Category: Announcements
Engaging Los Angeles, Changing the World: Summer 2025
Welcoming a new academic year
Dear Social Sciences Community:
As we welcome the new academic year and new and returning Bruins back to campus, I am reminded of how each of us contributes to creating a memorable experience for our students in the coming weeks. I am also reminded of our collective commitment to our educational mission at a great public institution where discovery drives change and empirics are used to engage the social sciences for the public good.
Looking back, we kicked off the summer season honoring our Lifka Staff Excellence Award winners and the contributions of all the staff members of our division who support our students, our faculty and the many offices and services that allow our division to thrive. Our rankings, our divisional excellence, and our stature are a direct result of our faculty, our students, working together in the vital work of the academy.
In late spring and over the summer, I also announced the appointment of several dedicated faculty who have agreed to lead our departments and research centers for the next several years, including for the departments of American Indian Studies, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, Labor Studies, the Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center, LGBTQ Studies, and our Master of Social Science (MaSS) program.
Our research remains as impactful and urgent as ever. In the last few months, our faculty and research units have released numerous studies and reports that are helping the public make sense of, among other topics, our current labor market and employment trends, immigration policies and the social and economic impacts of the recent L.A. wildfires.
As I write, I also know that as we begin fall quarter, we share a collective sense of uncertainty. We are navigating truly unpreceded times without a ready and easily available playbook. Institutions of higher education face existential threats. I do not take these realities lightly, they weigh on me every day. Moving forward, we will have to make tough decisions and adjustments to navigate these precarious budgetary challenges and political climate.
Despite these conditions, there is not a group of dedicated individuals who I would rather be working with. I am confident that with our collective expertise, we will get through this challenging period — we have no choice but to get through it and I pledge to work closely with you, to communicate with transparency, and to keep our shared mission at the forefront.
The work of the Division of Social Sciences is transformative, and the impact of our faculty, students, and staff resonates in our local community and worldwide. Our impact makes our efforts critical and continues to drive and inspire my work every day.
Abel Valenzuela Jr.
Dean
UCLA Social Sciences
Engaging LA, Changing the World Newsletter: June 2025
Engaging LA, Changing the World Newsletter: May 2025
Launching UCLA’s Social Science Divisional Newsletter: ‘Engaging LA, Changing the World’
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 Jr.
Dean
UCLA Social Sciences