Undergraduate research provides students with skills that employers value, including critical thinking, collaboration and communication. One way students practice those skills is participating in the annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference.
Four associate professors in the College of Letters and Science recently were named Chancellor’s Fellows for excellence in their research, creative work, teaching and service. The college's newest Chancellor's Fellows include an expert on immigrant family well-being, an artist/author, a political theorist and an archaeologist.
Coming to UC Davis in 2016, I was initially interested in sociological theory and its practical applications. I quickly found out the kind of theory I loved was experiential and unapologetically subjective, and the place where those kinds of learning opportunities and experiences were being offered was in ethnic studies classes.
As an older student—34 when I arrived—I expected to feel out of place in most classrooms. What I didn’t expect was to be so affected and inspired by the power of representation alongside critical thinking in an institutional setting.
The African American and African, Asian American, Chicana and Chicano, and Native American studies programs at UC Davis were all conceived in 1969, although full implementation took decades of struggle and sacrifice. Today, they lie at the heart of the college's mission to make a better world.
African American and African Studies
In 1969, 50 African American students, accompanied by the sole African American faculty member on campus, marched to the chancellor's office to demand an African American studies program.
