As the “UCLA in LA” program prepares to announce
grant recipients for its third year of faculty-community
partnership, its program leaders have begun to consider strategic
changes in structure.
The Center for Communications and Community, which runs the
program that funds UCLA faculty projects within the L.A. community,
currently awards grants for one-year projects. But the projects
have been taking from 15 to 18 months on average, said director of
the “UCLA in LA” program and Associate Vice Chancellor
Frank Gilliam.
The center is now rethinking the time limits.
“We’re looking at projects that have been really
successful and asking what could have happened if we supported them
longer,” Gilliam said.
“UCLA in LA” has funded 78 projects in the past
three academic year cycles.
Faculty at UCLA can apply for funding if they plan to work on a
project that creates a “bi-directional flow of
knowledge” between the campus and community groups, Gilliam
said. The program has received over 400 applications.
The funding, which can reach up to $50,000, is provided solely
through private donations. This means that some money is
restricted. For example, the center gives out the Ann C. Rosenfield
Prize, which must be awarded only to faculty and staff who have
already made contributions to the Southern California
community.
The completion of the year ends the money flow, but the program
continues to provide access to the campus, Gilliam said.
Initial review comes in-house to ensure that applicants meet the
basic standards, after which external reviewers, including the
center’s board of advisors, pick a group of finalists,
Gilliam said.
Professor of clinical psychology Steven Lopez has made use of
these funds to research the use of mental health services in the
Latino community in Los Angeles.
Lopez partnered with the Latino Behavioral Health Institute and
a variety of other community organizations in the city of San
Fernando to evaluate available services and educate community
members on mental health.
Thus far, his project has amassed information on the community
that is 80 percent Latino and created an educational video for its
public education campaign.
Lopez has spoken with health promotion groups, community health
centers, pastors of major churches and numerous residents.
“The movie helps to identify the indicators of psychosis:
hallucination, delusions and disorganized speech,” he
said.
Lopez plans to put the education campaign into action this
summer, and has asked “UCLA in LA” for an
extension.
If he can prove that his project does improve the
community’s understanding and treatment of mental health,
Lopez hopes to get major funding from the National Institute of
Mental Health.
Lopez found some of his inspiration for the project while
working on the surgeon general’s first-ever report on mental
health issues and its supplemental report on mental health, called
“Culture, Race and Ethnicity.”
“It’s very clear that Latinos don’t make use
of mental health services,” Lopez concluded from his work as
one of the report’s science editors.
A sister site in Puebla, Mexico, was also established to help
study the same issue.
“UCLA in LA” awards grants based not on
“charity, volunteerism or even outreach … but alignment of
community and campus interest,” Gilliam said. This has
allowed for unique projects such as gospel archiving, changing
media perceptions of people with disabilities, and nutrition
education through garden-based learning.
Professor David Myers, director of the Center for Jewish
Studies, was awarded a grant for the 2003-2004 year to research
“Jews in the Cultural Mosaic of Los Angeles.”
Myers has used funds to establish relationships with the Gene
Autry National Center and the Skirball Cultural Center.
With these two centers, Myers and colleagues have researched two
major questions ““ how the Jewish experience in Los Angeles is
different than in New York, and how Jews interact with other groups
in Los Angeles.
“The Jewish experience in New York has really dominated
scholarship. … We’ve found that the L.A. experience is
indeed different, but most communities are similar to L.A., and New
York City may be the atypical example,” Myers said.
The research group seeks to rethink the American Jewish
experience from west to east, he added.
Myers has tracked the rise and fall of Jewish prominence in Los
Angeles from the latter half of the 19th century to the first part
of the 20th century, and its renewed ascent after World War II.
Myers attributes the original decline in Jewish prominence in
Los Angeles to an “emergence of a large white Protestant
majority that was less ethnically diverse” and to “a
period of significant migration of a different stock of
Jews,” with a decrease in secular education and desire to
assimilate.
Myers has also researched the intra-Jewish relations within Los
Angeles, especially with the “multi-ethnic character”
that has developed with the more current migration of Iranians,
Russians and Israelis.
Myers and his colleague, Professor Steve Aron, hope to turn
their research into a museum exhibition at the Autry National
Center. They are also planning a conference on the topic.
Through the funding from “UCLA in LA,” the
groundwork laid has helped them find funding to continue the
project.
“UCLA in LA” also places undergraduates in paid
internships throughout the community.
The first round of interns were placed in 2005, and Gilliam
expects to send a large number of undergraduates to intern at a
satellite facility in South Los Angeles that the center hopes to
build.
Nonprofit groups are also allowed to apply for funding as long
as they have a UCLA partner, though their funding is capped at
$25,000.