WESTWOOD, CA – DECEMBER 1, 2014. College of Letters and Science photography.
As universities across the nation adjust to remote instruction in an effort to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, UCLA is working to make the transition smooth and to ensure that amid the stress of an uncertain time, no undergraduate student is left behind because of financial need.
An innovative program showcasing the strength of the UCLA community, called the Bruin Tech Award, launched this week, initiated by Patricia Turner, senior dean of UCLA College. The program offers an emergency award of up to $1,000 to support students who may not have the technology at home needed to access online classes, such as up-to-date computers or wi-fi. More than 40 awards were approved on the first day the funds were offered.
“This is an award, not a loan, that we hope will help UCLA students who may not have the resources to purchase the technology at home on their own to continue to excel in their courses in a virtual environment,” said Turner, who, in addition to her role at the College, also serves as vice provost of undergraduate education.
Bruin Tech funds will be distributed through UCLA’s financial aid office. Turner has been working closely with Roxanne Neal, assistant vice provost, to roll out aid rapidly to any undergraduate student in need who already is approved for financial aid. The office also is taking a variety of factors into account before determining eligibility.
“Our hope was to match the technical needs that students have for their courses without them worrying about the financial implications,” Neal said. “We want to make sure that students have the same access they traditionally get from campus computer labs and services. Dean Turner was instrumental in making this happen.”
Eligible undergraduate students may purchase laptops, tablets or hotspots at the UCLA Store in the Ackerman Union, which is the fastest method, or purchase their own equipment and submit the receipt for reimbursement. Financial aid administrators are asking students to use only the funds they need so that other students also may benefit.
Turner is currently using “every penny” of her vice provost’s discretionary undergraduate education scholarship fund, given by donors to UCLA’s Centennial Campaign for “rainy day” needs, which totals about $90,000. She was concerned it may not be enough. But when she unveiled the idea at a leadership meeting this week, other leaders across campus were quick to jump in and offer support.
“I am so touched and heartened by how the UCLA community demonstrates how much it cares for our most vulnerable students during this crisis,” said Eileen Strempel, dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. “The Herb Alpert School of Music also is pledging to support the Bruin Tech award for students across campus — transcending school affiliations.”
Others schools and divisions across campus, including the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA the Anderson School of Management — neither of which have undergraduate enrollments — also have been quick to pledge support.
Antonio Bernardo, dean of UCLA Anderson, has transferred $100,000 to the effort. The fund has now grown to about $280,000, and Turner said she hopes that once word is out, others both on and off campus will want to be part of this effort to support students.
“This is another example of the commitment of our leadership to ensuring that every student is successful at UCLA,” said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, vice provost for enrollment management.
UCLA as an institution had a head start in its transition to nearly all remote classes, thanks to its online teaching and learning initiative launched in 2014 in cooperation with the University of California.
“We are fortunate, but no matter how much we prepare, there are always going to be additional needs that arise in the moment,” Turner said. “I’m so proud to be here at UCLA, where colleagues across campus are looking out for all Bruins who need support — that’s truly what makes UCLA an unparalleled learning community.”
For more information or to submit a request for Bruin Tech Award support, visit https://ucla.in/2TR1G2a.
People who don’t know Neil Garg may be shocked to learn he has made organic chemistry — the chemistry of molecules made of carbon — one of UCLA’s most beloved and popular undergraduate courses. Students wait for years to get into his class and do celebratory dances when they learn they’re enrolled.
Garg, the Kenneth N. Trueblood Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, recently explained how he made the subject so popular and shared some of his teaching techniques in an article published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In 2018, Garg became the recipient of the country’s premier university teaching award, the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, given once every two years by Baylor University.
His undergraduate course Chemistry 14D, “Organic Reactions and Pharmaceuticals,” is very demanding. On exams, he asks students — mostly second-year, non-chemistry majors — to solve difficult problems he did not learn to solve until his first year of graduate school at Caltech. Students, for example, are asked to create a reasonable chemical synthesis of molecules they have never seen before. By the end of his course, more than two-thirds of the class can solve these problems.
Neil Garg reveals the teaching techniques that helped him to win the country’s premier university teaching award. (Photo Credit: Coral von Zumwalt)
“What is also striking,” Garg writes, “is that the students show impeccable creativity in their solutions, often providing reasonable responses that bear no resemblance to what is shown on the answer key, earning full credit. … My goal is always for students to do extraordinary things and learn to solve the hardest problems I can offer.”
In student surveys about Chemistry 14D more than two-thirds of the students rate their interest in organic chemistry as high, and fewer than 4% rate their interest in the subject as low. This is a dramatic shift from the start of the course when fewer than 10% reported a high rating, and more than 60% reported their interest as low.
In the article, Garg, who is also chair of UCLA’s department of chemistry and biochemistry, but not currently teaching organic chemistry, offers more than a dozen tips for teaching complex science. Among his practices:
-It’s essential to explain the relevance of organic chemistry to students and focus the class on problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity, rather than memorization. He teaches students that for each chemical reaction, there is a logic associated with how and why the reaction takes place. One of his students said she feels “like Sherlock Holmes when solving retrosynthesis problems.”
-He and his teaching assistants continually show students how much they care. Former student Elizabeth Matusov said, “He feels like a friend who happens to be teaching a really difficult class. He’s easily the best professor I’ve ever had. I would take any class with him. We all would.”
-He learns students’ names and calls on them by name, even in a class with 400 students. He stays in touch with hundreds of his former students, including some from 20 years ago.
-He teaches the fundamental vocabulary of organic chemistry and the rules of chemical reactivity, and performs in-class demonstrations with students.
-He poses questions that students answer with clickers, so he can immediately learn what they understand and what concepts require further explanation.
-More than 1,300 of his students have teamed up to make hundreds of music videos that have been viewed around the world hundreds of thousands of times. Many of the best are in Garg’s Chemistry 14D Music Video Hall of Fame, which features such student classics as “I Will Survive,” “Alkenes Are Used for These,” “Chem 14 Dreams Mashup” and “Say Alkane.” While teaching a semester at Baylor University last year, his undergraduate students teamed up to create 37 videos, including a chemistry adaptation of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
-He has created educational resources for students, including BACON (Biology And Chemistry Online Notes), a set of fun and engaging online tutorials that make connections between organic chemistry and sports, health, genetics and popular television shows, among other topics. Other chemistry resources that are free and being used worldwide are a smartphone app called “Backside Attack” that teaches organic chemistry concepts; qrchem.net; and rschemistry.com. QR Chem, a molecule visualization app created by Garg and some of his UCLA students, is being used in more than 160 countries.
Summing up his teaching philosophy, Garg asks, “How did organic chemistry become one of UCLA’s most popular classes? Teaching is all about the students. We must challenge them, support them, make them feel connected to the class and give them opportunities to do amazing things.”
In an acknowledgment at the end of the article, Garg thanks, among others, his “thousands of inspiring students.”
Garg and his family live in a campus residence hall as part of UCLA’s faculty-in-residence program, which allows him to dine with students, advise them, go on trips with them and inspire them daily with his passion for chemistry.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/NeilGargteachingphoto4byCoralvonZumwalt.jpg57603840Evelyn Tokuyamahttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngEvelyn Tokuyama2020-03-17 16:08:382020-03-17 16:13:24How did organic chemistry become so beloved at UCLA? Professor Neil Garg is glad you asked
Image showing the 3D atomic coordinates of molybdenum (blue), sulfur (yellow) and added rhenium (orange). A 2D image is shown beneath the 3D model. (Photo Credit: Dennis Kim/UCLA)
A UCLA-led research team has produced in unprecedented detail experimental three-dimensional maps of the atoms in a so-called 2D material — matter that isn’t truly two-dimensional but is nearly flat because it’s arranged in extremely thin layers, no more than a few atoms thick.
Although 2D-materials–based technologies have not yet been widely used in commercial applications, the materials have been the subject of considerable research interest. In the future, they could be the basis for semiconductors in ever smaller electronics, quantum computer components, more-efficient batteries, or filters capable of extracting freshwater from saltwater.
The promise of 2D materials comes from certain properties that differ from how the same elements or compounds behave when they appear in greater quantities. Those unique characteristics are influenced by quantum effects — phenomena occurring at extremely small scales that are fundamentally different from the classical physics seen at larger scales. For instance, when carbon is arranged in an atomically thin layer to form 2D graphene, it is stronger than steel, conducts heat better than any other known material, and has almost zero electrical resistance.
But using 2D materials in real-world applications would require a greater understanding of their properties, and the ability to control those properties. The new study, which was published in Nature Materials, could be a step forward in that effort.
The researchers showed that their 3D maps of the material’s atomic structure are precise to the picometer scale — measured in one-trillionths of a meter. They used their measurements to quantify defects in the 2D material, which can affect their electronic properties, as well as to accurately assess those electronic properties.
“What’s unique about this research is that we determine the coordinates of individual atoms in three dimensions without using any pre-existing models,” said corresponding author Jianwei “John” Miao, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. “And our method can be used for all kinds of 2D materials.”
The researchers examined a single layer of molybdenum disulfide, a frequently studied 2D material. In bulk, this compound is used as a lubricant. As a 2D material, it has electronic properties that suggest it could be employed in next-generation semiconductor electronics. The samples being studied were “doped” with traces of rhenium, a metal that adds spare electrons when replacing molybdenum. That kind of doping is often used to produce components for computers and electronics because it helps facilitate the flow of electrons in semiconductor devices.
To analyze the 2D material, the researchers used a new technology they developed based on scanning transmission electron microscopy, which produces images by measuring scattered electrons beamed through thin samples. Miao’s team devised a technique called scanning atomic electron tomography, which produces 3D images by capturing a sample at multiple angles as it rotates.
The scientists had to avoid one major challenge to produce the images: 2D materials can be damaged by too much exposure to electrons. So for each sample, the researchers reconstructed images section by section and then stitched them together to form a single 3D image — allowing them to use fewer scans and thus a lower dose of electrons than if they had imaged the entire sample at once.
The two samples each measured 6 nanometers by 6 nanometers, and each of the smaller sections measured about 1 nanometer by 1 nanometer. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.)
The resulting images enabled the researchers to inspect the samples’ 3D structure to a precision of 4 picometers in the case of molybdenum atoms — 26 times smaller than the diameter of a hydrogen atom. That level of precision enabled them to measure ripples, strain distorting the shape of the material, and variations in the size of chemical bonds, all changes caused by the added rhenium — marking the most accurate measurement ever of those characteristics in a 2D material.
“If we just assume that introducing the dopant is a simple substitution, we wouldn’t expect large strains,” said Xuezeng Tian, the paper’s co-first author and a UCLA postdoctoral scholar. “But what we have observed is more complicated than previous experiments have shown.”
The scientists found that the largest changes occurred in the smallest dimension of the 2D material, its three-atom-tall height. It took as little as a single rhenium atom to introduce such local distortion.
Armed with information about the material’s 3D coordinates, scientists at Harvard led by Professor Prineha Narang performed quantum mechanical calculations of the material’s electronic properties.
“These atomic-scale experiments have given us a new lens into how 2D materials behave and how they should be treated in calculations, and they could be a game changer for new quantum technologies,” Narang said.
Without access to the sort of measurements generated in the study, such quantum mechanical calculations conventionally have been based on a theoretical model system that is expected at a temperature of absolute zero.
The study indicated that the measured 3D coordinates led to more accurate calculations of the 2D material’s electronic properties.
“Our work could transform quantum mechanical calculations by using experimental 3D atomic coordinates as direct input,” said UCLA postdoctoral scholar Dennis Kim, a co-first author of the study. “This approach should enable material engineers to better predict and discover new physical, chemical and electronic properties of 2D materials at the single-atom level.”
Other authors were Yongsoo Yang, Yao Yang and Yakun Yuan of UCLA; Shize Yang and Juan-Carlos Idrobo of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Christopher Ciccarino and Blake Duschatko of Harvard; and Yongji Gong and Pulickel Ajayan of Rice.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and STROBE National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. The scanning transmission electron microscopy experiments were conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE user facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3Datomicstructure_edit.jpg8781170Evelyn Tokuyamahttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngEvelyn Tokuyama2020-03-13 15:23:172020-03-13 15:23:17UCLA-led research team produces most accurate 3D images of ‘2D materials’
From left, top row: Elaine Hsiao, Andrea Ghez, Sarah Stein. From left, bottom row: Heather Adams and Lynn Vavreck.
On International Women’s Day we give a shout-out to five incredible UCLA College faculty whose research and accomplishments are truly awe-inspiring—including discoveries about our galaxy’s black hole, landing on The Economist’s “Best of 2019” book list, spearheading one of the largest public opinion surveys for the 2020 election, revealing how anti-depressants affect our gut microbiome, and advocating for transfer students. See our highlights below.
Astronomers from UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered new objects that “look like gas and behave like stars,” said co-author Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group.
Senior author Elaine Hsiao, along with a team of researchers, hopes to build on their current study to learn whether microbial interactions with antidepressants have consequences for health and disease.
Humanities
Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Photo Credit: Caroline Libresco)
The Economist has named to its Best of 2019 list, “Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century,” by Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
Undergraduate Education
Heather Adams, first row center. (Photo Credit: Ivan Mendez/UCLA)
Adams was honored by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IWD_Pic_363x237-1.jpg237363Evelyn Tokuyamahttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngEvelyn Tokuyama2020-03-06 11:22:532020-03-12 10:22:13UCLA College Celebrates International Women’s Day
While at UCLA, Leia Yen founded Bruins for Urban Debate, an organization that mentors young debate students. Credit: El Camino College
Leia Yen, who graduated from UCLA in 2019, has won the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, making her the first Bruin to win in nine years, and also the first UCLA transfer student to receive the award.
The Marshall Scholarship — which finances one to two years of graduate study at any U.K. university — is awarded to approximately 45 American college graduates each year.
As a Marshall Scholar, Yen will pursue master’s degrees in digital humanities and digital culture and society at King’s College London.
“I see my studies at King’s College as a chance to develop an international, collaborative approach to digital humanities, not only between the U.S. and the U.K., but also with other institutions, nations and communities that have been underrepresented in traditional tech-related fields,” Yen said.
At UCLA, Yen focused on digital humanities, presenting two projects at Undergraduate Research Week and working as a research assistant for Ramesh Srinivasan, professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her research focuses on inequalities in technology and digital culture.
A native of Torrance, Yen transferred to UCLA from El Camino College, where she was an active member of the college’s speech and debate team. Even after transferring to UCLA, she continued coaching the El Camino debate team, because the experience was so transformative. Yen proudly noted that all of the students she mentored on the team last year had successfully transferred to UCLA.
She also coached high school debate teams in the Los Angeles Unified School District through the Los Angeles Metropolitan Debate League. At UCLA, she founded Bruins for Urban Debate, a student organization that mentors young debate students.
“I care about making education accessible and inclusive, and I see debate as a way of empowering students with the portable skills that will make them effective students, advocates and leaders, even after their debate careers come to an end,” she said.
Yen was drawn to UCLA after her experience at Bruin Day for transfer students, when she met faculty, staff and students who showed her how much UCLA values transfer students and the perspectives they bring to the campus. These supportive mentors inspired Yen to become a mentor at the UCLA Transfer Student Center.
“It’s important to me to support transfer students, because it really does make a difference when you have an advocate, friend, mentor or leader who knows how to speak and work from their own experiences,” Yen said. “I loved being a community college student, and I loved being surrounded by people who shared my love for the transfer community.”
When the British consulate called Yen to tell her that she had won the Marshall Scholarship, she was driving to a tournament for her El Camino debate team. She told the students the good news when she arrived.
“Throughout the tournament, I heard those students talking about the Marshall, Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships. And to my delight, they were thinking openly about what it would be like to pursue the scholarships themselves,” Yen said. “This is what representation does. Hearing my students dream big made me feel like I had won the Marshall all over again.”
Fourth-year UCLA student researcher Julia Nakamura
Meet fourth-year UCLA student researcher Julia Nakamura!
Julia majors in Psychobiology with a minor in Gerontology and is in our Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. The title of her research project is “The Role of Social Support in the Association between Early Life Stress, Depression, and Inflammation in Older Adults.”
How did you first get interested in your research project?
UCLA’s Cluster course “Frontiers in Human Aging” initially sparked my interest in aging populations. Through a service learning project at ONEgeneration Adult Day Care Center, I directly witnessed the burden of chronic disease in later-life adults and realized the pressing need to understand the mechanisms underlying these adverse health outcomes. Through my coursework in psychology, I became interested in the psychological factors that influence biological mechanisms and have the potential to positively impact the trajectory of chronic disease outcomes.
I began research in psychology in Dr. Julienne Bower’s Mind-Body Lab under the direction of Dr. Kate Kuhlman. We study the effects of childhood adversity on biological and behavioral responses to psychological stress. My experiences in this lab led me to wonder what factors could mitigate adverse physical and mental health outcomes from stressful experiences, specifically in older adults. My honors research project examines if social support moderates the relationship between early-life stress, depressive symptoms, and inflammation in older adults using data from the Health and Retirement Study.
What has been the most exciting aspect of your research so far?
Getting to test my own research questions has been the best part of this project. Specifically, it has been really exciting for me to run my own data analyses for the first time with Dr. Kuhlman’s guidance. Experiencing the “behind-the-scenes” of research and systematically moving through the steps of conducting an independent project has been really informative. This project has helped me to feel that I am truly developing the skill set of an independent researcher, which is very exciting!
What has surprised you about your research or the research process?
The immensely collaborative nature of research in academia was quite surprising to me when I first started on this project. Through my research, I’ve had the privilege of working with several scientists and professors who are experts in their respective areas of study. They have all welcomed me and helped to make my project as scientifically sound and comprehensive as possible. Research really builds on itself. Learning from other people’s projects and ideas, even if they are outside of your immediate area of study, can result in high levels of collaboration and really interesting research!
What is one piece of advice you have for other UCLA students thinking about doing research?
I would advise students interested in research to actively pursue research opportunities. There are plenty of amazing opportunities to be involved in research at UCLA, but you have to seek them out. It can be intimidating to take the initial steps to reach out to professors and discuss their research interests, but it is so worthwhile to find a lab and professor that are a good fit! I would recommend that students find an area of study that they are really passionate about. I think that your passion for your area of study and your continued curiosity will drive your research questions and help you get the most out of each research experience.
What effect do you hope your research has in your field, at UCLA, in your community, or in the world?
I hope to spend my life contributing to our understanding of the biobehavioral processes that promote mental and physical health across the lifespan. As the number of older adults (a majority of whom have at least one chronic disease) increase in our society, it is now more important than ever to identify potential intervention targets that can improve the trajectory of chronic disease outcomes.
This video for Carrying Our Ancestors Home features interviews with UCLA leadership and tribal cultural heritage and repatriation practitioners.
As a quiet darkness descended over the several thousand people gathered between Royce Hall and Powell Library eagerly waiting to celebrate UCLA’s Centennial, a voice broke the silence:
“UCLA acknowledges the Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of the Los Angeles basin. As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relations of the past, present and emerging.”
Those 15 seconds of alumna Cari Champion’s narration for the “Lighting the Way” light and projection show were a culmination of years of work and advocacy from dozens of people, including members of the Tongva community who collaborated with the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. It was also an opportunity for UCLA to demonstrate a commitment to acknowledging the history of the indigenous peoples of Southern California.
“It is an important gesture in Native tradition to ‘place yourself,’” said Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca), who in 2018 was named special advisor to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block on Native American and Indigenous affairs. “Introductions and acknowledgements place us in relationship with specific families, nations, geographies, cultural and political lineages. It is something we are taught to do from a young age as an anti-colonial tool to find connections between one other and remember that we are the result of bitter survival.”
The inclusion of the message in such a high-profile public forum — “Lighting the Way” capped the biggest UCLA Alumni Day ever — was for Goeman, who is chair of the American Indian Studies interdepartmental program and former associate director and interim director of the American Indian Studies Center, and her colleagues just a part of their tapestry of the center’s achievements.
The center’s work is not limited strictly to campus, of course. Over the years, people in the American Indian Studies Center have been at the forefront of efforts to build bridges between UCLA as an institution and members of local and state communities of people from indigenous backgrounds, especially the Gabrielino/Tongva, whose ancestors called the Los Angeles basin home for thousands of years before UCLA existed.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of UCLA’s four ethnic studies centers, which together make up the Institute of American Cultures. All four were launched in 1969 and designed to invest in research and projects that illuminate the struggles and uplift the experiences of people from marginalized communities.
For the American Indian Studies Center, known as the AISC, that involves embracing students and faculty from multiple indigenous backgrounds, those who continue to make up the smallest numbers in UCLA’s diverse population. Part of the AISC’s inclusive mission is to empower a strong campus community that helps recruit Native students and faculty and once here, support their academic success.
UCLA recognizes the cultural history of the region
Goeman shepherded the creation of the official statement that acknowledges the Tongva people. In August, Block encouraged all campus groups to adopt a form of the following statement at significant public events. (Click on links to hear the Tongva words spoken aloud):
UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to Honuukvetam (ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom, (elders) and ‘eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.
The land acknowledgment was used on behalf of UCLA officially for the first time at Bruin Day in April, an event that invites thousands of admitted high school students and their families and caregivers to campus, and the “Lighting the Way” centennial launch in May. American Indian Studies Center leaders and some campus units and professional schools had been incorporating it into their events and materials for a year before that.
“Sometimes if feels like very small steps, but they are important nonetheless, because for many decades, universities didn’t even take small steps at recognitions like this,” Speed said. “And this builds momentum for other policies and programs that consider the needs and desires of tribal communities.”
The American Indian Studies Center is hosting a conference on Oct. 15–16 titled, “Lighting a Path Forward: Land Grants, Public Memory and Tovaangar.” The first day is open to the public and includes a series of presentations on the history of land grant institutions, of which UCLA is one. Other presentations and panel discussions will highlight the state of American Indian education and consider how all of the University of California campuses can continue to forge stronger relationships with tribal communities.
A California tribal listening session includes representatives from the Gabrielino/Tongva, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, Chumash, and Acjachemen communities, as well as from the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians and Wintu.
“We want people to come away feeling like they made new connections and collaborations around important issues, and that they understand the responsibility of land grant institutions” Speed said.
A second day of closed workshops, as part Goeman’s special advisor programming, will hopefully yield ideas for white papers that will lay the groundwork for how universities might embrace those responsibilities, by prioritizing best practices that benefits indigenous people to establishing tangible government-to-government relations with tribal nations.
Leading efforts to return remains
For much of its 50-year history, faculty and students affiliated with the American Indian Studies Center have been deeply involved in efforts to return human remains of indigenous people to their ancestors. UCLA has been a leader in repatriations, much of its efforts led by Wendy Teeter, curator of archaeology in the Fowler Museum at UCLA and a lecturer in UCLA’s American Indian studies interdepartmental program.
A website launched this summer called “Carrying Our Ancestors Home” includes a timeline tracking UCLA’s path to almost complete repatriation. Videos featuring interviews with campus leadership and tribal cultural heritage and repatriation practitioners help underscore the powerful impact of repatriation. A large part of this project is giving communities their own space to work out tribal matters around repatriation and providing archival source material online, Goeman said.
The site is meant to help tribes and indigenous people navigate a process that is extremely complex and often met with resistance, Teeter said in May at an event during which she and Goeman launched the website.
In one of his final events as UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost of UCLA, Scott Waugh commended the efforts of the AISC to an invited audience from the Native community at that event.
“I know it is important for us to acknowledge where we are in place as well as time, to acknowledge the responsibilities of our shared history,” Waugh said. “I am also well aware that the history between Native peoples and institutions like ours can often be painful. While we cannot ignore our past, we can take steps to shoulder with respect and obligations that history places upon us. We can remember that the beauty of our state — the rivers, the ocean, mountains and deserts — was first experienced by the native and indigenous peoples who watched it before us and were the caretakers of it.”
Geography is something AISC-affiliated faculty take very seriously, knowing that Los Angeles and California are both home to some of the largest populations of humans of American Indian and indigenous descent.
Speed’s approach is to also invite students and faculty to also consider the nature of North American indigeneity at large and for scholars to confront ideas and stories about the indigenous people of Mexico and how their experiences with colonization are interconnected with American identities.
The center has offered critical support in recent years to scholars working on a web project called Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles, which seeks to tell layered stories from the city’s original inhabitants, especially the Gabrelino/Tongva and the Tataviam, as well as indigenous peoples who have come to call Los Angeles home by using digital maps and oral histories.
The AISC is about to embark upon one of its most ambitious research projects to date thanks to a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation that will help a team of researchers affiliated with the center tackle issues of race and water.
Speed, along with professor of anthropology Jessica Cattelino and Aradhna Tripati, professor in the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, will conduct community engaged research on water in the context of global warming in the southwestern United States.
“We’re really hoping this project brings together many disparate communities,” Speed said. “As a community collaboration project, part of what we are trying to do is decolonize the STEM field. With this research we’re bringing de-colonial methodologies into the sciences.”
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AISC50th-COAHvideo.jpg7981500Chris Ibarrahttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngChris Ibarra2019-10-17 14:40:252019-10-17 14:40:25UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center: 50 years of providing Native peoples a voice
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rocioimg.jpg34565184Robin Migdolhttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngRobin Migdol2018-07-19 13:40:202019-09-10 13:44:49Art gallery publishes undergraduate research on artist Patssi Valdez
