LASER Talks with Jasmine Alinder & Katharyne Mitchell
2021-03-11 09:00 - 10:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Jasmine Alinder, “Representing Japanese American Incarceration.” Katharyne Mitchell, “Sanctuary Space and Insurgent Memory.”

Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is an international program bringing together artists, scientists, and scholars for presentations and conversations. Join us at 5 p.m. for presentations by Dean of the Humanities and professor of History, Dr. Jasmine Alinder and Katharyne Mitchell, Dean of the Social Sciences and professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.

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Dr. Jasmine Alinder Dr. Jasmine Alinder is Dean of the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Alinder is an interdisciplinary, community-engaged scholar and teacher of public history, the history of photography, and the history of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As a historian of photography, her research investigates what she characterizes as “the presumptive right to the camera.” She earned her doctorate in the history of art at the University of Michigan, with an emphasis on the history of photography, her M.A. in art history at the University of New Mexico, and an A.B. in art history from Princeton University. She joined UC Santa Cruz from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was a professor of history and associate dean of the humanities in the College of Letters and Science.

Katharyne Mitchell Mitchell is Dean of the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research focuses on the ethics, practices and politics of church sanctuary in the protection of refugees in Europe. Recent books include Making Workers: Radical Geographies of Education (2018), and the co-edited Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration (2019). She is working on a monograph entitled Sanctuary Space: Memories of Insurgency, and an edited volume on philanthropy and humanitarianism. Mitchell is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters and the recipient of grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, and National Science Foundation. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.

21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge with the Homeless Garden Project
2021-03-20 04:30 - 05:30
You’re invited to join the Homeless Garden Project (HGP) in a transformative 21-day challenge to learn, reflect and discuss how we can build a thriving and inclusive community, workforce, and local food system. For the 21 days, HGP will be hosting weekly discussion sessions and engaging in discussions on social media and in emails.

The free online event will feature keynote remarks from U.S. Representative Jimmy Panetta, performances from Senderos and a presentation from Challenge organizers Curtis Ogden and Karen Spiller of FSNE.

You will learn how to participate in the Challenge and have an opportunity to reflect on equity in our local food system.

Senderos will share their Guelaguetza dance performance to celebrate the rich culture of our community and the spirit of collaboration.

More details and registration here: https://bit.ly/HGP21Day

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

The Homeless Garden Project is joining with Food Solutions New England (FSNE) to share their 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Food Challenge, which runs April 5-25, 2021. The goal of the program is to heighten understanding and address racism, as we work to fulfill our vision of a thriving and inclusive community, workforce, local food system and to inspire you to act in your local community to share your insights. We’re excited to partner with Food Solutions New England to offer this challenge. You can learn more about the challenge, what to expect when you participate, why it lasts 21-days, how it got started and more here: https://foodsolutionsne.org/21-day-racial-equity-habit-building-challenge/

Abolition Beyond the State
2021-04-06 09:00 - 10:30
w/ Sadie Barnette, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Zoé Samudzi, and Eric Stanley.

What role can the arts take in the movement to abolish prisons in addition to abolishing the society that upholds them? How can art and culture elevate other ways of living together, without relying on the fences, walls, and cages, which are both imagined and already practiced? Visualizing Abolition continues with Sadie Barnette, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Zoé Samudzi, and Eric Stanley discussing Abolition Beyond the State.

Visualizing Abolition is a series of online events organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences. The events accompany Barring Freedom, an exhibition of contemporary art on view at San José Museum of Art October 30, 2020-April 25, 2021. Solitary Garden, a public art project about mass incarceration and solitary confinement, is concurrently on view at UC Santa Cruz.

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Eric A. Stanley An assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the author of Atmospheres of Vioelnce: Trans/ Queer Antagnoism and the Ungovernable (forthcoming Duke UP) and the coeditor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.

Zoé Samudzi Samudzi’s research work engages the colonization of South West Africa (now Namibia) and genocidal productions of African identities on the continent. She is the graduate student intern at both UCSF’s Multicultural Resource Center and the LGBT Resource Center. Zoé received her MSc in Health, Community, and Development from the London School of Economics, and her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work seeks to merge political theory, visual studies, and critical approaches to science in service of a multidisciplinary means of articulating blackness(es). Her writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, The New Republic, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Arts. Black, and she is a contributing writer at Jewish Currents. Along with William C. Anderson, she is the co-author of As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Our Liberation (AK Press).

Sadie Barnette Barnette earned her BFA from CalArts and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and is in the permanent collections of museums such as LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, the California African American Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem (where she was also Artist-in-Residence), Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim. She is the recipient of Art Matters and Artadia awards and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, and Vogue. She lives in Oakland, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles and Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui(Kanaka Maoli) She is a Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses on Indigenous studies, critical race studies, settler colonial studies, and anarchist studies. Kauanui earned her doctorate in History of Consciousness and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008) and Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018). She is also the editor of Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018), which is based on the radio program she produced and hosted for seven years, “Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond” that was widely syndicated through the Pacifica radio network. Kauanui currently serves as a co-producer for an anarchist politics show called, “Anarchy on Air,” a majority-POC show co-produced with a group of Wesleyan students, which builds on her earlier work on a related program, “Horizontal Power Hour.” She is one of the six original co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), established in 2008. Kauanui also serves as an advisory board member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Diverse Voices 2021: Mothusi Pahl
2021-04-06 10:00
“Spring Board: A UCSC Founder’s Path on Driving Change in Heavy Industry.”

Diverse Voices is a professional speakers series spotlighting industry leaders and Baskin Engineering Students.

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Mothusi Pahl Chief Commercial Officer B3Bar Holdings

A Virtual Conversation with James Doucet-Battle and Edward Hawthorne: Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes
2021-04-07 17:30 - 19:00
In launching the new book, Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes, James Doucet-Battle, a medical anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the UC Santa Cruz, takes up the important task of weaving together complex strands of theory, practice, and experience into a coherent narrative about Type 2 diabetes, a seemingly simple disease to understand. Sweetness in the Blood takes the reader on an unexpected journey in a critical examination of three successive and interrelated technological moments between 2008-2012, when causal explanations of Type 2 diabetes changed radically. Sweetness in the Blood tells how the drive to collect African-descent human DNA faces long standing challenges to overcome public distrust in biomedical research and why the gendered directionality of genomic research on Type 2 diabetes raises both novel and enduring issues of social injustices, community resource disparities, and racial exclusion from the wider socioeconomic field.

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Co-sponsered by:

The Science & Justice Research Center, The UC Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation, and the Sociology department.

James Doucet-Battle Doucet-Battle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University of California, San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies, and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. He applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities.

Edward T. Hawthorne Founder and managing partner of CE3 Solutions, LLC, serves as Chief Administrative Officer, after a 33 year career with Bank of America. Hawthorne has a dynamic professional background, having held various senior positions within Bank of America, covering technology, operational risk, and customer servicing worldwide. During his tenure at Bank of America, he and his team developed a comprehensive system and corresponding methods for identifying and managing Operational Risk Assessments and Control, applying for and being subsequently awarded a U.S. Patent. Hawthorne and his family reside in California. He is actively engaged in serving his community and is committed to finding a cure for diabetes and improving the lives of all people living with diabetes.

Nancy Chen Professor and Chair of Anthropology, and Associate Dean for Health, Wellbeing, and Society. As medical anthropologist, Nancy Chen focuses on healing practices and health institutions. Her early enthnographic project compared how psychiatry and mental health become national agendas for social integration in Asia while, simultaneously, alternative forms of healing resurged. She has conducted fieldwork in mainland China, primarily, with comparative research in the United States. Her interests include the study of healing narratives, chronic and infectious diseases, traditional medical knowledge, and intersections between the body politic, gender, ethnicity, and medicine.

Jenny Reardon Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

Abolition from the Inside Out
2021-04-13 09:00 - 10:30
The Institute of the Arts and Sciences is pleased to partner with the Legal Studies Program at UC Santa Cruz for the next Visualizing Abolition event: ‘Abolition from the Inside out’, featuring jackie sumell, Albert Woodfox, and Tim Young.

Award-winning artist jackie sumell works collaboratively with people incarcerated across the U.S. to promote abolition. Albert Woodfox is an activist and author who spent decades in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Tim Young is a poet and activist currently on San Quentin’s Death Row and sumell’s collaborator on UC Santa Cruz’s Solitary Garden. Together, they will discuss the activism and collaborations taking place between people inside and outside of prisons to, as sumell puts it, “imagine a landscape without prisons.”

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jackie sumelljackie sumell is a multidisciplinary artist inspired by the lives of everyday people. Her work speaks to both traditional artist communities and those historically marginalized by structural racism. sumell’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the US and Europe. Her residencies and awards include 2017 Blade of Grass-David Rockefeller Fund Joint Fellow in Criminal Justice, 2016 Robert Rauschenberg Artist-As-Activist Fellowship, 2015 Eyebeam Project Fellowship, and 2008 Akademie Solitude Fellowship. An ardent public speaker and prison abolitionist, sumell has lectured in Colleges and Universities around the US including UC Berkeley (BAMPFA), RISD, ZKM Karlsruhe, and as keynote for the National Prisoner Advocacy Conference 2014. sumell began the Solitary Gardens project to honor the legacy of political prisoner Herman Wallace, who was held in solitary confinement for over 40 years and with whom jackie corresponded and collaborated for 12 years. Her collaborative work with Herman Wallace, The House That Herman Built, is the subject of the Emmy Award Winning documentary Herman’s House, screened to a national audience on PBS in 2013. sumell’s work explores the intersection of creative practices, mindfulness studies, social sculpture, and the principles of The Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Albert Woodfox Albert Woodfox is an activist and the author of “Solitary,” a 2019 National Book Award finalist. Known as one of the Angola Three, along with Robert King and Herman Wallace, Woodfox served nearly 44 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He was released in 2016. Woodfox was a committed activist in prison, he remains so today, speaking to a wide array of audiences, including the Innocence Project, Harvard, Yale, and other universities, the National Lawyers Guild, as well as at Amnesty International events in London, Paris, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium.

Timothy James Young Timothy James Young is a writer, activist, and a wrongfully convicted prisoner on Death Row. He was arrested in April of 1999 for a crime that he did not commit and was subsequently sentenced to Death Row in April of 2006. He is now partaking in the Appellate process as a means of proving his innocence and regaining his freedom. Tim is a collaborator in Solitary Garden, a participatory public sculpture and garden project by award-winning artist jackie sumell. The sculpture follows the blueprint of a 6’x9’ U.S. solitary confinement cell similar to the one that Tim has been confined to for twenty-one years. The cell is surrounded by a garden which Tim designed via letters and drawings to students and volunteers, who cultivate it as his proxies.Tim’s writings have been featured in the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper.

Reparations for Black Americans: The Road to Racial Equality in California and Beyond
2021-04-15 16:00 - 17:30
In 2020, California established the nation’s first state task force to study and make recommendations on reparations for the institution of slavery, the atrocities that followed the end of slavery, and the ongoing discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present. Although the movement for reparations extends to the eighteenth century, it has gained new momentum in recent years. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) first introduced legislation to create a national task force to study reparations in 1989. The current version of the bill, H.R. 40, has at least 169 co-sponsors in the House, but has yet to achieve majority support.

Join us on April 15, 4pm Pacific Time (7pm Eastern) for a conversation with some of the country’s leading experts and advocates for reparations, to discuss these questions and more.

– How does the movement for reparations fit into efforts to close the racial wealth gap and promote racial equality? – Why study and discuss reparations in California? – What are the connections between the California task force and national debates about reparations? – What might reparations for Black Americans at a federal level look like in the 21st century?

Speakers

William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, co-authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

Anne Price, President of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, U.S. Representative for California’s 13th congressional district

Moderated by Chris Benner, Director of the Institute for Social Transformation

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Limited number of FREE books available to event registrants (priority given to UCSC students).

William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen are co-authors of the 2020 book, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, which makes a powerful case for Black reparations and offers a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program.

Co-sponsored by: The Institute for Social Transformation, Center for Racial Justice, and Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UC Santa Cruz.

William A. Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, Economics and Business, and Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Darity’s research includes a focus on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution. He is a past president of the National Economic Association and the Southern Economic Association.

A. Kirsten Mullen is a folklorist and the founder of Artefactual, an arts-consulting practice, and Carolina Circuit Writers, a literary consortium that brings expressive writers of color to the Carolinas. Mullen’s research focuses on race, art, history and politics. She was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s commission to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She is a past president of the North Carolina Folklife Institute.

Anne Price is the first woman President of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. She has worked in the public sector on a wide range of issues including child welfare, hunger, workforce development, community development and higher education. Anne was one of the first national leaders to examine narratives about race and wealth. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Nation, The Washington Post, The Mercury News, The Wall Street Journal, Citylab, O Magazine, and other publications. Anne holds a BA in Economics from Hampton University and a Master’s Degree in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the Milano School of Management and Urban Policy in New York City.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee was born in segregated El Paso, Texas. As a single mother raising two sons, she attended Mills College in Oakland, and later received her Master’s in Social Work from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1998, she was elected to serve California’s 9th congressional district (now the 13th) in a special election. Currently, Congresswoman Lee is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and Chair of the subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations. She serves as Co-Chair of the Steering & Policy Committee, former Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Chair Emeritus of the Progressive Caucus, Co-Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Health Task Force, and Co-Chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus. As Co-Chair, Rep. Lee works to ensure that committees reflect the diversity, dynamism, and integrity of the Democratic Caucus. As a member of the House Democratic Leadership, she is the highest ranking African American woman in the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Chris Benner is the Director of the Institute for Social Transformation. He is also Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship, Director of the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change, and a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Rooted in an urban political ecology approach, his research examines the relationships between technological change, urban and regional development, and structures of economic opportunity.

Photo above is of the Memorial Corridor at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (from Wikimedia Commons by Soniakapadia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

UC Santa Cruz Virtual Alumni Week 2021
2021-04-19 00:00 - 2021-04-25 23:59
Celebrating Alumni Week in true 2021 style April 19-25th. Have fun, remember your roots, reignite your passions, and connect like never before as our first virtual Alumni Week zooms you back to campus.

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Diverse Voices 2021: Kelly Harkins Kincaid
2021-04-21 10:00
“Living on the Edge of Your Comfort Zone: Women in Executive Leadership.”

Diverse Voices is a professional speakers series spotlighting industry leaders and Baskin Engineering Students.

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Kelly Harkins Kincaid Chief Executive Officer Claret Bioscience & Astrea Forensics LLC

Virtual Earth Day
2021-04-21 17:00 - 2021-04-22 16:59
There are many UCSC events happening on April 22nd, as well as the entire week around Earth Day and the month of April.

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New Gen Learning: Community-Supported Learning by Children and Students during the Pandemic and Beyond
2021-04-23 08:00 - 09:00
In this gathering, we share evidence-based insights into community-supported learning by children and students during and beyond the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

New Gen Learning is an interdisciplinary consortium that brings together faculty and students from all divisions on campus to work on research that identifies the strengths for learning in children and students from underserved backgrounds.

This event is part of UC Santa Cruz Alumni Week 2021. To view the full schedule of events visit alumniweekend.ucsc.edu.

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UCSC AgTech Symposium
2021-04-23 13:00 - 16:00
New technologies in our agro-food system hold both tremendous benefits and potential harms. This era will require inter-disciplinary expertise and cross-disciplinary dialogue to maximize benefits and minimize harms from technological change. UCSC is well-positioned to contribute. In October 2020, faculty from several departments at UC Santa Cruz met for a preliminary discussion about what a more coordinated AgTech focus could look like at UCSC. Some strengths identified include strong student demand, experience and reputation of CASFS (i.e. agroecology and sustainable food systems), a strong commitment to social justice, expertise in sensors, robotics, drones and biomolecular engineering, power systems, partnerships with local farmers and community organizations, and strengths in critical social sciences, particularly in the areas of food and agriculture. As a next step we invite faculty, graduate students and researchers from all five divisions of UCSC to participate in a symposium on Friday, April 23 at 1:00pm, hosted virtually by the Institute for Social Transformation. This symposium will provide an opportunity for sharing research, in-depth discussion to better understand each others’ work, and identify possible synergies and areas for collaboration.

The symposium will start with faculty lightning talks, followed by small group discussions and a panel who will facilitate a conversation about how to work together across fields and disciplines. We also hope that these conversations will help us define what AgTech means on our campus. Faculty, professional researchers, and graduate students will share a 3-4 minute lightning talks about some aspect of their work and how it relates to, or could relate to, the field of AgTech (whatever that may mean to you). Administrators, staff and others who support interdisciplinary research are also encouraged to attend. Note: If you signed up to give a lightning talk, you do not need to register.

Join here

Symposium Schedule

1:00-1:05pm Welcome

1:05-2:05pm Lightning Talks: Group 1

Aaron Hunter, PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering: “Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller” (slide presentation)Jeffrey Bury, Professor of Environmental Studies: “Agtech in the Andes: Climate Change, Water Resources, and Livelihoods in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru” (slide presentation)Melissa Gwyn, Associate Professor of Art: “Rust Belt Solutions: Healing Land and People”Mohammad Jafari, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Applied Mathematics: “Towards Sustainable Agriculture Technology by Using Machine Learning Techniques”Grant Hartzog, Professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology (MCD); “Global and Community Health: Opportunities for AgTech” (slide presentation)Shun-Nan Chiang, PhD Candidate in Sociology: “How Contested Agri-Innovations for Nutrition Co-Exist in the Same Infrastructural Environment” (slide presentation)Jon Detka, PhD Student in Environmental Studies: “Developing low-cost leaf wetness and fog event sensors for plant disease monitoring”Steve McGuire, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering: “Multimodal Scene Understanding in Field Robotics”Gregory Gilbert, Professor of Environmental Studies: “Computerized tomography for tree health and hazard assessment”J. Xavier Prochaska, Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics: “Deep Learning of Sea Surface Temperature Patterns to Identify Ocean Extremes” (slide presentation)Rebecca DuBois, Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering: “New vaccines for agriculture”Julie Guthman, Professor of Community Studies: “The funding pitch as window onto the limitations of Silicon Valley ag tech”Ricardo Sanfelice, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Director of Cyber-Physical Research Center: “Agriculture Cyber-Physical Systems (ACPS): Opportunities and Challenges”

2:05-2:10pm Break

2:10-3:05pm Lightning Talks: Group 2

Sylvie Childress, Director of UCSC Greenhouses: “Opportunities for AgTech connections at the UCSC Greenhouses” (slide presentation)Ingrid Parker, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Faculty Executive Director of the UCSC Greenhouses: “Cannabis & Hemp Initiative for Interdisciplinary Plant Studies”Michael Loik, Professor of Environmental Studies: “Trade-offs between glasshouse conditions and plant production” (slide presentation)Brian Nguyen, PhD Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering: “The Continuous Monitoring of Nitrate Content in Soil using Time-Domain-Reflectivity”Chris Benner, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Director of the Institute for Social Transformation and Everett Program: “Delivering Insecurity: E-commerce and the Future of Work in Food Retail” (slide presentation)Jennifer Parker, Professor of Art: “OpenLab Collaborative Research Center and The Algae Society: Bio Art & Design”Katia Obraczka, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering: “IoT for Environmental Monitoring: Applications to Wildfire Mitigation and Preparedness”Stacy Philpott, Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems: “Insects, community gardens, and ag-technology”Robert Wilson, Postdoctoral Researcher in Electrical and Computer Engineering: “Psychophysiological Modeling for the Improvement of Human-Robot Interaction”Maywa Montenegro, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies: “Digital Agriculture & Surveillance Capitalism”Zouheir Rezki, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering: “Agro Health Monitoring via Wireless Communication Networks”Lissa Caldwell, Professor of Anthropology: “What If? Hacktivism and Anticipatory Food Justice”Pallab Sarker, Associate Research Professor in Environmental Studies: “Recycling microalgal co-product to develop ocean-friendly fish-free feed for sustainable aquaculture”

3:05-3:10pm Break

3:10-3:30pm Lightning Talks: Group 3

Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS): “Farmer creation, adaptation and adoption of technologies: research, extension and evaluation strategies”

—Damian Parr, Research and Education Coordinator at CASFS—Joji Muramoto, Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist at CASFS and Environmental Studies—Darryl Wong, Farm Site and Research Lands Manager at CASFS and Environmental Studies—Jan Perez, Food Systems Research and Education Specialist at CASFS

Summer Sullivan, PhD Student in Environmental Studies: “Different Fields, Different Farms?: An Investigation into the Synergies and Frictions into Ag-Tech and Agroecology”

3:30-3:50pm Break-out Discussions

What have you learned today that was new, interesting and valuable, that you would be interested in pursuing?What do you see as valuable areas of strength at UCSC AgTech that are worth supporting/building?What would you like to see as valuable next steps in developing more AgTech work at UCSC?

3:50-4:00pm Closing & Next Steps

A Conversation with Terri McCullough, chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, in memory of Gabe Zimmerman
2021-04-24 10:30 - 12:00
Gabe Zimmerman (Stevenson ’02, sociology) was U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’s community outreach director. He organized the “Congress on Your Corner” event on January 8, 2011, in Tucson, Ariz., where he was among four people killed in a shooting that also severely wounded Giffords and 13 others. Gabe’s unofficial nickname on Giffords’s staff was “The Constituent Whisperer,” because he had a way of listening to community members that helped create bridges. To mark 10 years since Gabe’s tragic death, we are honoring his legacy with a conversation that celebrates the transformative power of honest and conciliatory public service.

This event is part of UC Santa Cruz Alumni Week 2021. To view the full schedule of events visit alumniweekend.ucsc.edu.

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Terri McCullough (Oakes ’91, politics)Chief of Staff to the Speaker Nancy Pelosi @U.S. House of Representatives Terri McCullough is Chief of Staff to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve in a paid capacity in that role. She has served for over seventeen years in a variety of roles in Speaker Pelosi’s offices in Washington, DC & San Francisco. She has spent her career advancing the participation of women & girls through policy & programs. Most recently, she served as CEO of the Clinton Foundations No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, an initiative to evaluate & promote progress in gender equity globally. Terri was the first Executive Director of the Tory Burch Foundation, which works to support U.S. women-owned businesses through access to capital, education & mentorship. She held senior positions at organizations such as NARAL, PENCIL & Anna Deavere Smith’s Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue at New York University. Terri received a B.A. in Politics from UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Washington D.C. & New York with her family.

Chris BennerDirector of the Institute for Social Transformation Conversation moderated by Chris Benner, Dorothy E. Everett Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship chair; director of the Everett Program; director, Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation; and a professor of sociology and environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. Rooted in an urban political ecology approach, his research examines the relationships between technological change, urban and regional development, and structures of economic opportunity.

Confronting Climate Change: Food Security in a Changing World
2021-04-27 17:00 - 2021-04-29 16:59
Wednesday & Thursday, April 28-29, 2021 from 5:30pm – 7:00pm.

Confronting Climate Change is an annual public lecture series that brings together luminaries and the community to discuss the latest in climate science and policy, and share solutions to protect our planet’s wellbeing. The series is free and encourages audience participation!

This year’s theme is Food Security and how we can adapt to feed a growing population during unprecedented changes in our planet’s climate, culture, and political landscape.

The UC Santa Cruz Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, Division of Social Sciences, and Division of Arts invite you to the seventh annual Confronting Climate Change Conference. This year’s event will include two short on-demand films curated by the Division of Arts with a panel discussion of the films on April 28, and a panel discussion on the topic of Food Security hosted by the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences and the Division of Social Sciences on April 29. Both events are free and will be conducted virtually.

Wednesday, April 28 from 5:30pm to 7:00pm – Sustainability on Film

Thursday, April 28 from 5:30pm to 7:00pm – Food Security in a Changing World

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How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens
2021-04-30 05:00 - 06:00
Hillary Angelo, Author of How Green Became Good, is joined in conversation with Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Neil Brenner, and Claudio Benzecry.

Join us on Friday, April 30th at 12:00 PST as Hillary Angelo, is joined in conversation with Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Neil Brenner, and Claudio Benzecry to discuss her new book, How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens.

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How Green Became Good traces a century of greening projects in Germany’s Ruhr region in order to provide a sociological explanation for urban greening as a contemporary, global phenomenon. Across historical moments, Angelo shows that greening is as much a social process as a physical one. She documents the persistent impulse to bring nature into urban life in a response to a host of social changes, and reveals an enduring conviction that green space will transform us into ideal inhabitants of ideal cities. Ultimately, however, she finds that the creation of urban green space is more about how we imagine social life than about the good it imparts.

“Angelo risks sacrilege; she takes on nature as a mundane tool of politics, entertainment, and real estate. The ideology of green comes out of its black box, exposed to insightful and historically aware analysis.” — Harvey Molotch, New York University

“How Green Became Good takes the conventional western urban imagination out of Chicago’s Loop and past Los Angeles’s Sixty-Mile-Circle to the expanse of the Ruhr and rewrites urban theory from there. This brilliant book on more than a century of “urbanized nature” in Germany’s former industrial heartland will forever change our views of the industrial city as preceding the green city. If you are looking for a concept of the urban beyond the Zwischenstadt, you will find it in Angelo’s magisterial contribution.” — Roger Keil, York University

Hillary Angelo is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Santa Cruz. How Green Became Good is her first book.

Claudio Benzecry is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and the author of The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry (forthcoming 2021).

Neil Brenner is the Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Chicago. His most recent books are New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question (Oxford, 2019) and Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays (Bauwelt Fundamente, 2016), as well as the edited volume Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization (Jovis, 2014).

Robin Wagner-Pacifici is a University Professor affiliated with the Department of Sociology at The New School for Social Research. She is the author of a number of books, most recently What is an Event? (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End (2005).

Join us on April 30th for this interactive and free conversation on a pressing and more relevant than ever subject!

Produced in partnership with the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, By the Book: Smart Talk with Chicago Authors brings big ideas and smart conversation directly to you. Join these book events via Zoom from the comfort of your favorite chair and engage with authors and experts on a variety of topics.

Thinking and Rethinking our Actions: Nnimmo Bassey in Conversation
2021-05-04 02:00 - 03:30
Join leading Nigerian environmental and human rights activist Nnimmo Bassey in Conversation.

The interactive event is part of the Right Livelihood Community Conversations series aimed at connecting students and faculty from UC Santa Cruz with those at other Right Livelihood Colleges worldwide.

Our conversation will probe issues surrounding our perceptions and interactions with our environment, the limits of what we know, and the need for humility and solidarity in interactions with Mother Earth and the transformation of her gifts — bearing in mind that there is a future! Please watch Nnimmo’s ‘Message From the Future II’ (9 min) on YouTube prior to the session at: https://youtu.be/2m8YACFJlMg or if you’d like a deeper engagement please watch the (57 min) interview with Naomi Klein and Nnimmo where they discuss the film and its social implications at: https://youtu.be/B2axUzQHRck

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Documenting Justice
2021-05-04 16:00
The Institute of the Arts and Sciences is pleased to present ‘Documenting Justice,’ a screening of short films curated by Dee Hibbert-Jones, professor, art, UCSC, and filmmaker Nomi Talisman, followed by a panel discussion by the filmmakers. The documentary films on prisons and justice will be available to watch online between April 30 – May 4. Advance registration required for online access to view the films and attend the discussion. See below for information on the films.

Documenting JusticeFilm Screenings curated by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi TalismanApril 30-May 4, 2021

Panel Discussion w/ Dee Hibbert-Jones, Nomi Talisman, and guestsMay 4, 2021, 4-5:30 p.m. PTOnline events: Registration required

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Huntsville Station, 2020, 14’Jamie Meltzer and Chris FilipponeEvery weekday, inmates are released from Huntsville State Penitentiary, taking in their first moments of freedom with phone calls, cigarettes, and quiet reflection at the Greyhound station up the block.

Beyond the Wire (working title), 2020, 15’Ted GriswoldFormer Army Ranger Chris Pesqueira experiences freedom after 33 years at Soledad State Prison in California. He leans into a community of formerly incarcerated veterans for support as he takes his first steps back into society.

What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong? 2020, 19’Lucas GuilkeyWhen a young man mysteriously dies in a Bay Area jail, his mother begins a determined quest to find out what happened to him, but quickly runs into the opaque and powerful position of American sheriffs.

Laps, 2015, 17’R.J. LozadaThe San Quentin 1000 Mile Running Club is a group of men incarcerated at California’s historical San Quentin State Prison who find temporary solace in long distance running. Laps captures a regular training day in the recreation yard.

The Box, 2021, 16′ James BurnsThe Box is a hybrid short film immersing audiences in the realities of solitary confinement through interviews with three people, one of whom is the film’s director, who spent a combined 9 years in solitary.

Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman Collaborative filmmakers whose animated short documentary Last Day of Freedom was awarded a Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust Award, the California Public Defenders Association Gideon Award, a Northern California Emmy, Best Short at the International Documentary (IDA) Awards, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Their films have been supported by the IDA Enterprise Fund grant, NEA, Cal Humanities Documentary Project Grant, and the Pacific Pioneer Fund, among others. Hibbert-Jones and Talisman are Guggenheim Fellows, MacDowell Colony Fellows, Creative Capital awardees and recipients of the Filmmakers Award from The Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University. They are currently residents at SFFilmHouse. They live and work in San Francisco, CA.

Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance
2021-05-04 17:30 - 19:00
On May 4th, 2021, we celebrate the launch of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (PM Press) by Erin McElroy, UC Santa Cruz Feminist Studies alum and co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. Counterpoints brings together cartography, essays, illustrations, poetry, and more in order to depict gentrification and resistance struggles from across the San Francisco Bay Area. Compiled by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, each chapter reflects different frameworks for understanding the Bay Area’s ongoing urban upheaval, including: evictions and root shock, indigenous geographies, health and environmental racism, state violence, transportation and infrastructure, migration and relocation, and speculative futures.

Co-Sponsored by: University Relations, Science & Justice Research Center, Institute for Social Transformation, The Humanities Institute, Genomics Institute, and departments of Sociology and Feminist Studies.

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Mark Massoud: "Shari'a, Inshallah - Finding God in Somali Legal Politics"
2021-05-05 08:30 - 09:45
This book talk is presented by the Politics Department, the Centre for the Middle East and North African, and the Legal Studies Program.

Speaker: Professor Mark Fathi Massoud, Politics and Legal Studies

Discussant: Professor David Anthony, History

Moderator: Professor Jennifer Derr, History

Book Description:

Western analysts have long denigrated Islamic states as antagonistic, even antithetical, to the rule of law. Mark Fathi Massoud tells a different story: for nearly 150 years, the Somali people have embraced shari’a, commonly translated as Islamic law, in the struggle for national identity and human rights. Lawyers, community leaders, and activists throughout the Horn of Africa have invoked God to oppose colonialism, resist dictators, expel warlords, and to fight for gender equality – all critical steps on the path to the rule of law. Shari’a, Inshallah traces the most dramatic moments of legal change, political collapse, and reconstruction in Somalia and Somaliland. Massoud upends the conventional account of secular legal progress and demonstrates instead how faith in a higher power guides people toward the rule of law. (Cambridge University Press https://www.cambridge.org/inshallah)

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All-In All-Together Spring Webinar
2021-05-07 11:00 - 13:00
Seizing the Pandemic Portal: Transforming Universities for Community Engaged Scholarship.

As Arundhati Roy so powerfully articulated early on in the crisis, pandemics provide us an opportunity to imagine the world anew. What does this mean for universities?

As we try to navigate the opportunities for ‘building back better’, how can we help expand the space for community engaged scholarship? How can we more effectively deploy our resources, to strengthen truly equitable community partnerships across all aspects of the research process? What does this mean for graduate students and early career faculty? For individual research centers? For university administrators, and cross-university networks?

Join us for a discussion on how we can seize the moment to help transform universities in the post-pandemic world, to be truly powerful partners in co-creating knowledge for justice.

More Info and Registration

Futures
2021-05-11 16:00 - 17:30
w/ Sora Han, adrienne maree brown and Savannah Shange

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction – that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.” -Adrienne Maree Brown

For the next Visualizing Abolition event, join legal and popular culture theorist Sora Han, author and activist adrienne maree brown, and urban anthropologist Savannah Shange for a conversation on strategies, activism, and liberatory futures. What are the creative and radical abolitionist methods that are creating the future that “we long for,” in brown’s words, in the present

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Sora Han Sora Han is the Director of the Culture & Theory Ph.D. Program at UC Irvine, and an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society with courtesy appointments in the School of Law and African American Studies. Her first book, Letters of the Law (Stanford University Press 2015), extends the theoretical insights of critical race theory to produce new readings of American law’s landmark decisions on race and civil rights. She is also the co-author of the law casebook, Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, Third Edition (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020). She is currently working on two books: Slavery as Contract: A Study in the Case of Blackness, which brings together poetics, contract law and afro-pessimist theory to think beyond the property metaphor of slavery; and Mu, the First Letter of an Anti-Colonial Alphabet, an experimental text on the “anagrammatic scramble” (Nathaniel Mackey) of the unconscious materiality of abolitionism. Recent publications on these new lines of research include “Slavery as Contract,” in Law and Literature (2016) and “Poetics of Mu” in Textual Practice (2018).

adrienne maree brown adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategypodcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

Savannah Shange Savannah Shange is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and serves as principal faculty in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. Her research and teaching interests include state violence, late liberal statecraft, multiracial coalition, ethnographic ethics, queer politics, and abolition. Her book, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness and Schooling in San Francisco (Duke 2019) is an ethnography of the afterlife of slavery as lived in the Bay Area.

Diverse Voices 2021: Jossie Haines
2021-05-11 17:00
“Retaining Women in Tech: The Skills Needed by Women to Help Face the Challenges of Staying and Thriving in the Tech Industry.”

Diverse Voices is a professional speakers series spotlighting industry leaders and Baskin Engineering Students.

Register Here

Jossie Haines Sr Director of Platform & Web Engineering; Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tile

Sites of Memory, Spaces of Dispute: Missions and Monuments in the United States
2021-05-13 12:00 - 13:30
The Research Center for the Americas is proud to host “Memory Studies in the Americas,” a thematic series exploring how markers or symbols of memory are imagined and disputed. Listen to presentations on the San Gabriel mission in Tovaangar (known as Los Angeles today) by Dr. Catherine Ramírez (Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies) and Confederate monuments in Virginia by Dr. Kate Jones (Associate Professor, History), as they weave the personal with the scholarly to explore the contested terrain of memory in the United States. The Q&A will be facilitated by Dr. Rebecca Hernandez, Director of the American Indian Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz. Closed captioning and an ASL interpreter will be provided. This event is free and open to the public and co-sponsored with the Institute for Social Transformation and The Humanities Institute.

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Dr. Catherine S. Ramírez Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is a scholar of migration, citizenship, race, and gender; Mexican American history; Latinx literature and visual culture; comparative ethnic studies; and speculative fiction. She is the author of Assimilation: An Alternative History (2020) and The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (2009) and she is a co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (forthcoming in 2021). She has also written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Public Books.

Dr. Catherine Jones Associate professor of History at University of California, Santa Cruz. She completed her PhD in History at the Johns Hopkins University in 2007. Her first book, Intimate Reconstructions: Children in Postemancipation Virginia, was published with the University of Virginia Press in 2015. It won the Grace Abbott Book Prize from the Society for the History of Children and Youth in 2016. She is currently at work on a book about the history of child incarceration in the post-Civil War era. She has published articles in the Journal of Southern History, J19, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.

Bookshop Santa Cruz: Julia Alvarez, Afterlife
2021-05-16 11:00
Bestselling author Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) will be in conversation with Sylvanna Falcón about Alvarez’s most recent novel, Afterlife, now available in paperback. This event is cosponsored by Research Center for the Americas at UC Santa Cruz.

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Julia Alvarez Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

Sylvanna M. Falcón Falcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, and founder/director of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations, [University of Washington Press, 2016; winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Award] and the co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship [Rutgers University Press, 2021] and New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights [Routledge, 2011]. She is a former UN consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.

Music for Abolition: Artist Panel
2021-05-18 16:00 - 17:30
Music for Abolition, directed and curated by Terri Lyne Carrington, is a project bringing together musicians across a variety of genres to create a soundtrack—and provide a heartbeat—to our shared struggle for abolition. Expressing grief, rage, exhaustion, and resolution in the face of the U.S. history of racism and oppression, the music resonates with calls of freedom.

Join us May 18 for a conversation about the role of sound and music in the struggle for prison abolition with the participating musicians, including Lisa Fischer, Kris Davis, Val Jeanty, Lily Finnegan, Maimouna Youssef aka “Mumu Fresh”, Queen Cora Coleman, Nicholas Payton, Jason Moran, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Nicole Mitchell, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, Elena and Samara Pinderhughes, José James, Dianne Reeves, Camila Cortina Bello, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science.

Music for Abolition videos can be found here.

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Terri Lyne Carrington Three-time GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, producer, educator and activist, Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career as a “kid wonder” while studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the mid ’80’s she worked as an in-demand drummer in New York before gaining national recognition on late night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones’ VIBE TV show. In 2019 Ms. Carrington was granted the Doris Duke Artist Award, a prestigious acknowledgement in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music. Her current band project, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science (a collaboration with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens), released their debut album, Waiting Game, in November, 2019 on Motema Music.

Plastic Justice: A Conversation with Kristal 'Ocean' Ambrose
2021-05-20 17:00 - 18:30
Please join us for a screening of “Plastic Warriors” and a critical conversation with Kristal ‘Ocean’ Ambrose, recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award, on the importance of youth-led, Caribbean resistance to plastic pollution. In this conversation, we will speak to the intersections of waste and race in the afterlife of slavery and colonization. Q&A conversation moderated by UCSC grad students, Breanna Byrd and Chris Lang.

This event is a collaboration between the People of Color Sustainability Collective and the African American Resource and Cultural Center.

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Global Community Health Wellbeing Fellows 2020-2021 Research Panel Presentations
2021-05-26 09:00 - 10:00
Please join in celebrating this year’s GCH Wellbeing Fellows as they present their research projects!

Jonathan Chavez, Mentoring Latino Youth During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abby Cunniff, Working Conditions of Incarcerated Firefighters in 2020

Rachel Edelman, Using Digital Media to Share Incarcerated Stories

Nona Golan, Visibility and Access to Health Care in the time of Coronavirus

Ramtin Poustinchi, Perceptions of COVID-19 Risk within Homeless Communities

Tashina Vavuris, Centering Youth Voices to Promote Environmental Justice & Community Health

The UCSC Division of Social Sciences Global and Community Health (GCH) Wellbeing Awards program enables undergraduate and graduate students to complete a research project that addresses Global and Community Health in collaboration with a community organization. Our goal is to support the sustainability of communities and climates for health both locally and globally, doing so in ways that cultivate a new generation of global and community health leaders. The program is offered through the Institute for Social Transformation, who supports and facilitates the wellbeing awards.

All are welcome to attend the event including students, faculty, staff, family and friends.

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Zoom Link

Building Belonging Student Flash Talk Event & Celebration
2021-05-26 15:00 - 16:30
The Institute for Social Transformation is excited to host an online end-of-year celebration and student flash talk event to honor the work that has been accomplished in the Building Belonging program. Students who have been involved in the program in 2020-2021 will present their contributions to research projects.

This event will provide Building Belonging Fellows an opportunity to share their research with the community. All are welcome to attend the event on May 26th including students, faculty, staff, family and friends.

Sponsored by: The Institute for Social Transformation and the Division of Social Sciences

RSVP here

Schedule:

3:00pm Welcome by Katharyne Mitchell, Dean of the Division of Social Sciences and Chris Benner, Director of the Institute for Social Transformation

3:10pm Katherine Quinteros, PhD student in Social Psychology who received the Chancellor’s Graduate Internship/Campus Fellow Award for Building Belonging Through Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration and winner of the Graduate Research Symposium Best of the Social Sciences Division Award

3:15pm Student Presentations

GROUP 1

We Belong: Collaboration for Community-Engaged Research and Immigrant Justice Jonathan Sanchez (Sociology major) Faculty Mentor: Steve McKay, Sociology Department

A Syndemic in the Ring of Fire: COVID-19, Type 2 Diabetes, and Climate Change Andrea Asher (Sociology and Human Biology major) and Tamar Sasson (Economics and Sociology major) Faculty Mentor: James Doucet-Battle, Sociology Department

Communicational Remembering in Social Networks Hananiel Suradji (Cognitive Science major) Faculty Mentor: Jeremy Yamashiro, Psychology Department

Barriers to Adopting Healthful Diets Across Cultural and Socio-economic Groups Dmitrius Rodriguez (Environmental Studies/Economics + Philosophy major) and Yang (Elaina) Li (Business Management Economics and Mathematics major) Faculty Mentor: Galina Hale, Economics Department

Vulnerability and Positionality in Fieldwork on Law Anushka Shah (Legal Studies and Intensive Psychology major) Faculty Mentor: Mark Fathi Massoud, Politics Department

GROUP 2

Building Environmental Belonging: Racial Inclusion and Diversity Among Undergraduates at UCSC Kimberly “Kimie” Dare (Environmental Studies major) and Jianjia Gettinger (Environmental Studies and Psychology major) Faculty Mentors: Flora Lu and Emily Murai, Environmental Studies Department

Faculty Diversity in California Environmental Studies Departments: Implications for Student Learning Amani Taylor (Environmental Studies major) and Arien Hernandez (Environmental Studies major) Faculty Mentor: Sikina Jinnah, Environmental Studies Department

Profiling First-Generation Faculty: On Making Sense of Racial/Ethnic Identity in First-Generation Visibility Campaigns Nationwide Kimberlie Hatch (Cognitive Science and Psychology major) Faculty Mentor: Rebecca Covarrubias, Psychology Department

Optimizing Feedback to Enhance Student Learning Kaylie Kurland (Cognitive Science major) Faculty Mentor: Hannah Hausman, Psychology Department

Suddenly Distant: Teachers’ Work in the Context of COVID-19 Lila Harte (Literature/Education major) Faculty Mentor: Lora Bartlett, Education Department

Educational Justice across Digital Divides: Building and Sustaining a Community Partnership during COVID-19Jesica Garcia Garcia (Sociology major)Faculty Mentor: Cynthia Lewis, Education Department

GROUP 3

Chimpanzee Video Coding Team Payton Sime (Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology major) and Lauryn Hobbs (Anthropology and Psychology major) Faculty Mentor: Vicky Oelze, Anthropology Department

Who Saves Whom? Compassionate Economies of Care in Animal Rescue Sam Bass (Anthropology) and Dee Cappelli (Anthropology major) Faculty Mentor: Lissa Caldwell, Anthropology Department

Ecosystem Services and Shade Management in Coffee Agroecosystems: Ecology and Application Robyn Fowler (Environmental Studies major) and Jenny Hsu (Ecology and Evolution major) Faculty Mentor: Stacy Philpott, Environmental Studies Department

Phenology Observers on Social Media Luke Hamilton (Environmental Science major) and Caitlin Schilt (Environmental Studies/Economics major) Faculty Mentor: Kai Zhu, Environmental Studies Department

4:20pm Rebecca Covarrubias, Associate Professor of Psychology and faculty mentor in the Building Belonging program

4:25pm Closing Remarks

Diverse Voices 2021: Sheldon Logan
2021-05-26 17:00
“My Journey from Jamaica to Google: From Majority to Minority.”

Diverse Voices is a professional speakers series spotlighting industry leaders and Baskin Engineering Students.

Register Here

Sheldon Logan Senior Software Engineer- Google

Tech For Social Good Project Showcase
2021-06-04 14:30 - 16:00
Please join us on June 4th from 2:30 until 4:00 pm for a showcase of UCSC’s Tech For Social Good teams from both the 2019 and 2020 funding periods. Teams from both years have faced an unprecedented series of challenges – from student strikes to wildfires to a global pandemic lockdown – and have shown tremendous tenacity and creativity in moving their visions closer to completion. We’re excited to celebrate their progress and learn where they plan to take their projects next.

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The schedule of presentations is as follows:

2:30-2:35 pm: Welcome, introduction2:35-2:42: The Cookie Problem2:42-2:49: Circus-Themed Physical Rehabilitation App2:49-2:56: ReFuel: Harnessing Synthetic Biology to Build a Plastic-to-Biofuel Pipeline.2:56-3:02: Project Pasithea3:02-3:09: The Gateways Project3:09-3:17: Wonderfil at UCSC3:17-3:24: weBLACK3:24-3:31: Enhancing Climate Change Education Through Personalized Scientific Communications on Phenology3:31-3:38: Ocean Sustainability Autonomous Boats3:38-3:45: Revitalizing Everett’s Digital Toolkit & Educational Outreach3:45-4:00: Follow-up discussion/questions, wrap-up
