The Riordan Foundation continues to support pathways for underrepresented students to excel in business and leadership. Established more than 35 years ago, the Riordan Programs serves students from diverse and disadvantaged communities and has had a sizeable influence on the lives of young people in Southern California. More than 4,000 students at all levels have participated overall, and 100% of the high schoolers who have taken part in the Scholars Program have been accepted at colleges or universities.
Drawing lessons from his own journey, UCLA doctoral student Merhawi Tesfai aims to break down barriers to higher education. For the 2023–24 academic year, he will serve as the board’s sole student regent, with full voting rights, giving voice to the statewide system’s 285,000 students. He brings to the position the unique perspectives of transfer students, first-generation students, older students and parenting students — and a record of using his own experiences to light the way for others.
Earlier this month, former Governor Gray Davis, California NanoSystems Institute Director Jeff Miller and Chancellor Gene Block along with other UCLA leaders, faculty and friends of the Institute gathered to celebrate CNSI’s 20th anniversary. California government officials who also played a crucial role in creating the four California Institutes for Science and Innovation, including the 41st mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, and former state senator Robert Hertzberg were also on hand to offer their congratulations, along with current California state senator Ben Allen.
The Institutes represent an investment by the state to keep California at the forefront of technology through advanced academic research and partnerships with the private sector.
The latest UCLA Anderson Forecast lays out two possible scenarios for the national and California economies. Which scenario ultimately occurs will depend on how the Federal Reserve sets monetary policy: If the labor market remains robust but inflation remains persistent, the Fed will likely err on the side of tightening monetary policy more aggressively. In either scenario, the Forecast calls for a relatively minor impact on California’s economy, no matter which path the Fed decides to take.
On March 10, the UCLA Labor Center and UCLA Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work hosted a homecoming celebration for Lola Smallwood-Cuevas recently elected to represent California’s 28th Senate District.
Smallwood-Cuevas credited her 15 years at the Labor Center prior to being elected that inform her approach as a legislator working directly with impacted communities to address challenges. She hopes UCLA students will become more involved in state policymaking, adding that state legislation directly shapes the economy and communities that students will eventually work in.
Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas presented Latino voter data in a preview of the U.S. Latino Data Hub. Launching this spring, the goal of this publicly available online tool is to address the lack of visibility of Latinos in current aggregated data platforms and to become the go-to source for reliable data about Latinos across a variety of issue areas.
Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and director of UCLA’s Center for Climate Science, has been named the interim faculty director of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. Launched in 2013, the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge is an interdisciplinary university-wide initiative aimed at applying UCLA research, expertise and education to help transform Los Angeles into the world’s most sustainable megacity by 2050 — making it the most livable, equitable, resilient, clean and healthy megacity and an example for the world. Hall, one of the faculty founders of the initiative, focuses on using global and local climate models and other data sources to study climate variability and to spur
science-informed action on climate change.
UCLA LiveWell podcast is a people-centric storytelling platform sharing new perspectives on health and wellbeing, from environmental and social justice to advances in food and medicine.
A UCLA study found that vegan, Mediterranean and climatarian diets create smaller carbon footprints because they rely less on red meat and processed food. Red meat has an especially large carbon footprint because raising animals for meat requires a large amount of land and water, including the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
