By Robin Migdol

Transfer Student Program students in zoom class (English 2 – Math and Science Cohort with Ms. Poston)

Going into his freshman year at UCLA, Daniel Juarez ’19 freely admits, “I had no idea what I was doing.”

The first member of his family to go to college, Juarez had fulfilled every requirement to get into UCLA, but he was lost when it came to the next steps like choosing which classes to take, navigating the campus and utilizing resources and extracurricular programs. An upperclassman from his high school in Moreno Valley told him about a summer program at UCLA that would help him acclimate to campus life. Juarez was sold.

“That was one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made,” Juarez said. “FTSP [Freshman Transfer Summer Program] really provided me with the foundation that I needed in order to excel [not only] academically at UCLA … but also in terms of networking and seeking opportunities. Were it not for that program, I would not have been introduced to various other programs that allowed me to enrich my undergraduate academic experience.”

UCLA’s Academic Advancement Program (AAP), now celebrating its 50th anniversary, launched FTSP to help incoming students from underrepresented and first-generation backgrounds transition to life at UCLA and feel a sense of belonging. The program for freshmen has been around since 1976; for transfers, it started in 1978.

“Oftentimes students gain entry into the university but don’t necessarily either feel welcomed or prepared, or it takes a while … to establish a sense of community,” said Dr. Jonli Tunstall ‘05, AAP’s director of pre-college and summer programs and an alumna of FTSP. “So the goals of the program are to make sure students are academically prepared for the challenge of UCLA, but also to ensure they can build community before the quarter even starts.”

FTSP, offered only for incoming freshman and transfer students who qualify for AAP membership, begins eight weeks before fall quarter starts. While some students commute, most live in the residence halls for the duration of the program. About 500 students participate each year.

Students are required to take three courses including a writing course; freshmen can choose either a science intensive track or writing intensive track. Transfers must also take a research course. Students also have the opportunity to take some of their courses for Honors credit.

For each course they take during FTSP, participants have access to an AAP peer learning facilitator, an undergraduate tutor who works with students in small groups. They also learn about campus resources, student groups, research programs and other opportunities that await them at UCLA.

While Juarez was at FTSP, Professor Tracy Johnson, currently UCLA College’s dean of life sciences and holder of the Keith and Cecilia Terasaki Presidential Endowed Chair, spoke to students about an undergraduate research program called Pathways To Success, which Juarez jumped at the chance to join. He was later able to parlay that experience into a position doing research in the lab of renowned Parkinson’s disease researcher Dr. Jeff Bronstein. A biology major and global health minor, Juarez also participated in AAP’s High AIMS (Achievement in Math and Science) program, which provides academic, career and mentoring support to AAP students interested in gaining admission to medical, dental or nursing school.

This fall Juarez is beginning his first year at the UCLA School of Dentistry. He credits the foundation he received at FTSP with getting him where he is today.

“I realized, oh wow [dentistry] is my calling. This is something I want to do as a career,” Juarez said. “All this was only possible because I did a program at the start of my undergraduate career. I was introduced to so many resources as an undergrad and I was able to take advantage of them … and get into these programs.”

For 2013 anthropology alumna Alexandra de la Torre, learning about AAP and FTSP on Bruin Day (for admitted students) solidified her decision to attend UCLA. Although she grew up in North Hollywood just 30 minutes from campus, she thought of UCLA as “daunting.”  The idea of being part of a   community of peers who were also first-generation students from underrepresented backgrounds reassured her that she would be comfortable and supported.

“I didn’t really have mentors in my life … who had been to college, and I was really scared, [because] obviously UCLA is hard,” de la Torre said. “At Bruin Day, everyone from AAP was so nice. Students from previous years were … telling us their perspective on how much they got out of the program and how it helped them to get on the right foot coming into UCLA.”

De la Torre noted that by starting their first year in the summer, FTSP students have extra time to adjust to the fast-paced quarter system, learn their way around campus and figure out how to balance their social lives and academics.

For the past two summers, FTSP has been offered virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although students couldn’t live and study together in person, FTSP staff put groups of students together into virtual dorm “floors” to help them build relationships. FTSP has focused on supporting students’ socio-emotional wellness through sessions with UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and the Rise Center (Resilience in Your Student Experience). Staff have also facilitated meetings with UCLA staff from other offices and programs who are eager to meet the new students.

De la Torre is now a veterinarian in Culver City. As it did for Juarez, FTSP paved the way for her academic and professional success as well as her sense of belonging and community at UCLA. She continued to return to AAP for peer counseling and tutoring as an undergraduate and also worked in the new student programs office and, after graduation, as a residence director for FTSP.

“Throughout FTSP and then throughout my years at UCLA, with AAP and all that they gave me, I always felt like someone had my back,” she said. “I think the program is really amazing because it gives students a sense of community and a lot of support. It really sets the students up for success.”

UCLA sociologist’s demographic tool clarifies impact of temporary ‘shocks’ like epidemics and natural disasters

By Jessica Wolf

iStock.com/imagedotpro

At its peak, COVID-19 drastically reduced the average human lifespan — by as much as nine years in one U.S. state — according to a new longevity metric developed at UCLA.

Sociology professor Patrick Heuveline devised the metric, called the mean unfulfilled lifespan, to assess the impact of temporary “shocks” like the novel coronavirus on average length of life. To date, the pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 4.2 million people worldwide.

The tool allows demographers to conduct fine-grained analyses in specific regions over various periods of time, offering a new and more dynamic way of gauging how different areas of the country and the world experience decreases in lifespans over the course of the pandemic, Heuveline said.

Heuveline’s analysis, published online in the open-access journal PLOS One, suggests, for example, that as COVID-19 peaked in New Jersey in mid-April 2020, the average lifespan in the state plummeted by almost nine years, the most dramatic example from the U.S.

Demographers typically calculate lifespan using a metric known as period life expectancy at birth, or PLEB, which is the average number of years a person born at a certain time would be expected to live if future death rates remained at present levels. When researchers factor in the impacts of a given cause of death — a steady increase in heart attacks or car accidents, for instance — they see how these factors can reduce PLEB.

However, calculating changes to life expectancy in this way cannot adequately capture the effect of large, temporary shocks like natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic, in which mortality conditions are rapidly shifting, Heuveline said.

To more clearly illustrate the impact of such phenomena, Heuveline’s mean unfulfilled lifespan measures the difference between the average age at death of individuals who died within a given time frame and the average age these people would have been expected to reach had there not been a temporary shock.

“As did a few other demographers, I initially tried to convey the mortality impact of COVID-19 by assessing how much life expectancies would decline during the pandemic,” he said. “When mortality conditions are continuously changing, however, life expectancies are hard to interpret, and I wanted to provide a more intuitive indicator of that mortality impact.”

► Read about Patrick Heuveline’s previous research on COVID-19 and life expectancy.

Heuveline demonstrated the mean unfulfilled lifespan by applying it to COVID-19 mortality data from regions with similarly sized populations, including New Jersey, Mexico City, Lombardy in Italy, and Lima, Peru. He compared decreases in life expectancy by calendar quarter (from March 31, 2020 to March 31, 2021) and using rolling seven-day windows (from March 15 to June 15, 2020). The latter analysis suggested that the mean unfulfilled lifespan peaked at 8.91 years in New Jersey, 6.24 years in in Mexico City, 6.43 years in Lombardy and 2.67 in Lima.

In addition, his study found that during the month of April 2020, the mean unfulfilled lifespan may have reached 12.7 years in the Guayas province of Ecuador.

Heuveline noted that uncertainties in calculating mean unfulfilled lifespan may arise from potential differences between deaths related to temporary shocks like the pandemic and actual or excess deaths — differences that, when accounted for, may push the peak unfulfilled lifespan figures seen in the study even higher. His analysis demonstrates how these issues can be factored into calculations.

Heuveline said he hopes the new metric will eventually be applied broadly as researchers seek to better understand the impact of epidemics, natural disasters and even violence on life expectancy.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

By Sean Brenner

Gary Nash

Gary Nash, a prolific historian of early America and a member of UCLA’s history department for more than 50 years, died July 29. He was 88.

Nash’s most celebrated work was “The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution” (1979), which highlighted the importance of non-elites in bringing about American independence. The book, which became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, reflected Nash’s view that U.S. history was shaped by the struggles of ordinary people trying to better themselves.

“He was undeniably one of UCLA’s greatest treasures and ranks among the most prolific and brilliant historians of any generation,” said UCLA distinguished professor Robin D. G. Kelley, who holds an endowed chair established in 2008 in Nash’s name. “He never wrote for the guild — professional historians — but for readers everywhere. But he knew that being a public intellectual was not a popularity contest measured by book sales; it meant being unpopular, confronting power without concern for the consequences.”

In 1997, three years after he retired from UCLA with the title of distinguished research professor, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Over the past two decades, he continued to support students and junior colleagues across the country and to produce new scholarship.

“Writings of Warner Mifflin: Forgotten Quaker Abolitionist of the Revolutionary Era,” co-authored with Michael McDowell, was published this summer, and his last manuscript, “Our Beloved Friend: The Life and Writings of Anne Emlen Mifflin,” co-authored with Emily Teipe, was recently completed. At the time of his death, he was collaborating with co-authors Clayborne Carson and Emma Lapsansky-Werner on revisions to their 2007 book “Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans.”

Nash, who earned UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1990, inspired generations of students. One, Carla Pestana, who earned her doctorate under Nash’s guidance in 1987, now heads UCLA’s history department and is the university’s Joyce Appleby Professor of America in the World.

Another, Damion Thomas, is the sports curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Thomas earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UCLA in the 1990s and his doctorate in 2002, and the first course he took at UCLA was taught by Nash. Thomas was engrossed from the opening lecture.

“Fifteen minutes into the class, he said, ‘Whoever controls the present will use their power to control the past in hopes of controlling the future,’” Thomas said. “In that one sentence, I began to learn two life-changing ideas. The first is that history is about power — power to define what matters and why it matters. The second thing is that history is actually not about the past; history is about the future. Because if you can control what people think about the past, you can influence what they believe is possible.

“I learned that in Professor Nash’s class, and from that point, I wanted to be a historian.”

Born July 27, 1933, in Philadelphia, Nash earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University before serving in the Navy for three years. (He continued his military service as a member of the Navy Reserve from 1958 through 1965.) Upon completing his doctorate at Princeton in 1964, he taught briefly there before coming to UCLA in 1966.

Among his most notable books was “Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America” (1974), a survey of early American history that reshaped historians’ approach to the American past. In addition to “Struggle for Freedom,” which he co-authored, his books on African American history included “Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840” (1988) and “The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution” (2006).

Kelley said Nash — as a citizen and as a teacher — responded emphatically throughout his career to the changing societal landscape.

After Los Angeles’ 1965 Watts Rebellion, Nash helped support groups like Operation Bootstrap, which promoted Black entrepreneurship and community-based economic cooperation in South Los Angeles. He introduced a UCLA course called Racial Attitudes in America as a direct response to the rebellion.

“He published 33 books throughout his career,” Kelley said. “But I would say the life he lived as an anti-racist activist, teacher, scholar and public intellectual should be recognized as his 34th.”

Nash’s leadership positions at UCLA included serving as dean of undergraduate and intercollege curricular development and as dean of the council on educational development. He also founded the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA, through which he worked with the National Council for History Standards to create history teaching standards with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education.

His expertise on teaching standards kept him engaged in the contentious national debate over how history is taught in K–12 schools. Pestana said historians have routinely expressed gratitude for Nash’s efforts on behalf of the discipline of history specifically and of education in general.

Nash spoke on the subject on the Economist’s “Checks and Balances” podcast in July.

“[Teachers] know you’re not going to have a very interesting, productive and useful history class if you exclude anything which would make any child uncomfortable or that would lead to any division of opinion,” he said. “In a liberal democracy, we want a division of opinion, for young people to grow up learning to express themselves, argue about [history, and] think hard about it. Patriotism is not just saluting the flag. It’s becoming responsible citizens who will take an active role in what’s going on around them.”

Nash is survived by his wife of 40 years, Cindy Shelton; his children, Brooke, Robin, Jennifer and David; and nine grandchildren.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA newsroom.