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas. This lab has gone on to receive multiple grants and has become a vibrant center for innovative student-led open-source investigations supporting human rights defenders around the globe. In another example, our Harvest Grant to Rebecca London in 2019 helped support the launch of her book Rethinking Recess, documenting the importance of recess in children’s development and mental health. London’s research later became central to the creation and enactment of California Senate Bill 291 in 2023, guaranteeing recess for all California students.

Our network approach is also evident in our ongoing work with faculty to help further their own scholarship. We tend to get involved in research projects with multiple investigators, especially if they are in different departments or divisions, and when the work involves external collaborations and hosting meetings or a conference. Our ability to provide administrative support and strategic guidance, in research development, implementation and dissemination stages of the work, allows faculty to focus on the content of their research, rather than logistical and administrative tasks.

A perfect example of this is our work with Brent Haddad on the Salton Sea Long Term Planning Project, which comprised three UCSC faculty members, seven graduate students and a range of engineering, economic, legal and environmental consultants, under the administration of the institute. The work included creating an independent review panel with experts across the country, organizing multiple site visits to the Salton Sea, arranging internal team convenings and workshops, planning open public forums, and publishing four formal reports. The institute’s assistance helped Haddad and the other experts in the project focus on their work helping to solve what has been described as the worst environmental and public health crisis in California’s history.

New Gen Learning is a similar example, and one of the earliest partnerships in the institute’s development. Led by psychology professors Su-hu Wang and Barbara Rogoff, and by education professor Cynthia Lewis, faculty and students in New Gen Learning come from all five academic divisions at UC Santa Cruz. These scholars collaborate to develop interdisciplinary research that identifies the cultural strengths of learning by students from historically underserved populations, and idntifies ways to leverage those strengths in formal and informal settings for learning.

Similarly, the institute, in collaboration with Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) Santa Cruz and the Banato Institute Santa Cruz, led our campus’ application to become part of the Public Interest Technology-University Network (PIT-UN), which was founded in 2019 to help build the field of public interest technology and nurture a new generation of civic-minded technologists. Now comprising 59 U.S. and four international universities, our membership in this network opens opportunities for faculty to apply for targeted funding, students to gain from new educational offerings and employment opportunities, and our campus to network with like minded institutions and researchers in the annual PIT-UN summit. There are many more examples of collaborative research projects highlighted throughout this report.

VIBRANT INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL COMMUNITY

The institute also strives to be a vibrant hub for discussion, dialogue and development of innovative ideas to address critical issues of our time. One key way we do this is through the events we organize, where we’re continually striving to understand systemic causes of problems in ways that can contribute to transformative solutions. One of the earlier examples of this was our partnership with University Relations in the “University Forum Election 2020 Series.” While much of the debate during the 2020 election cycle was focused on its significance as a referendum on the Trump presidency, we focused on bringing together scholars and practitioners to discuss some of the deeper issues at stake in the context of longer term creation of structures of democratic accountability, racial justice, equal citizenship and economic equality. The events in this series included a focus on links between electoral strategies and social movement organizing, demographic shifts and youth engagement, efforts to confront gerrymandering, promote institutional reform and reduce the role of money in political campaigns, and the potential of three propositions on the statewide ballot to reform our criminal justice system. The unexpectedly high attendance at this series, occurring still within the first year of the pandemic, demonstrated people’s desire for deeper discussions on transformation and hope.

We also were particularly gratified by the turnout for the “All-In Conference” in October 2022. Bringing together more than 400 university scholars, students, community organizers, foundation representatives, artists and activities, the event enabled a wealth of energizing discussions focused on the possibilities of universities and community partners co-creating systemic change for justice. Partnering with the Urban Research Network, and co-sponsored by a broad range of foundations, community organizations and partners on and off campus, the event helped strengthen communities of people committed to moving beyond loose definitions of public good often embedded in university community engagement initiatives, to focus on efforts that can really transform systems of inequality or injustice. Or as Professor Steve McKay so clearly put it, ensuring we’re not “settling for ‘public good’ but working for the ‘public better’.”

INCUBATING CHANGE

Some of our work at the institute also involves incubating new initiatives. By providing an institutional home as new efforts are getting off the ground, we enable scholars to focus on the intellectual and educational content of their work. For example, we started as early as 2018 to help provide visibility to the Global & Community Health (GCH) initiative in its early stages, particularly highlighting the incredible breadth and depth of research being done in everything from toxicology and epigenetics, to community gardens, migration & health, and Indigenous and traditional healing. This helped leaders of the GCH initiative to focus on building involvement across campus, to launch a pathbreaking interdisciplinary program with shared commitments to health justice, that includes a vibrant undergraduate degree program with both a B.A. and B.S. track.

Similarly, we have collaborated closely with Campus + Community (C+C), a hub for coordinating and facilitating ethical and mutually beneficial community engaged scholarship at UC Santa Cruz, since before its formal establishment in 2022. C+C has been instrumental in highlighting community-engaged scholarship across all five academic divisions of the university, putting together invaluable resources on community-engaged scholarship for students, faculty and community members, and helping spearhead efforts to better recognize and reward community-engaged scholarship in faculty promotion and tenure processes.

Other examples of initiatives we have helped incubate or grow include the Center for Labor and Community (CLC)–a vibrant initiative launched in 2023 with the institute’s support focused on research to support working families in the Central Coast and California–and the Right Livelihood Center (RLC) Santa Cruz, which is housed in the institute and has recently become the Global Secretariat of a dynamic international network of universities devoted to working closely with Right Livelihood Laureates, which includes 194 courageous changemakers from 76 countries who have received the distinction.

BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF CHANGE LEADERS

Supporting innovative scholarship that changes the world also requires paying attention to the next generation of change leaders. Thus we have developed a number of programs geared towards supporting students to become more effective future leaders. We launched the Building Belonging Program in 2019, connecting students from under-represented backgrounds to faculty members in Social Sciences, who mentor them in research or service-learning programs. Through 2023 we have provided 342 student scholarships, related to 123 distinct faculty research projects, providing over $500,000 to support this work. Students have worked on everything from farmland investment in the Mississippi Delta, to global governance of solar geoengineering, to ethnic studies pedagogy in local Santa Cruz County schools.

More recently, in 2022 we launched the Transforming Futures program, designed to open up opportunities and remove financial barriers for first-generation, underrepresented and low-income students to participate in career-advancing summer internships. Students have worked with a variety of nonprofit and public sector organizations, on everything from legal assistance to immigrants, programs to support small businesses owned by people of color, to providing connection and support to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth.

FACING THE FUTURE

When we began to envision this impact report, we intended it to be, in part, an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned from our work of the past five years. The strongest lesson we take away from the past five years is captured in the Ubuntu philosophy Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which can be translated as “a person is a person through other people.” The Institute for Social Transformation would not be possible without all the scholars, students and staff at UC Santa Cruz and their partners outside the university who care so deeply about justice, environmental regeneration and democratic revitalization. Together, over the past five years, the breadth and depth of collaborations reflected in the pages of this report have enabled a remarkable amount of impact in a wide diversity of areas. We think this helps validate the network structures and relationships we’ve been trying to build through the institute, and sets a strong foundation for the next five years and beyond.

As we move forward from here, we plan to continue with much of the range of activities we’ve engaged in so far. But we will also be looking for opportunities to develop strategic new programs in partnership with new collaborators. So if you have ideas and suggestions, or have a project you’d like help with, please contact us at transform@ucsc.edu.