A Message from the Vice Provost
A growing body of literature indicates BIPOC, LGBTQIA and women scholars are disproportionately contributing to public scholarship and community engaged learning. Lunsford & Omae (2011) found that women of color and White women are more likely than White men to work with non-university groups through engaged research and teaching. Additionally, studies indicate that women and faculty of color who pursue public scholarship often experience epistemic exclusion, tokenization and cultural taxation within their universities (Griffin, Bennett, & Harris 2013; Harris 2020; Settles, Buchanan, & Dotson 2019; Stanley 2006).
The feedback we received when surveying UC Davis faculty to develop priorities for our office support these findings. Many interviewees cited public engagement as a means of practicing more effective diversity and inclusion and addressing some of the persistent inequities in institutions of higher education. Related, our interview data also indicates that faculty motivation to practice public scholarship centers primarily on interpersonal and community relationships that are personally rewarding, key to their knowledge production, and impactful.
In February 2020, a group of committed UC Davis faculty joined together in a Community of Practice — Faculty Retention and Inclusive Excellence Networks—Designing Solutions (FRIENDS) — to understand and address the barriers that prevent underrepresented and/or marginalized faculty from thriving in our institution. FRIENDS Scholars identified public scholarship and engagement as an important vehicle for faculty retention. We support these ideas, and have worked to focus on equity through programs such as our Public Scholarship and Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellows.
There is a need to examine what constitutes scholarship in the academe and how it should be recognized and rewarded. For example, we need to begin valuing the intellectual labor and time it takes to conduct publicly engaged research and teaching. Currently, public scholarship at UC Davis is recognized unequally, or unevenly at best. If we want to be a university that represents the diversity of California and beyond, scholarly public engagement should be valued in the merit and promotion process. This is what my colleague, John Saltmarsh, has identified as “epistemic equity”— an approach to examining the ways in which systems of higher education privilege what types of research are legitimized, whose knowledge is valued, and who participates in knowledge production and dissemination. The aim of epistemic equity is to recognize a broader range of scholarship and the types of scholars who produce this knowledge.
We developed our Implementation Framework with intentionality to ensure alignment between our objectives, the university’s strategic plan, and the vision for diversity, equity and inclusion at UC Davis. For example, our goal of developing and improving community-based learning experiences is integral to promoting diversity and inclusion in research, teaching, public service and training across UC Davis and in neighboring communities, in turn bolstering the university’s efforts to support our community, region, state, nation and world through mutually beneficial and impactful partnerships.
We see public scholarship as an equity issue and will continue to champion, invest in, and promote collaborations that recognize and uplift equity and inclusion efforts across UC Davis.
In community,
Michael Rios
Vice Provost, Public Scholarship and Engagement
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Updates and Announcements |
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FYI: We'll be pausing our monthly newsletter for June and July — see you in August! |
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Our Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows program is open to individuals who are working to develop new avenues of scholarship with high potential for public impact. This program aims to support individuals developing new publicly engaged research or scholarship, including, but not limited to: developing relationships with community partners, identifying ways to integrate scholarship with policy, applying for extramural funding or awards, and writing or presenting on their research for broad audiences. All full-time members of the UC Davis Academic Senate and non-represented Academic Federation members are eligible to apply. Deadline: May 24, 2021
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Approximately 100,000 Californians are cooking and selling meals from their home kitchens, providing healthy food for their neighbors and supporting their families — but most of these small businesses are illegal. With a Public Impact Research Initiative grant, Gail Feenstra and Penny Leff with the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (UC SAREP) partnered with the COOK Alliance in support of their efforts to legalize MicroEnterprise Home Kitchen Operations.
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Lindsay Poirier — assistant professor of science and technology studies and 2020 Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellow — has been working with a group of students, staff, alumni, and faculty in a research cluster called Hack for California. Together, they explore public data and how it could be leveraged to examine social equity issues facing California.
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As part of the Public Impact Research Initiative, Public Scholarship and Engagement recently awarded nine grants to support the development of new research collaborations and to deepen, sustain, or evaluate existing collaborative research. Learn more about the projects.
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Recognitions and Celebrations |
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A Successful UC Davis Give Day |
Thank you to everyone who helped us reach our goal, together we raised more than $3,500 for Graduate Public Scholars! The funds raised will directly support students within the program and have an immediate impact on community-led projects, graduate support, ongoing partnerships, and new community collaborations. |
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An article co-authored by our Director of Engagement Stacey Muse and Trina Van Schyndel from Imagining America was recently published in the Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education. This collaborative autoethnographic research study examines the motivations, experiences, and professional outcomes of seven community engagement practitioner-scholars who served in a high-level elected position in a community engagement research association and its affiliated graduate student network.
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Ryan Meyer, Executive Director of the Center for Community and Citizen Science (and 2020-21 PIRI grantee) and Laci Gerhart Barley, assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Evolution and Ecology (and 2021 Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellow) co-organize the Sacramento City Nature Challenge, an annual "competition" that motivates residents to find and document wildlife in their homes, backyards, and communities.
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In the second Reframing Sacramento event, Professor Milmon Harrison (2020 Community Engaged Learning and 2020-21 Public Scholarship Faculty Fellow) spoke about his book project, “The Black Valley,” which expands the history of Black California by focusing on the smaller cities and towns in the Central Valley, asking why African-Americans migrated to the Valley, what they found, and the contemporary impacts of this history.
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Public Engagement Champion |
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Graduate student Alex Volzer's path has been winding, but an array of diverse experiences — from youth political advocacy to massage therapy to international service work to research assistant — have helped shape his approach to community development, and what he plans to do next. Read his story.
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Join the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute for a virtual seminar and workshop series to explore how scientists can leverage their training and expertise to support the climate justice movement. This month's seminar features Kapuaʻala Sproat is a Professor of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi’s William S. Richardson School of Law and the Director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law. Professor Sproat's areas of scholarship and interest include Native Hawaiian law, water law, indigenous rights, climate justice, the public trust doctrine, and natural resource protection and management.
Event: May 24, 2021 | 1 – 2 p.m.
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Our Migration History is a community-based inclusive participatory project which seeks to promote learning on current and past immigrant narratives at the secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. In this presentation, our team will introduce the Our Migration History project and elaborate on how different aesthetic approaches were incorporated into the topic of migration, including sharing the creative process behind the project’s animation video and the choice and use of selected images in the photo story-telling activity.
Event: May 25, 2021 | 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
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TGIF awards grants up to $20,000 throughout each academic year to projects that positively impact students through increasing educational opportunities, promoting environmental awareness, engaging in sustainability research, advocating for climate and environmental justice, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy and water efficiency, limiting the amount of waste created on campus, and encouraging healthier, more planet-friendly lifestyles.
Deadline: May 31, 2021
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IGP — the organization partnering with Ryan Meyer and Heidi Ballard on a Public Impact Research Initiative project — is seeking an Executive Director. The ideal candidate will be a visionary, adaptable, experienced leader who is passionate about criminal and environmental justice, and can guide IGP into its next phase of growth in California and nationally through our in-prison programs, reentry model and community based-programs.
Deadline: June 1, 2021
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The Whiting Foundation invites selected schools, scholarly societies, and other humanities institutions to nominate for the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship and Seed Grant. These programs celebrate and empower early-career faculty who embrace public engagement as part of their scholarly vocation by funding ambitious, often collaborative projects to infuse into public life the richness and nuance that give the humanities their lasting value.
Deadline: June 1, 2021
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The UC Davis Humanities Institute invites proposals for 2021-22 Research and Arts Clusters. Clusters are meant to facilitate exchange among faculty and graduate students in workshops, symposia, or mini-conferences, to encourage experimentation with new forms of collaboration within and beyond UC Davis, and to broaden the aims of faculty research in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences.
Deadline: June 11, 2021
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Beth Rose Middleton, professor and chair of the Department of Native American Studies, is a leading voice on three projects that recently received a combined $1.5 million in funding to advance ongoing Indigenous research connected to water, fire and land.
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Sheep are grazing the University of California, Davis, campus gateway on Old Davis Road this week in an academic experiment to see if sheep can eat weeds and grass, fertilize and control pests as well as or better than using conventional landscaping methods.
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UC Davis’ 9th annual Native American Studies Graduate Student Research Symposium took place over four days and concluded with a discussion “How would you define the native North Pacific, and what does it mean for you, your research, your nations or your community?”
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Partnering for the Public Good |
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At a time when our planet and its people face unprecedented challenges, UC Davis is reimagining the vital links that connect university, community and society. Philanthropic support plays a vital role in advancing UC Davis research, education and collaborations that make the world a better place. We invite the partnership of university friends who share our vision of discovery, learning and engagement for the public good. |
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About Public Scholarship and Engagement |
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Public Scholarship and Engagement is building and supporting meaningful relationships between communities and UC Davis scholars that work together to solve today’s problems and tomorrow’s challenges. We envision a university unbound that seeks to serve the public, equitably and inclusively, resulting in reciprocal and mutual benefit to California’s communities and beyond.
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