Campus + Community Publications & Spotlights
Campus + Community Spotlights
Decolonize the Surf
David Crellin created Decolonize the Surf for his Master of Fine Arts thesis in Digital Arts New Media. The project was created to present research about the history of representation and racism in surf culture and to encourage meaningful conversation in the surfing community around these issues.
A site-specific art and research project, Decolonize The Surf deployed over 400 surf-style stickers throughout surfing locales (surf spots, surf shops, cafes, parking lots, etc) from San Francisco to San Diego. The stickers, embedded with QR codes for scanning, introduce countervailing narratives that challenge typical surf histories and problematize assumptions of white normativity in the sport.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
The Psychological and Social Benefits of Agriculture with the Homeless Garden Project
Trevin Dace, a 2022 UCSC Sociology BA graduate, began his involvement with HGP by volunteering, which led to a summer internship. Inspired by his involvement, he wrote his senior thesis in collaboration with the Homeless Garden Project Farm from May 2021 to May 2022. His goal was to understand the physiological and social benefits of agriculture for the trainees (those affected by homelessness working through the program), volunteers, and staff who work on the farm.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
The Blum Center & Second Harvest Food Bank Partner to Address Food Security in Santa Cruz County
Since 2018, UCSC’s Blum Center and Professor of Psychology Heather Bullock has collaborated with their long-standing partner Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County, to better understand food insecurity across the region. Through engaged research involving Second Harvest staff along with UCSC faculty and graduate students, this partnership has found new ways to understand, track, and address food insecurity in Santa Cruz County.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Watsonville is in the Heart
Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) is an initiative organized by Assistant Professor of History Kathleen Gutierrez and Associate Professor of Sociology Steve McKay in collaboration with Roy Recio, founder of the Tobera Project aiming to preserve and uplift the history and heritage of Filipino families in Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley. In April 2022, the initiative launched a digital archive, directed by History graduate student Meleia Simon-Reynolds and HAVC graduate student Christina Ayson Plankdocumenting the stories of the “manong” generation (Ilokano/Tagalog for “older brother”) of Filipino migrant farmworkers who first settled in the Pajaro Valley in the early to mid-twentieth century.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Making an Exoneree
In fall 2021, Sharon Daniel, Professor of Film and Digital Media launched a two-quarter course titled “Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” co-taught with Georgetown professors Marc Howard and Marty Tankleff. The course reinvestigated questionable cases, produced short documentaries that made the case for wrongful conviction, and created social media campaigns calling for exoneration.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
We Belong Too
Professor of Psychology Regina Langhout and Associate Professor Steve McKay worked with the United Way’s Youth Action Network (YAN) to pilot an engaged research project titled We Belong Too. Combining youth participatory action research with undergraduate student experiential learning, the project explores what local youth find compelling to study and what they are looking for from their adult allies.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Playworks
Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca London has been working with Playworks since 2008. Their work involves helping schools to improve playtime through strategies to make recess safe, healthy, and engaging, and to provide students with tools to manage their own play, solve conflicts that arise, and strengthen their social and emotional skills.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Your Future is Our Business
Assistant Professor of Computational Media David Lee leads the Tech4Good Lab, directing research on scaling experiential education and supporting community collaboration at the intersection of computing and society. With undergraduates in his spring 2022 course, he partnered with Your Future is our Business to create several projects aimed at supporting their mission of improving middle and high school students’ academic and technical skills.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Thinking Globally about Okinawa
The Okinawa Memories Initiative, a collaboration between Associate Professor of History Alan Christy and the Okinawan Association of America (OAA), aims to rethink the history of postwar Okinawa by focusing attention on the Okinawan diaspora.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative
Since the fall of 2021, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies Chris Benner has been working with the Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative (SIEDI). Together with Institute for Social Transformation staff and Everett Program students, they support a cohort of nine community-based organizations as they work to build a more inclusive and equitable economy for the families and communities of the Salinas Valley.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Invisible Labor on California’s Central Coast
Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film explores the history of labor in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through tap dance, Mexican Zapateado, Son Jarocho, Afro-Caribbean movement, and live music. The film is the culmination of a years-long collaboration between Professor of Film and Digital Media John Jota Leaños, San Francisco-based dance company La Mezcla, and non-profit Ayudando Latinos a Soñar.
To read more, download the full Campus + Community Spotlight issue below.
Campus + Community Publications
The Right to Play: A Policy Guide to California Recess Priorities
February 2022
Play is a critical input to positive child and youth development. Recess is the only time in the school day when students can learn and practice social and emotional skills as well as be physically active, connect with friends, and take a break from the structure of the classroom. Today, in the aftermath of the trauma and isolation wrought by COVID-19, California’s students need the healing time of recess. Authored by Rebecca London, Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.
Community-Engaged Research (CER) in Contentious Times: Some Reflections
Winter 2022
Miriam Greenberg reflects on the CISER project No Place Like Home, which addressed the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz County. The power of the project, as well as the friction it caused, was rooted in the historical, political, and place-based conjuncture in which it emerged—one that made their research topic both extremely timely and divisive.
Critical Engagement: Deepening Partnerships for Justice
Winter 2022
Resurgent “culture wars” and American partisan politics have once again put higher education on the hot seat, and universities find themselves on the defensive, fending off charges of elitism, liberal bias, and irrelevance. Community-engaged research (CER) has become increasingly common on today’s campuses as part of this counter-campaign. Steve McKay outlines attempts at the UCSC to develop a critical CER model.
Research for, by, and about the People
Winter 2022
Rebecca London writes on her experience and expertise with community-engaged research, arguing that rather than sequester community-engaged research to the sidelines of academia, sociology should elevate it as a rigorous, theoretically rich, and ethical way to conduct research and advance social justice.
Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Service at UC Santa Cruz
April 2021
This report is the first product of the Campus + Community center. It details results from a campus-wide survey of UC Santa Cruz faculty and staff about their community-engaged research and teaching.
