Dear Social Science Chairs, Faculty, and Staff Colleagues,
I’m excited to share our inaugural Social Sciences newsletter: Engaging LA, Changing the World.
Our goal is to publish this digital digest monthly during the academic year, to showcase the breadth and impact of our work — our discoveries, our celebrations, and our collective impact in Los Angeles and the world.
In each issue, we will spotlight faculty accomplishments and research, highlight graduate and undergraduate scholarship, and how our social science research, education and service is driving change locally and globally. It’s also important to me that we highlight staff accomplishments and their integral role in advancing our educational mission. This platform will also serve to better narrate, showcase, and simplify what we do, and how research, teaching and social science is transformative. Our aim is to amplify your work and by extension, its value to California and beyond.
Our newsletter will include a few lead articles featuring stories of our faculty, students, alumni, departments and research centers. The digest will also include a faculty news section to uplift our academic achievements. We hope to include faculty and student podcasts and other media that connect our research accomplishments to the local as well as the global by highlighting impact, engagement, and change; a social science that matters. As you know, every day, our faculty experts engage with prominent media outlets and publications that are shaping the public narrative — our newsletter will uplift a variety of these headlines as well. We have created a bookshelf section that will highlight new faculty books and seminal articles, and a section on upcoming events hosted by our departments and research centers that will more easily facilitate active engagement with some of our Division’s intellectual life.
As you explore our inaugural issue, I invite you to share stories and accomplishments from your own unit so that we can promote and amplify your faculty, staff, and students, and all the wonderful things that you (and your units) do to make UCLA and the Division of Social Sciences the special place that it is. You can use this form to submit your contributions now and into the future, the form will be updated periodically to reflect our evolving editorial direction. I encourage you to help us promote your unit, faculty, programs, and students.
Thank you for all that you do to shed light on the complexities of our society and to answer our world’s most urgent questions. The work that you do has never been more important and we hope this platform will enhance its reach and impact.
Sincerely,
Abel Valenzuela
Dean
UCLA Social Sciences