Melinda Guzman, Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre and Lydia Ramirez attended UC Davis at different times, pursued different majors in the College of Letters and Science, and followed different paths to successful careers in law, business advocacy and banking. Their paths converged at various times, most recently with a shared honor: each was named to The Sacramento Bee’s inaugural list of Top 25 Latino Change Makers for leading positive transformations in their communities.
Two College of Letters and Science faculty members have been recognized for their outstanding global engagement work with Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching of Study Abroad Awards: Jaimey Fisher, professor of German and cinema and digital media, and David Masiel, continuing lecturer in the University Writing Program.
Marianne Page can count numerous accomplishments during her career as an economics professor in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, but none like an honor recently bestowed by a Napa Valley winemaker. Page appears on the label of The Sage, an organic red blend wine created by Kira Ballotta for her Cantadora brand that celebrates Page and two other women “doing extraordinary things in support of their communities.”
Two faculty in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis have been recognized by their campus peers for outstanding teaching. Camelia Hostinar, associate professor of psychology, is a recipient of the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award: Undergraduate. Tim Brelinski, a continuing lecturer in classics, received the Academic Federation’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award
Three alumni of the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis — an international economist, a racial justice advocate, and an assets manager dedicated to supporting research and educational excellence — are recipients of Cal Aggie Alumni Association’s 2023 Alumni Awards.
In rural Nigeria in 2014, 276 teenaged girls were abducted from their school by the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram. A few escaped, some were later released, but nearly a decade later about 100 are still missing.
Ten doctoral students across many disciplines in the College of Letters and Science and two students from outside the college will present research done as UC Davis Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Summer Fellowship recipients. The fellowships allowed the students to travel to further their scholarship into diverse topics ranging from music about the Panama Canal to examining human remains for insights into drought and societal collapse in Peru.
Ryan Lee Cartwright, an American studies professor in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, has received a $1.5 million award from the Mellon Foundation for a project to explore the intersection of research on disability and chronic illness. The three-year project in partnership with Yale University aims to develop a national network of scholars, culture workers and organizers who will bring disability justice approaches to the study of chronic illness.
Babies learn from looking at human faces, leading many parents and childhood experts to worry about possible developmental harm from widespread face-masking during the pandemic. A new study by researchers in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science allays those concerns, finding that 6- to 9-month-old babies can form memories of masked faces and recognize those faces when unmasked.
Liza Grandia, associate professor of Native American studies, and Keith David Watenpaugh, professor and director of human rights studies, have been honored by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) for research and partnerships with a tangible impact on the daily lives of people in countries such as Guatemala and Syria.
