UCLA Undergraduate Education Initiatives invites the Bruin community and broader public to participate in a year-long series of events inspired by the UCLA Cluster Program’s model of dynamic, multidisciplinary engagement with a “Big Idea.”
For the 2020-21 academic year, the Big Idea is the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. All events will be live-streamed and open to everyone.
Upcoming Event
Past Events
Please check back often for program updates. Reach out to Dr. Sara Burdorff with any comments or questions about this series.
The goals of this “Big Idea” series include:
To bring people together, to help understand the COVID-19 pandemic from a diverse range of perspectives.
The pandemic has touched every aspect of our lives, in every corner of the world.
Each event in this series will focus on one broad topic related to COVID-19, asking questions and offering insights into key areas of impact—including politics and media; race and social inequality; education and childhood development; mental health; bioscience; the environment; and global culture.
To promote engagement with a particular “Big Idea.”
Cluster courses at UCLA take our students’ experiences of shared conversation with faculty and other leaders, and build on them to generate impactful, action-driven awareness of important ideas.
Following this model on a larger scale, each event in this Community Cluster series will be accompanied by expert recommendations for further reading, places to learn more, and opportunities to get and stay involved. With these curated resources, we hope to enhance awareness, build connections, and inspire further action among our participants.
To enable broader participation in the UCLA Cluster program experience.
The opportunity to take a Cluster is usually available only to our first-year students. This program will allow all of our students, their families, our alumni, and community members—local, national, and global—unprecedented access to this unique way of learning at UCLA.
For more information about these challenging, dynamic courses, please visit https://www.uei.ucla.edu/academic-programs/ucla-cluster-program/
Our events, like our clusters, will be dialogue-based, and welcome a wide variety of voices into generative and respectful conversation.
FALL
The 2020 Election, Public Perspectives, and COVID-19
How has COVID-19 changed the way Americans approach politics? How do personal beliefs affect the way we behave during the pandemic? How do we study what ordinary people think and say about COVID-19 in America? Our panel of experts will consider all these questions and more, as they discuss voting and voter behaviors, polling and public opinion, and the spread of internet conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Special welcome delivered by Adriana Galván, Dean of Undergraduate Education.
A special thank you to our co-sponsors, UCLA Alumni and the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative Voting Rights Project.
Moderator
Sonni Waknin is the Managing Law Fellow at the UCLA Voting Rights Project and a UCLA School of Law class of 2020 Graduate and graduate of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy Program. Sonni believes that to ensure an equitable democracy, elections must be free, fair, and devoid of systemic racism. Voting is the right that protects all other rights and must be defended. Sonni recently worked on the UCLA Voting Rights Project: Vote-By-Mail: Debunking the Myth of Voter Fraud in Mail Ballots, a report aimed at addressing the concerns associated with vote-by-mail programs. Sonni has wanted to be a voting rights litigator since she was in high school. Sonni currently works on all of the VRP’s project areas and is especially involved in the litigation docket and vote by mail research. Previously, Sonni interned with the ACLU Voting Rights Project and for Common Cause’s National Redistricting Project.
Speakers
Keith Chen is a Professor of Behavioral Economics with tenure at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His research blurs traditional disciplinary boundaries in both subject and methodology, bringing unorthodox tools to bear on problems at the intersection of Economics, Psychology, and Biology.
Tim Tangherlini is Professor in the Department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley, where he also serves as graduate advisor in the Folklore program. He has worked on computational approaches to stories and storytelling over the past three decades. Under the auspices of the NSF’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, he co-directed a program on Culture Analytics, as well as an NEH Institute on Network Analysis for the Humanities. His current work focuses on generative models of common story genres such as legend, rumor, personal experience narratives, and conspiracy theories.
Lynn Vavreck is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a contributing columnist to the New York Times and was a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival. At UCLA, she teaches courses on campaigns and elections, as well as a Cluster course on the 1960s.
COVID-19 Resources
COVID-19 Multilingual Resource Hub
(a collaboration between UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center and Fielding School of Public Health)
A UCLA Health Survey to help track (and stop) the spread of COVID-19: https://stopcovid19together.org/
National Voting Resources
How to Find Polling Place
https://www.nass.org/can-i-vote/find-your-polling-place
Apply to be a Poll Worker
https://www.nass.org/can-i-vote/become-a-poll-worker
More on This Event’s Topics
More on the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, including the Voting Rights Project
https://latino.ucla.edu/votingrights/
More on Sonni Waknin’s work with the UCLA’s VRP
https://law.ucla.edu/news/students-drive-push-voting-rights-amid-covid-19-outbreak
Keith Chen’s paper on Stay-at-Home Orders and Political Affiliation
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty_pages/keith.chen/papers/WP_StayAtHomeOrders_and_COVID19.pdf
More articles from Professor Chen, especially on partisanship and behavioral effects
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty_pages/keith.chen/articles.htm
Tangherlini, et al.’s published article on COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13783
Podcasts about more of Professor Tangherlini’s work on Conspiracy Theories
https://www.mike-walsh.com/podcast/tim-tangherlini
https://www.parsingscience.org/2020/08/18/tim-tangherlini/
An article about Tangherlini’s conspiracy mapping
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-conspiracy-theories-emergeand-storylines-fall.html
More on Lynn Vavreck’s Nationscape polling
https://www.lynnvavreck.com/nationscape
An article by Professor Vavreck on COVID-19 and Voter Choice
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/upshot/polling-trump-virus-election.html
More about our Community Event Partners
Puerto Ricans in Action
https://www.puertoricansinaction.com/
Positive Results Center
WINTER
Education and Development: Schools, Kids, and COVID-19
What specific effects has the pandemic had on children and adolescents? How are educators rising to the challenges of COVID-19? What impacts have school closures and remote learning had on gaps in educational equity and academic achievement? How might the pandemic be affecting the neurological and socioemotional development of young people? What can we do to foster resilience in children, adolescents, and families during these difficult times? Our panel of experts will consider all these questions and more, as they discuss coping, trauma, education, and growing up in a global pandemic.
Moderator
Dr. D’Artagnan Scorza believes that education can be used as a tool for civic and social empowerment in order to advance justice in communities. Currently serving as the inaugural Executive Director of Racial Equity for Los Angeles County, Dr. Scorza’s work has centered on building leaders who fight for equity in communities and schools. He founded and was the Executive Director of the Social Justice Learning Institute, and served the Inglewood Unified School District as President of the Board of Education.
Dr. Scorza serves as a lecturer in the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA, is a UC Regent Emeritus and is the current President of the UCLA Alumni Association. For his work paving the way in advocacy, policy and philanthropy, he was recognized as one of the 40 Emerging Civic Leaders under 40 in 2018 and he received the UCLA Recent Graduate Achievement Award in 2016.
Speakers
Adriana Galván is Dean of Undergraduate Education and Professor of Psychology at UCLA. She is the Co-Executive Director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent and Director of the Adolescent Neuroscience Lab, where she studies the adolescent brain, motivation and learning in youth.
Dr. Sheryl Kataoka is Professor Emeritus in the UCLA Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry where she serves as the Associate Program Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship. She is also in the Division of Population Behavioral Health where she leads school-based partnerships to improve prevention of traumatic stress and enhance resilience in school-based services as part of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health-UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence.
John Rogers is a Professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Faculty Director of Center X, which houses UCLA’s Teacher Education Program, Principal Leadership Program, and professional development initiatives. He also serves as the Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA).
COVID-19 Resources
COVID-19 Multilingual Resource Hub
(collaboration between UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center and Fielding School of Public Health):
A UCLA Health Survey to help track (and stop) the spread of COVID-19: https://stopcovid19together.org/
UCLA Geffen School of Medicine #TeamLA Community Resources and Support:
https://www.racialhealthequity.org/covid19
More on This Event’s Topics
(including links to resources, support, and ways to give and get help)
UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS):
https://www.counseling.ucla.edu
UCLA Campus and Student Resilience Program:
https://www.resilience.ucla.edu/
More on Dean Galván’s Work
Center for the Developing Adolescent:
https://developingadolescent.org/
Washington Post article about the adolescent brain: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-teenage-brains-can-teach-us-about-thinking-creatively/2020/03/02/c1d96556-574c-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.htm
More on Dr. Kataoka’s Work
DMH+UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence (COE—offering training opportunities and professional resources to sustain systems of care that are both trauma and resilience informed):
https://www.wellbeing4la.org
COE COVID-19 Resources:
https://learn.wellbeing4la.org/topic?k=covid19
COE Series for Educators During COVID-19:
https://www.wellbeing4la.org/educators-overcoming-under-stress-a-new-series-designed-for-educators-during-covid-19/
Students interested in volunteering with the center can contact Shanna Rosenberg
More on Professor Rogers’s Work
Center X (transforming public schools):
https://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/
UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA):
https://www.idea.gseis.ucla.edu/
“Learning Lessons: U.S. Public High Schools and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spring 2020”:
More on Dr. Scorza’s Work
Dr. Scorza’s Website (including community links and volunteer opportunities):
https://www.dartagnanscorza.com/
Social Justice Learning Institute:
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies:
PATHS UP Engineering Research Center (changing the paradigm for the health of underserved populations by developing revolutionary and cost-effective technologies and systems):
More on Dr. Lester’s Work
UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center:
Family Stress, Trauma and Resilience Clinic at UCLA (parenting resources and find a provider):
https://nfrc.ucla.edu/STARClinic
FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) Program (resilience training for military families):
EMPWR Program (Promoting Wellbeing & Resilience in LGBTQ Mental Health): https://www.uclahealth.org/empwr/our-team
Dr. Lester on COVID’s impact on Families:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dfIlkNcI_E
UCLA Division of Population Behavioral Health:
More about our Community Event Partners
Puerto Ricans in Action
https://www.puertoricansinaction.com/
Positive Results Center
Trauma Informed LA
SPRING
Race, Inequity, and COVID-19
What has COVID-19 taught us about systemic inequity in America? How has the pandemic affected the way we think about race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and their relationship to health-outcome disparities? What other issues of racial and social justice has the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized or exacerbated, and what comes next? Our panel of experts will consider these questions and more as they discuss the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on a number of vulnerable groups in the US, including African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and incarcerated populations.
Moderator
Sonja Diaz is a practicing civil rights attorney and policy advisor. As Founding Director of UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative (LPPI), Diaz co-founded the first multi-issue policy think tank focused on Latinos in the University of California. Diaz is responsible for overseeing all aspects of LPPI, including strategy, research, mobilization, and leadership.Diaz routinely briefs state legislators and local elected officials from across the U.S. on evidence-based governance and emerging trends in domestic policy.
Prior to LPPI, Diaz served as policy counsel to U.S. Sen. Kamala D. Harris during her first and second terms as California’s attorney general, managing legal and policy issues of statewide and national importance, including civil rights, consumer protection, criminal justice, immigration, and privacy and technology policy.
Speakers
Laura Abrams is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Welfare, in the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her scholarship focuses on improving the well being of youth and young adults with histories of incarceration. Her ethnographic studies have examined youths’ experiences of criminality, risk, and institutions seeking to reshape their identities through both therapeutic and punitive practices. She is currently involved in several studies concerning juvenile justice, reentry, and transition age youth both locally and globally.
Randall Akee is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at UCLA. Previously, he served as a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Akee completed his doctorate at Harvard University in June 2006 and is an applied microeconomist by training.
Courtney S. Thomas Tobin is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California–Los Angeles. Her research examines the social, psychological, and biological pathways that contribute to the health and longevity of Black Americans. As a medical sociologist, she integrates traditional sociological theories with perspectives from public health, social psychology, medicine, and the biological sciences to better understand the causes and consequences of long-standing Black–White differences in health. She also considers the multiple ways that racial minority status shapes the everyday experiences and health trajectories of Black Americans across the life course.
COVID-19 Resources
COVID-19 Multilingual Resource Hub
(collaboration between UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center and Fielding School of Public Health):
A UCLA Health Survey to help track (and stop) the spread of COVID-19: https://stopcovid19together.org/
UCLA Geffen School of Medicine #TeamLA Community Resources and Support:
https://www.racialhealthequity.org/covid19
CDC National COVID-19 Vaccine Information
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/index.html
California COVID-19 Vaccine Information
https://covid19.ca.gov/vaccines/
More on This Event’s Topics
CDC on COVID-19 and Race
CDC on Health Equity
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html
Article on Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity
UCLA’s Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health, COVID-19 Task Force
https://www.racialhealthequity.org/covid19taskforce
More on Professor Abrams’s Work
Interviews with UCLA Alumni Social Workers on the Front Lines of COVID-19
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7010224
Article about the Luskin Interviews
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/perseverance-amid-the-pandemic
Professor Abrams on the COVID-19 Heroes Podcast
https://luskin.ucla.edu/covid-19-reinforces-racial-health-disparities-abrams-says
More on Professor Akee’s Work
Marketplace Podcast, on COVID-19 Outreach to Native American Communities
Co-Authored Brookings Article, “Natives are dying of COVID-19 at shocking rates”
EconoFact Article, on disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Indigenous Peoples in the US
https://econofact.org/covid-19-impact-on-indigenous-peoples-in-the-u-s
Featured interview on Turtle Talk, American Indian Reservations and COVID-19
https://turtletalk.blog/2020/04/25/new-research-on-covid-19-infection-rates-in-indian-country/
Open Letter on Inequities and the COVID-19 Response, with Chandra Ford, et al.
https://lasocialscience.ucla.edu/2020/04/02/open-letter-on-inequities-and-the-covid-19-response/
More on Dr. Thomas Tobin’s Work
Sunshine Parenting Podcast, Race-Based Stress of Black Americans and Coping Strategies
SPQ Podcast on Co-Authored Article, “Race and SES Differences in Psychosocial Resources”
California Initiative for Health Equity & Action
https://healthequity.berkeley.edu/people/courtney-s-thomas-tobin-phd
More on Director Diaz’s Work
UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI)
California Health Report, co-authored opinion article, “How to Right the Injustices of COVID-19”
Governing Q&A on Immigrant Rights, Social Justice and Post-Pandemic Planning
https://www.governing.com/next/Immigrant-Rights-Social-Justice-and-Post-Pandemic-Planning.html
Links to three articles on vaccine distribution disparities, and prioritizing disadvantaged communities
https://luskin.ucla.edu/diaz-on-ensuring-equitable-distribution-of-covid-19-vaccines
Study by LPPI: Examination of Prevalence/Impact of COVID-19 by Race/Ethnicity in LA and NYC
https://latino.ucla.edu/research/covid-19-in-vulnerable-communities/
Featured Interview, NYT Article on COVID-19 Health Disparities
LPPI Webinar, COVID-19’s Impacts on California’s most vulnerable communities
https://latino.ucla.edu/event/effects-of-covid-19-on-californias-vulnerable-communities/
LPPI Research Library, for numerous other articles, interviews, and resources on COVID-19
https://latino.ucla.edu/issue/covid-19/
More about our Community Event Partners
Puerto Ricans in Action
https://www.puertoricansinaction.com/
Positive Results Center
Trauma Informed LA
Please check back often for program updates. Reach out to Dr. Sara Burdorff with any comments or questions about this series.