UCLA Luskin Day, co-sponsored by UCLA Government and Community Relations brought graduate students from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs to downtown LA on February 24 to interview and learn from local leaders in government, nonprofit agencies and the community. Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman hosted the group, led by Luskin faculty advisor Michael Lens, on the topic “Homelessness Governance Reform — Service-Led Models, Building More Housing, Better County-City Collaboration.”
UCLA has received more than 169,800 applications for fall 2023 admission, with approximately 145,900 coming from freshman applicants and nearly 24,000 from transfer applicants — making UCLA once again the most applied-to four-year university in the nation.
UCLA also continued to attract freshman applicants from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, with 41% of California freshman applications coming from first-generation students and 45% from low-income students.
A new initiative of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge intends to bring UCLA scholars together with community stakeholders to address a rotating list of four key topics related to sustainability: transportation, energy, water and ecosystems. The first program, called TRACtion — for Transformative Research and Collaboration — will tackle the city’s transportation challenges, and will tap the expertise of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.
UCLA social demographer Anne Pebley, a distinguished professor of community health sciences and sociology and a fellow at UCLA’s California Center for Population Research, teamed up with professors from Emory and Princeton universities and a UCLA graduate student to analyze sociodemographic trends among Mexican immigrants who were deported or voluntarily returned to Mexico. The researchers were the first to study the issue using data collected on both sides of the border, over a nearly 20-year period spanning the presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Each year, extreme heat kills more people in the U.S. than any other natural disaster. Los Angeles residents who are most likely to get around the city on foot or using public transportation will be among the populations who, in the coming years, will have the highest risks for death from heat-related causes. Research has demonstrated that bus shelters are a proven way to help mitigate the impact of extreme heat.
Researchers at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, in collaboration with the advocacy group MoveLA, analyzed how shelters are allocated across Los Angeles County, focusing on LA Metro bus stops that provide service to more than 560,000 daily riders. Their study is a snapshot of the county's largest agency: where shelters are and are not located and how these trends vary by heat levels, priority population status, city, county, supervisor, and state assembly and senate districts.
The LA Governance Reform Project was launched amid recent controversies at Los Angeles City Hall that have underscored the need for a transparent, accountable and community-driven system of government in the diverse and dynamic region. The project involves scholars and researchers from LA-area colleges and universities and has funding from philanthropic organizations including the California Community Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation. The group’s first task will be to produce recommendations for an independent redistricting process to be presented to policymakers in the coming months.
UCLA School of Law’s Behind Bars Data Project has launched a database that tracks the number of people who have died while incarcerated. As the federal government ceased reporting on deaths in custody in 2019, the project’s database is currently the only nationwide accounting of recent deaths in U.S. prisons. Sixteen state prison systems saw their mortality rate increase at least 90% from 2019 to 2020.
Constitutional law scholar Adam Winkler became the first UCLA professor to host a Reddit “Ask me anything.” Prompted by the spate of mass shootings in the U.S., Winkler, UCLA School of Law’s Connell Professor of Law, took to Reddit to provide context on historical and modern interpretations of U.S. gun laws.
President Michael Drake delivered remarks at an Assembly budget hearing on February 21 highlighting priorities for the University, including how UC is expanding access and affordability for California students, partnering with California State University and the California Community Colleges and solving California's complex challenges.
For the 2023-24 year, UC campuses are planning to grow by over 4,200 California undergraduates. This figure includes the replacement of 900 nonresident students with California residents at the Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego campuses. This robust undergraduate growth will occur in tandem with graduate enrollment growth.
When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and western Syria, medical students, faculty and staff rallied to put together a relief effort to send supplies to help those in need. Over the course of several days, donations were gathered at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, Geffen Hall and a distribution facility in the San Fernando Valley.
UCLA Health’s partnership with Project Lead the Way conducts a biomedical science curriculum aimed at inspiring high school students to pursue medical careers.
During a recent visit at El Segundo High School, six UCLA Health anesthesiologists fielded student questions — “What made you want to be a doctor?” “How long are your shifts?” “What do medical schools look for?” — before demonstrating ultrasound technology with small transducers and iPads.
A $20 million gift from long-time UCLA supporters, Andrea and Donald Goodman and Renee and Meyer Luskin, will help establish a center to study microbes, which contribute to autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and muscular dystrophy.
