Alumna creates endowment for graduate study of SoCal literature

To honor her graduate study and 21 years of teaching at UCLA,
newly retired and renowned author Carolyn See established a
$100,000 endowment for the study of Southern California and Los
Angeles literature.

As early as next year, any UCLA graduate student writing a
dissertation in the field of Southern California literature will be
eligible to receive at least $5,000.

See, a bestselling and award-winning author, is a former
professor of creative writing and literature of California and the
West.

She said her years in graduate school at UCLA were some of the
best in her life, which is one reason why she chose to provide
graduate-student funding.

Southern California literature, the subject of See’s own
graduate dissertation, is something See said needed more attention
at UCLA.

“This is a wonderful university, but they’re very
traditionally oriented,” she said. “There’s a
need for funding because funding brings attention.”

Writers can’t exist without scholars, See said, explaining
that books that take years to write have a bookstore shelf life of
three months before being forgotten.

“The only real chance (books) have at a longer life is if
a scholar takes the book and starts seeing patterns in what
(authors) are doing,” she said.

See said the study of literature brings a community into the
academic field, giving it an extra push.

She added that she wants her endowment to promote both the
literary community and the academic community that she had so much
fun with.

“There’s plenty of fun, but we could have a little
more,” she said. “I just want to help graduate students
play.”

Thomas Wortham, the chair of the English department, expressed
the importance of endowments to humanities at UCLA, particularly
English.

“The state allows us to teach classes. Everything else
that makes UCLA an interesting place, an exciting place
intellectually, is provided by other sources of income,” he
said, referring to endowments.

Wortham said support for graduate students is the
department’s highest priority right now because of graduate
students’ significance to the department as a whole.

“Sometimes people forget how important graduate students
are to the undergraduate program,” he said.

See’s endowment will allow graduate students to consider
other possibilities in their study of literature beyond just
Renaissance or New England literature, he said.

“We have tended so much, in California and Los Angeles, to
look elsewhere that sometimes we miss the brilliance in our own
backyard,” he said.

Wortham said the artistic talent in Los Angeles is often
overlooked even by its own residents and that See’s endowment
calls attention to the importance of the field and prevents the
need for students to compete for funding with those who study
Shakespeare or other more traditional authors.

Wortham added that See’s endowment focuses on an area of
study that is not only important, but also very broad.

“She realized she could focus her philanthropic desires on
a topic that is broad enough that there would never be a lack of
people who could benefit by it,” he said, referring to the
See’s grant.

Michelle Harding, the English graduate student adviser, said the
need for dissertation funding is felt among English graduate
students because funding is inadequate to support graduate
education.

“Students really do understand the need for free time.
They TA and have demands like that while trying to concentrate on
finishing up or writing.

“It gets pretty difficult to balance that out,” she
said.

Harding added that dissertation funding helps the graduate
community because it contributes to graduates being more qualified
to get jobs in their profession.

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