Monthly Archives: April 2018

Councilmember Paul Koretz listens intently to a student during UCLA Luskin Day at L.A. City Hall. (photos by Jonathan Van Dyke)

Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz attended the annual UCLA Luskin Day at L.A. City Hall on March 2, meeting with students and particpating in a conversation on homelessness issues in Los Angeles.

Afterwards, he participated in an interview with UCLA Advocacy, further elaborating on homelessness, partnering with the university, and how to become more civically engaged going into the 2018 elections.

The following is a transcript of the interview. Continue reading →

Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo and Luskin School of Public Affairs Dean Gary Segura participated in a special lunch conversation during her recent campus visit. (photos by Jonathan Van Dyke)

Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo has found success where there was once failure, a lesson in persistence she tries to impart on the next generation of civic activists and idealistic young people.

“My trajectory is very different than those who have been looking to run for office for a while,” she told an audience of students, alumni and faculty during a special lunch on UCLA’s campus.

Carrillo was invited by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI), in partnership with UCLA Government and Community Relations, for the second ever LPPI Diálogo, a conversation to discuss 21^st Century Leadership.

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David Schaberg (second from left), dean of Humanities in the UCLA College, visited with Congresswoman Mimi Walters (middle) during a recent D.C. trip.

Because Humanities is so woven into the fabric of everyday life and work, one might not realize UCLA advocates for critical funding for this division of the university from the federal government every year.

“Any job that requires that you learn a body of material: procedures, rules and laws that you then apply and act in accordance with, is fundamentally a job that is going to require the skills of a humanist,” said David Schaberg, dean of Humanities in the UCLA College.

Each year Schaberg and his fellow humanities deans across the nation converge on Washington, D.C. to meet with Congressmembers and their staff during the NHA (National Humanities Alliance) Humanities Advocacy Day. This year, Schaberg was able to meet directly with Mimi Walters, Congresswoman and UCLA alumna from Orange County, as well as a number of congressional staff members.

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Former State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman and former Democratic Congressmember and State Assemblymember Mel Levine draw upon their experiences in government.

Former State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman and former Democratic Congressmember and State Assemblymember Mel Levine may come from different sides of the political aisle, but their love of higher education has united them in a common cause as co-chairs of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education.

Both men came to politics in completely different ways.

“I’m, in many ways, a child of the 1960s — deeply concerned about civil liberties and civil rights,” said Levine, noting his opposition to the Vietnam War as a younger man and his desire to protect the coast and bolster higher education as sparks to the beginning of his political career.

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UCLA Samueli School of Engineering Dean Jayathi Murthy is greeted by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein during a recent trip to the nation’s capitol. (photos by Kathy Eiler)

What the students of the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering are working on, working toward, and graduating to, is often determined by U.S. federal government funding and partnerships, a fact Dean Jayathi Murthy knows all too well.

Keeping in contact with elected officials and demonstrating the value of the engineering school is of the utmost importance to her.

“I speak about engineering with an eye to the future,” she said, reflecting on a recent trip to Washington, D.C., where she participated in an engineering conference and met with major California representatives and several key Congressional committees in a group that included deans of other UCs and CSUs. “If you don’t invest in fundamental science and engineering ideas now, 50 years from now you aren’t going to have anything.”

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The UCLA coalition for UC Graduate Research Advocacy Day. (photos by Jennifer Brice)

UCLA contingent was there as part of the annual UC Graduate Research Advocacy Day

To help ensure that UCLA can continue turning its research into positive impacts throughout Los Angeles County, four graduate students recently traveled to Sacramento to lobby state legislators for more funding so they can continue that kind of difference-making work.

“The nice thing about graduate students is you sort of get two for one. You have them supporting the undergraduate population, and then, in addition to that, doing the research that is also an important part of the university’s mission,” said Leslie Rith-Najarian, who is a fifth-year doctoral student studying clinical psychology at UCLA.

Rith-Najarian, and three other grad students, along with Robin Garrell, dean of the graduate division, and associate dean of the graduate division Susan Ettner traveled to Sacramento for UC Graduate Research Advocacy Day.

Continue reading →