Boundaryless | Brilliant Future | UCI School of Social Sciences

BOUNDARYLESS Brilliant Future | UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

boundaryless

is a publication of the UCI School of Social Sciences writers, designers, editors & photographers: Heather Ashbach, Christine Byrd, Luis Fonseca, Pat Harriman, Roy Rivenburg, Gianna Virgillio, John Westcott, Janet Wilson, Steve Zylius

School Leadership: Bill Maurer, Dean Barbara Sarnecka, Associate Dean Jeanett Castellanos, Associate Dean Anita Casavantes Bradford, Associate Dean Angela Jenks, Vice Associate Dean Rebecca Ávila, Assistant Dean Communications & Marketing: Heather Ashbach, Executive Director Luis Fonseca, Digital Media Production Development: Tracy Arcuri, Executive Director Elizabeth Codispoti, Director Ian Delzer, Associate Director Melissa Churlonis, Operations Coordinator

connect with us: www.socsci.uci.edu @ucisocsci UCI School of Social Sciences 3151 Social Science Plaza | Irvine, CA 92697-5100 communications@socsci.uci.edu

INSIDE

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LETTER FROM THE DEAN

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BRAIN & BEHAVIOR

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POPULATION SCIENCE

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EMERGING CONFLICTS

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DEAN’S CHALLENGE

LETTER FROM THE DEAN

It’s been more than five years since we embarked on our boundaryless journey to promote the passion and purpose driving all we do – from teaching, research, and service to finding new sources of support for our many programs. Our faculty and students have been in the trenches tackling daunting global issues like brain disease and decline, emerging conflicts worldwide, and population research that aims to uncover and unravel inequality’s underpinnings. While we’ve accomplished much in our pursuit to improve the human condition, there is endless opportunity to do more.

With the launch of UCI’s Brilliant Future campaign, we’re taking a cue from our beautiful state as we find inspiration in the natural brilliance of our uniquely California canvas – one that’s emboldened generations of mold breakers to make waves, to reach higher, to step up - to do better.

Like the ocean waves, the human brain is constantly in motion, changing and learning, developing from before birth through our twilight years. The beautiful pathways lining our parks, beaches, and iconic scenes remind us of our world’s complex human diversity and the many ways in which our journeys intersect. And the ability of California’s quintessential sequoias to withstand the test of time, living more than 3,000 years through elements both natural and man-made, remind us of the resiliency of the human spirit – that if we spread our reach wide, we can achieve amazing heights in our quest to tackle some of the most pressing global issues of our time.

The bold, vibrant hues of the constantly churning Pacific, the myriad pathways winding throughout our beautiful Golden State landscape, and the towering height and extensive reach of our national parks’ giant sequoias are simply stunning sights to behold. And they offer an amazingly awe-inspiring backdrop against which to build our boundaryless focus for the coming years.

These visual elements are woven throughout our renewed commitment highlighting the ways in which we’re pushing the boundaries of research, teaching, and service in our pursuit to create positive change in our societies, economies, and for human wellbeing. They also remind us that in our focus and drive to tackle some of the heaviest topics, there is so much beauty to be found.

Join us in our boundaryless pursuit of a more brilliant future.

Bill Maurer, Dean

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BRAIN & BEHAVIOR As Californians, we hear talk of “waves” and our thoughts naturally extend to the surf - past PCH and deep into the swirling, vibrant blues and greens of the white-capped Pacific.

Try to capture the beauty in a picture, and you’ll get a snapshot in time, but you’ll miss the motion, the constant activity, the energy. The same holds true for the human brain - a boundaryless, uncharted territory where different kinds of waves drive our every thought, emotion, and behavior. The brain is constantly changing and learning, developing from before birth through our twilight years.

And just like the ocean forming our western border, a picture doesn’t do it justice. To understand the brain, we need to understand the changing brain and its relationship to behavior throughout the entire life course, from every stage of development to the environmental, social, and biological factors that help or hurt its progress.

Doing so requires a bold, boundaryless approach.

UCI’s world-renowned social scientists - highlighted within the following pages - are conducting cognitive neuroscience research with experts in engineering, computer science, and health to help us understand the brain’s inner workings and its relationship to behavior. They are also building and experimenting with new technologies and advances in data analysis that will drive future neuroimaging research.

With your support, we’ll deepen the understanding of the dynamic relationship between brain and behavior and develop new treatments for brain disorders and cognitive decline.

Help us make waves.

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T H E B R A I N A N D M U LT I TA S K I N G U C I c o g n i t i v e s c i e n t i s t Ma r k St e y v e r s s t u d i e s h o w o n l i n e t ra i n i n g e n a b l e s seniors to multitask mentally on par with those 50 years younger

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ultitasking is a valuable skill, particularly in today’s daily information onslaught. But constantly divided attention can be quite mentally taxing, most notably for older adults. A UCI-led study has found that online brain game exercises can enable people in their 70s and even 80s to cognitively compete with individuals 50 years their junior.

“The brain is not a muscle, but like our bodies, if we work out and train it, we can improve our mental performance,” said lead author Mark Steyvers, a UCI professor of cognitive sciences. “We discovered that people in the upper age ranges who completed specific training tasks were able to beef up their brain’s ability to switch between tasks in the game at a level similar to untrained 20- and 30-year-olds.”

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscore the cognitive cost of multitasking, which dilutes function by splitting focus, as well as the ways in which people across the lifespan can overcome the brain drain brought on by both the increasingly cluttered multimedia environment and the natural aging process.

Of the millions of people who played the game between 2012 and 2017, researchers randomly sampled the performance of about 1,000 users within two categories: those who ranged in age from 21 to 80 and had completed fewer than 60 training sessions; and adults 71 to 80 who had logged at least 1,000 sessions.

They found that the majority of older and highly practiced players were able to match or exceed the performance of younger users who had not played very much. However, any lead seniors had on their younger counterparts significantly declined after the 21- to 30-year-olds completed at least 60 practice sessions, showing that training can improve mental “muscles” of all ages.

“Medical advances and improved lifestyles are allowing us to live longer,” Steyvers said. “It’s important to factor brain health into that equation. We show that with consistent upkeep, cognitive youth can be retained well into our golden years.” •

For the study, Steyvers and his colleagues partnered with Lumosity, an online platform that offers a variety of daily brain training games. They focused on data from “Ebb and Flow” – a task-switching game that challenges the brain’s ability to shift between cognitive processes interpreting shapes and movement. uci soc sci | 9

Greg Hickok, cognitive scientist, hopes to launch a graduate program in audiology and speech-language pathology to train the next generation of practitioners working directly with those impacted by hearing, speech, and language disorders.

THE BRAIN AND STROKE Language model developed by UCI cognitive scientist may soon h e l p c l i n i c i a n s b e t t e r d i a g n o s e a n d t r e a t s t r o ke s u r v i v o r s

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ach year, nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. experience a stroke – that’s one person every 40 seconds.

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death, killing almost 130,000 Americans each year – that’s one person every four minutes.

Enter Greg Hickok, UCI cognitive sciences professor. Over the last 15 years, he’s received $16 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to support research on how neural abnormalities affect speech and language in an area of the brain tied to stroke-induced aphasia.

But there are far more who survive. In fact, current CDC estimates place the number around 7 million, making treatment ever more important for the lasting disabilities stroke leaves in its wake.

“About one-million people in the U.S. suffer from aphasia, caused most often by stroke,” Hickok says. “A stroke can cause damage to networks in the brain that enable language, which – from a scientific

“ Communication is the foundation of our relationships and society; aphasia can take it all away.

standpoint – is the system that translates thought into speech and speech into thought.”

The result can be devastating.

“Our ability to communicate is fundamental to being human. Imagine not being able to speak or write, not being able to understand a conversation or the evening news, not being able to text, email, or Tweet.

Communication is the foundation of our relationships and society; aphasia can take it all away.”

He’s currently working with researchers at the University of South Carolina and Johns Hopkins University to better understand the nature of the various forms of aphasia, the prognosis for recovery, and how best to treat it.

The collaborative study is directly tied to clinical practice; at its end, the researchers will understand why some patients respond better than others to aphasia treatment. They’ll also be using treatment approaches that are routinely employed in clinical practice, allowing for immediate translation of the findings directly into patient management.

At the same time, Hickok is also working with the University of Texas at Houston using ElectroCorticoGraphy (ECoG) – which takes direct cortical recordings in neurosurgical patients – to understand the organization and dynamics of the speech production process in great detail.

“fMRI and stroke-based methods can help us map the location of regions, but they tell us little above the millisecond dynamics of how the brain actually carries out a given task,” he says. “ECoG provides very high temporal resolution recording brain signals with millisecond resolution and provides excellent spatial resolution measuring these signals in patches of cortex a few millimeters in diameter.”

He’s also continuing research on the subdivisions of the planum temporale region of the brain where regulation of auditorymotor processes occurs. Previous work yielded 40 publications on its functional organization in healthy young people.

Now, Hickok and his team, which includes UCI faculty Kourosh Saberi, John Middlebrooks, and Fang-Gang Zeng, are looking at stroke and hearing impaired patients to study what happens when people have damage to various portions of this system.

“We’re focusing on speech production, audiovisual integration, and spatial hearing,” he says. “This work will both refine our understanding of these circuits and the PT region as well as help us understand the sources of speech and language difficulties following stroke.”

A potential application of this better understanding, he says, is that neural prostheses - brain implants – could one day be used to compensate for lost function in some aphasia cases. The idea may seem farfetched, but considering the advancements they’ve made in aphasia-based research over the past decade and a half, and considering that neural prostheses are becoming a reality for some neurological disorders, the sheer possibility is welcomed news among the millions who live with stroke-induced language deficits.

And in the coming years, UCI hopes to further tap Hickok’s expertise as the director of a new graduate-level program in audiology and speech language pathology.

Focusing on both basic science and clinical training, the program would equip the next generation of academics and practitioners working directly with those impacted by hearing, speech, and language disorders, and fill a critical need area in both the state of California and the nation. • uci soc sci | 11

THE BRAIN AND SLEEP UCI cognitive scientist studies the science of sleep and its impact on memory

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leep - like eating and drinking - is one of our most basic needs (just try going a night without it - past your mid-twenties - and see what happens). But sometimes this natural process gets disrupted, and scientists are finding it happens more often, and like clockwork, in women. The culprit? Periods, says UCI cognitive scientist Sara C. Mednick. The longterm effects of the waxing and waning of sex hormones could be putting women at higher risk of memory-related disorders like Alzheimer’s, which hits twice as many more women than men aged 75 and older.

The author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life, Mednick is a New York actress-turned Harvard-trained expert on the science of sleep: how it impacts memory, how interventions like pharmacology and electrical brain stimulation can be used to improve it, why kids need more of it, and how sex hormones and age can help or hinder it. She’s also pursuing on-going research on how psychostimulants like Adderall impede sleep and working memory. The director of UCI’s Sleep and Cognition Lab, she’s pioneered studies using a nap design that’s replaced nocturnal studies as the dominant research method for understanding the role of sleep in memory formation.

Her recent findings have been published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Behavioural Brain Research, and Cognition. And since joining UCI’s faculty in fall 2018, she’s received $1.8 million from the National Institute on Aging to dive deeper into the effect of menstrual cycles on sleep and long-term memory in women across their lifespan.

“Our bodies perform a number of processes throughout the day - digesting food, information, feelings - that deplete our natural

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energy resources and molecular makeup,” says Mednick. “Sleep is the antidote to all of our daily active processes.”

A good night’s sleep restores glucose metabolism and balance between our fight-orflight and rest-and-digest processes so that humans can function - biologically, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Her research contributes to a growing body of evidence showing which specific aspects of sleep are critical in memory consolidation.

“Sleep is the only time the brain slows down and recuperates from the activity it’s involved in during the time we’re awake,” she says.

In the transition from wake to sleep, the brain goes from a state of high activity with asynchronous firing of neurons to a much slower pace in which all neurons begin to fire as one. This synchronized firing allows for the transfer of information from short-term to long-term storage areas of the brain via large coordinated brain waves, she explains.

“As we fall into deeper and deeper sleep, the waves get bigger. At the peaks, neurons from different brain areas fire together and this allows for the communication and transfer of information,” she says. This pattern gets repeated over and over across the different stages of sleep, helping the brain absorb information from the day, commit it to memory, and restore itself. When this pattern gets interrupted due to poor or lost sleep, cognition and memory are affected.

Read more online about her work on sleep’s role in our overall health, why getting good Z’s may fluctuate in women, and what that means for long-term cognitive function: socs.ci/sleep2019 •

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THE BRAIN AND PERCEPTION UCI vision scientist Donald Hoffman says evolution has t ra i n e d h u m a n s t o c o n s t r u c t r e a l i t y, ra t h e r t h a n t o s e e the world as it truly is

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erception is not objective reality.

Case in point: The left-side image is stationary and flat…just try telling your brain that. In his new book, The Case Against Reality, UCI cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman applies this concept to the whole of human consciousness – how we see, think, feel, and interact with the world around us. And he thinks we’ve been looking at it all wrong.

“I’m interested in understanding human conscious experiences and their relationship to the activity of our bodies and brains as we interact within our environment – and that includes the technical challenge of building computer models that mimic it, which is why I’m working on creating a model that explains consciousness,” he says.

Current scientific approaches assume there to be a pattern of neural activity that makes us experience things like the taste of a nut or the appearance of the color red. But, says Hoffman, there are no formal theories that explain this.

“As a scientist, I propose a theory and then try to prove the theory wrong, to test its validity,” he says. “Because there is no mathematical theory explaining the pattern of neural activity that creates consciousness, it may mean we are making a false assumption.” He argues instead that consciousness creates neural activity – that humans have evolved to see what’s needed for survival.

Perceptions, he says, are a user interface, but not necessarily reality.

A vision scientist, Hoffman’s work has caught the attention of those in the scientific and spiritual communities for its attempt to understand qualities that make the human experience, well, human. In 1998, he published Visual Intelligence, which introduced 35 rules governing the perception of line, color, form, depth, and motion. The book explains how people pro-

cess two-dimensional images to create a 3-D environment – or how individuals use vision to construct the world around them.

The concept, which comes from evolutionary psychology, is that humans have adapted in certain ways over time to survive and thrive.

He lectures on the topic in his undergraduate psychology courses, and he gave a TED talk in 2015 on the idea that people may be perceiving the world as they need it to be, rather than as it really is. As of fall 2019, it had more than 2.7 million views.

He’s frequently cited in and interviewed by the media and he appeared on “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” in an episode titled “Can We Handle the Truth?”

His work was the topic of a live-streamed New York Academy of Sciences event in February, and in August, he took center stage again in the Big Apple – this time at the Rubin Museum of Art – with spiritual guru Deepak Chopra at a signing event for Hoffman’s newest book.

“The field of vision science is really powerful,” he says. “The notion that we are constructing our own realities ties into so many different areas. These ideas can be used in many ways – including in marketing and advertising to change the way people experience a product.”

He’s put principle into practice for major names in fashion by redesigning clothing gradients to showcase more shapely rears, thighs, and busts. He’s applied the same ideas to marketing using mathematical analyses to determine the best color, lighting, and composition of targeted advertising.

And now, he’s diving deeply into the topic of consciousness, its roots in evolution, and his plan for trying to explain through science the very things that make us all human. Read more: socs.ci/caseagainstreality •

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Participants in the prism goggle experiment have varied reactions, says cognitive scientist Alyssa Brewer (left). While she says she can only tolerate the eyewear for a few minutes, her colleague, Brian Barton (right) has adapted to the point where he can accomplish complex tasks.

THE BRAIN AND VISION UCI cognitive scientist’s prism goggles trick the brain into rewiring the visual cortex, providing insight into its plasticity

The first thing you notice after donning Alyssa Brewer’s prism goggles is the nausea.

A roiling hits the stomach and grows worse as you begin to move. The world is strangely out of kilter. You reach out to grab hold of something, but it’s not there.

Just putting one foot in front of the other takes an enormous effort.

“Welcome to the world of unreality” is what the UCI associate professor of cognitive sciences likes to say when unlucky subjects first peer out of the goggles.

They’re an ingenious way to unhinge a person’s sense of reality. The environment one sees is completely flipped; the two prisms inside are tilted so that what you see on the left is really on the right, and what’s on the right is really left.

Brewer is intentionally tricking the brain, forcing it to find a way to adapt to this

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strange new reality. Her subjects stumble and lurch, grasping at air. It’s the supreme test of the visual and vestibular systems, pathways in the brain that use what you feel and see to enable navigation of the three-dimensional world around you.

Such mind boggling helps Brewer and other scientists learn how the brain works.

She hopes experiments like this will lead to new treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder and stroke, perhaps even Alzheimer’s disease and chronic pain.

Paradoxically, flipping reality right to left is a far bigger challenge to the brain than turning things upside down. That’s apparently because of the way its two hemispheres communicate with each other.

“We are not entirely sure why this is the case, but one hypothesis is that the difference is due to the wiring and connectivity of the brain,” Brewer explains.

“The representation of the body is split between the two hemispheres. The left side of the brain is controlling the right side, and vice versa. The visual information from both sides of visual space, for the most part, doesn’t come together until pretty far along the visual processing pathways. We were actually surprised by how different the experiences are.”

The brain is also surprised. When someone wears the goggles, the cerebellum – or lower brain – protests, sending urgent signals of distress and disequilibrium to the cerebral cortex. In turn, the visual and motor regions of the cerebral cortex – or higher brain – frantically try to realign what you see with commands for how to move through space.

“You get this warning from your brain that something is very wrong,” Brewer says. “You get motion sickness, and every head movement you make multiplies the motion sickness.”

“ Because the prism goggles produce such dramatic changes in part of the visual cortex, we are hopeful that these changes make the brain as a whole more susceptible to restructuring – to being more ‘plastic.’ Such an increase in this plasticity could make other treatments more successful, especially for conditions like PTSD and drug addiction.

But just as she suspected, the brain does adapt. Usually, after a week or so of using only the prism goggles to view the world, subjects who were initially so disoriented they could hardly stand, let alone walk, find their footing and become quite adroit at navigating their new environment.

“You’re forcing the brain to rewire itself,” Brewer says. “And you end up with two different maps in your visual cortex: one that matches the normal visual world to spatial movements and one that matches the flipped visual world to the same movements. When subjects came back three months later and did the study again, it only took about a day for them to readjust to the goggles, suggesting that these changes persist for extended periods of time.”

It’s a form of neuroplasticity in which the brain develops new neuronal connections in response to altered circumstances. Scientists used to believe the adult brain was mostly static, that it couldn’t change in significant ways after an early developmental period. But the explosion of brain research that Brewer and others have fostered in recent decades shows that the lump of gray matter sitting atop our shoulders is far more resilient than we once thought.

Brewer and her colleagues first began fiddling with prism goggles in 2008, shortly after she arrived at UCI. Subjects in the two-week experiments were required to view the world exclusively through the contraptions and wear blackout masks for sleeping and showering.

Brewer found that the prisms caused more than just visual confusion. The brain employs a broad network of input to discern reality, including sound and touch.

As a result, a goggle wearer’s hand almost instinctively reaches for an object seen on, say, the right, even though he or she knows it’s on the left. An hour after one woman took off her goggles, she still automatically turned her head to the right when someone to the left called her name.

Individual reactions to the goggles can vary greatly. Brewer says she personally can’t handle more than a few minutes of wear. And that’s an improvement. “I couldn’t even get out of the chair,” she recalls of her first time.

On the other hand, her colleague Brian Barton, a postdoctoral fellow who has worked with Brewer on several research projects over the years, adapted to the goggles with lightning speed. He can accomplish such difficult tasks as walking through a maze or preparing cupcake batter with relative ease.

“I was in the lab with a graduate student and Dr. Brewer, both of whom had just tried the goggles on and were unable to navigate the roughly 15-foot walk to the nearest doorway,” Barton says. “To everyone’s surprise, I was able to navigate not only to the first door, but through another, down the hallway and back, through the two doors to my chair.”

Brewer is not sure why, but she suspects Barton’s frequent forays into three-dimensional video games have primed his brain for the imaginary goggle world. Barton agrees, saying that video games probably gave him practice in dealing with conflicting visual information. They have also identified a genetic difference that affects brain plasticity. These are the types of insights Brewer hopes will illuminate brain function.

Brewer employs groundbreaking neuroimaging techniques that map the physical changes in the brain as it adapts. Images from fMRIs – which measure the fluctuating oxygen levels in clusters of neurons – indicate changes in the visual and motor brain regions after someone has worn the goggles.

It’s painstaking work, but it’s proving that the visual cortex is capable of profound change even in adulthood. This is promising news for those seeking solutions to disorders such as stroke, which often causes vision loss or other visual disturbances.

“We are starting related studies exploring how different types of visual training could be effective for rehabilitation of visual deficits,” she says. “Perhaps the still-healthy brain hemisphere could take on the function of the damaged hemisphere for a particular visual behavior. We see this type of interhemispheric change in the normal brains of our subjects who adapted to two weeks of reversed vision.”

There is even tantalizing evidence from other studies that neuroplasticity can be contagious, in a good way. Once it takes hold in certain areas of the brain, as it appears to do in the goggle experiments, neighboring tissue may become more receptive to change.

Brewer is teaming up with researchers at Stanford University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to dig deeper into these and associated issues.

And her experiments with the goggles continue, now with the new goal of determining how different senses, like hearing and touch, interact with the visual adaptations that her subjects’ brains undergo.

“Because the prism goggles produce such dramatic changes in part of the visual cortex,” she says, “we are hopeful that these changes make the brain as a whole more susceptible to restructuring – to being more ‘plastic.’ Such an increase in this plasticity could make other treatments more successful, especially for conditions like PTSD and drug addiction.”

To conquer such intractable disorders, Brewer notes, it helps to view them from a different perspective. •

Brewer and her colleagues have spent hundreds of hours sifting through the raw data. uci soc sci | 17

T H E B R A I N A N D R O B OT I C S A n i n t e rd i s c i p l i n a r y U C I t e a m i s i m p r ov i n g a s s i s t i v e r o b o t i c t e c h n o l o g y f o r h o m e b o u n d c h i l d re n a n d l i m i t e d - m o b i l i t y a d u l t s

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elping homebound children and adults with limited mobility navigate everyday experiences like attending school and doing household chores - is CARL SR’s goal. Short for Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory Support Robot, the intriguing contraption is on lease to UCI from Toyota Motor Corp. to be optimized with state-of-the-art assistive robotic technology.

“Children who can’t go to school due to either long-term illness or limited mobility have begun to rely on telepresence robots that livestream video of the remote student and the classroom, giving the student the social interaction that they miss when they must do their work from home,” says Jeffrey Krichmar, UCI cognitive scientist and director of the campus’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory. “But current assistive robotic technology has its limits. It can’t move on its own or reach out and touch objects, and it requires constant Wi-Fi connectivity. All this reduces a child’s ability to naturally engage with a teacher and fellow classmates.”

Assistive technology for adults similarly leaves a lot of room for improvement, he notes, and applications developed through work with homebound children can extend to limited-mobility adults and elders.

CARL SR may very well be the solution. The project began in 2017 with a chance meeting between Krichmar and Veronica Newhart, a postdoc in UCI’s National Institutes of Health-funded Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. She studies the impact of telepresence robots on home- and hospital-bound children but wasn’t satisfied with the existing technology.

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“After working on this research for four years, I realized that it wasn’t enough to explore robot-mediated experiences for homebound children. We also needed to contribute to the design and production of improved technologies,” says Newhart, who earned a Ph.D. in education at UCI in 2018. “Currently available off-the-shelf robots were designed for adults in medical or corporate settings. We needed robots designed for children to engage in their real-world settings – school, community, extracurricular – on a daily basis.”

She approached Krichmar – who, with his lab, was already developing autonomous robots to meet this demand – about utilizing data collected from her user-centered studies to improve robot design, and an all-star research team was born.

Over the past year, Krichmar and his lab members have been adapting the robot designed by Toyota for household use to operate in a classroom setting. It has four onboard cameras, including one with high enough resolution to livestream a teacher’s whiteboard notes to a student thousands of miles away. The robot also has a movable arm with a grasping “hand” that can be raised when a homebound child has a question or wishes to contribute to a class discussion, reducing the need for verbal or other interruptions that may be necessary with current telepresence models. The same technology could help limited-mobility adults and elders perform common household tasks.

But what really makes CARL SR stand out from the crowd of assistive robotic devices is the very thing for which the UCI CARL team is internationally renowned: artificial

intelligence modeled on the mammalian brain. Since joining the UCI faculty in 2008, Krichmar has received more than $4 million in public and private funding for his work in neurorobotics, which involves programming robots with real-life neural data to approximate thinking, moving beings.

“We design robots whose behaviors are guided by large-scale simulations of the brain,” he says. “And because these simulated nervous systems are embodied in a robot, they provide a powerful tool for studying brain function and developing smarter robots.”

Supported by over $300,000 from Toyota Motor North America, Krichmar tapped into the expertise of Tiffany Hwu, ’19 UCI cognitive sciences Ph.D. She enhanced CARL SR’s operating system with software that mimics the human brain’s neural networks – particularly those pertaining to contextual memory.

The robot is now able to “remember” how to behave differently in a classroom versus a cafeteria or break room and which items are commonly found in each setting.

“The software is based on the idea that context is important,” Hwu says.

To help, the team transformed the lab into a break room and a classroom. CARL SR, through trial and error, began to “learn” where it should go, if asked, to locate things that belong in a classroom – such as books and backpacks – or a break room – such as food and cups – and retrieve them.

Another lab researcher, Hirak Kashyap, a UCI graduate student in computer science, developed a software model based on the human visual system that allows the robot to predict where an object in motion will go.

“Children who can’t go to school due to either long-term illness or limited mobility have begun to rely on telepresence robots that livestream video of the remote student and the classroom,” says Jeffrey Krichmar, director of UCI’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory, shown here with several of its robots.

“ We design robots whose behaviors are guided by largescale simulations of the brain, and because these simulated nervous systems are embodied in a robot, they provide a powerful tool for studying brain function and developing smarter robots.

“It’s similar to when a car goes behind a tree,” he explains. “We know it’ll come out on the other side, so we look there.” His model imbues CARL SR with the same predictive behavior. When applied, this will enable a telepresence robot to turn its head to follow a teacher or friend who may be moving, letting the remote operator spend more time engaging with peers than running the robot.

And thanks to undergraduate researchers Lara Mirzakhanian, who’s majoring in cognitive sciences, and Giselle Tian, a psychology major, CARL SR can be moved from point A to point B at the click of a mouse. This ease of navigation – coupled with the robot’s movable arm, grasping hand, and obstacle avoidance and contextual recognition features ­– means that homebound students can participate in the classroom in a more active and seamless way than permitted by other assistive devices on the market.

Recently, the team demonstrated that CARL SR could travel from Krichmar’s ro-

botics lab on the second floor of Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway to the elevator, ride up to the fifth floor, and navigate to the social sciences dean’s suite – all with only a few clicks from the remote user.

Mirzakhanian and Tian were also part of an undergrad group that, based on their work with CARL SR, fabricated an inexpensive robot alternative from basic parts, kits, and 3-D-printed components – suggesting that more inclusive, affordable access to telepresence robots may be well within reach.

They, along with group members Mikayla Minton, a mechanical engineering major, and Steven Seader, a computer science major, presented the prototype at UCI’s annual Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program symposium.

“This is an ambitious project that addresses an important need,” Krichmar says of CARL SR. “And none of it would be possible without a strong interdisciplinary effort to accomplish our goals.” •

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Studying the shift between the way babies and toddlers view “winners” gives us new insight into how the mind develops - especially the parts in charge of how we think about other people, says Barbara Sarnecka, UCI cognitive sciences professor.

THE BRAIN & CONFLICT U C I c o g n i t i v e s c i e n t i s t B a r b a ra S a r n e c ka s t u d i e s w h y b a b i e s a n d t o d d l e r s p i c k d i f f e re n t “ w i n n e r s ”

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he adage “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” rings true with babies and toddlers.

one who deferred. Toddlers aged 21 to 31 months favored the victor, but not if winning required force.

In a set of studies published in Current Biology and Nature Human Behaviour, UCI cognitive scientists found that in a staged confrontation between two puppets, infants aged 10 to 16 months preferred the

The findings yield new insight into how the mind develops - especially the parts in charge of how we think about other people, says Barbara Sarnecka, professor and co-author of the study.

“ Children seem to develop a characteristically human preference for ‘winners’ sometime between the ages of 16 and 21 months.

‘winners’ sometime between the ages of 16 and 21 months.”

In a series of experiments involving both infants and toddlers, Sarnecka and Ashley Thomas, ’18 psychology Ph.D., demonstrated right-of-way conflicts between two puppets. For infants aged 10-16 months, 24 out of 30 chose the puppet who yielded to let the other pass. Similarly, in a tug-of-war like struggle over a rattle, 15 of 17 infants chose the puppet who gave up the toy.

The findings are consistent with what we find in some other species, says Thomas.

“Low-status individuals sometimes avoid high-status ones and thus avoid the threat of aggression.”

“Babies and toddlers recognize basic indicators of social status, like when one person bows down and lets another one pass.

Babies seem to prefer the person who bows, which is similar to how many nonhuman social species behave,” she says.

“But toddlers prefer the person who is bowed to. Children seem to develop a characteristically human preference for

However, when force was introduced and one puppet won by knocking the other puppet out of the way, the toddlers had the opposite preference - 18 out of 22 reached for the puppet that got knocked down.

Here, says Thomas, “human toddlers prefer winners, but they seem to avoid bullies.”

Taken together, the findings suggest that although humans start out like many other species – avoiding high status others – a shift occurs between the first and second year of life.

“This is consistent with the idea that for humans, high-status individuals can provide benefits to low-status ones,” Sarnecka says. •

When both puppets were allowed to reach their goal or hold the rattle without conflict, infants showed no preference.

But something appears to switch between the ages of 16 and 21 months in humans.

When Thomas and Sarnecka tested toddlers, aged 21 to 31 months, 20 out of 23 chose the puppet who didn’t defer and “won” the conflict.

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fa c i l i t y f e a t u re :

FIBRE

Fa c i l i t y f o r I m a g i n g & B ra i n Re s e a r c h , U C I ’s n e w e s t n e u r o i m a g i n g fa c i l i t y

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hen you have a space where the country’s top biologists, engineers, cognitive scientists, mathematicians, educators, social ecologists, and medical doctors are joining forces and putting their multidisciplinary talents to work, answers to some of the greatest questions about the human brain and behavior may soon be possible.

As the newest imaging facility on campus, FIBRE provides researchers access to the latest technology in:

From research on how inconsistent parenting practices impact child brain development to studies on how the brain responds to trauma and disease progression, UCI has a reputation for its mold-breaking neuroscience research.

Functional MRI: measures neural activity to assess which brain regions are involved in behavior. When a part of the brain is active, it demands more oxygen, known as the BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) effect, which is represented in colorful brain maps.

Understanding complicated brain-related issues requires bold researchers who aren’t afraid to question the status quo - to think not only about what’s known, but about what’s possible.

And at UCI, researchers aren’t afraid to challenge ideas, rethink problems, and look at things from a fresh perspective.

The campus’ capacity to study new frontiers in brain research just got a huge boost with the installation of a new Siemens Prisma 3T fMRI. Part of the campuswide strategic initiative to assume leadership in brain imaging and analysis, the Facility for Imaging & Brain Research (FIBRE) joins the Neuroscience Imaging Center and Preclinical and Translational Imaging Facility under the auspices of the Campus Center for Neuroimaging to make UCI the place where tomorrow’s technologies for studying the human brain take flight.

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Structural MRI: measures changes in shape and size of structures in the brain, showing both gray and white matter.

High-resolution methods improve visualization and allow researchers to assess small regions, such as the hippocampus.

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS): measures metabolic changes in the brain.

Metabolites reflect underlying brain chemistry that can change with disease.

Diffusion imaging: shows the white matter connections between structures. Allows researchers to infer how well information is flowing along a path from one structure to another.

But the new fMRI tool is only part of the equation. With UCI’s collaborative approach involving researchers from seven of the country’s top schools, answers to some of the most vexing questions of brain and behavior may be just around the corner. •

fa c i l i t y f e a t u r e :

A N EC H O I C R E S E A R C H FAC I L I T Y E c h o - f r e e s i l e n c e i s f o u n d i n U C I ’s a n e c h o i c s o u n d c h a m b e r

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hen Clinton Haycraft, head music teacher at The Discovery Prep School in Aliso Viejo, wanted his students to feel how the human ear receives and translates acoustic information to orient the brain, he knew the UCI Department of Cognitive Sciences was the perfect place for such an experiment. Known for its focus on the brain, perception, cognition, and behavior, the department boasts a premier anechoic sound chamber.

“I had taken my music classes to such facilities while teaching at the University at Buffalo, New York, and it always proved to be a very fun and informative experience,” says Haycraft who holds a Ph.D. in music composition. “Understanding how the human ears use acoustic information to orient the human brain in various environments is one aspect of our class discussions.”

The School of Social Sciences Anechoic Facility includes a large (12.5′x12.5′x7′ interior) acoustically isolated RF-shielded chamber that allows researchers to completely isolate sounds in an echo-free environment. Officially opened in fall 2011, the facility features state-of-the-art equipment including a harmonizer, function generators, oscilloscopes, mixers/equalizers, amplifiers, an auditory brainstem recording setup, MIDI microprocessors, and research-quality vocal microphones and headphones. It’s managed by UCI cognitive scientists Bruce Berg, Greg Hickok, Ginny Richards, and Kourosh Saberi who focus on hearing, speech, and language.

U.S. have a measurable hearing loss that can affect their speech, language, and cognitive development,” says Saberi. “Communication and hearing disorders affect not only physical wellbeing, but also social, emotional, recreational, and educational qualities of life. The effects are not limited to the individual, but often affect their families and friends.”

At UCI, faculty and students use the latest research techniques and cutting edge technologies to better understand how the human auditory system processes complex sounds such as speech and music.

“And with the opening of the Facility for Imaging and Brain Research, we’re collaboratively conducting research that will help us gain insight into how different regions of the brain are involved in processing sounds and how damage to these areas affects the perception of sounds,” he says. •

“One in six Americans will experience a communication disorder in his or her lifetime, and 3 out of 1000 newborns in the

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POPULATION SCIENCE Dirt trails, cracked stairs, paved sidewalks, even moving walkways. Throughout California, myriad pathways mark the way to some of the state’s most well-known scenes.

At UCI, they wind the campus, encircling Aldrich Park where, on a quick walk through, you’ll experience a microcosm of our world’s wonderfully complex human diversity. Students from 15 to well past 50 years of age representing every race, religion, socioeconomic background, and political belief converge on the southern California campus to pursue an education that opens the door to infinite possibilities.

Their university admission often belies the difficult path many forged to get here - one intertwined with pressing issues like access to healthcare, affordable housing, adequate income, and equal education. Regardless of hometown, country, or continent, these issues span the whole of humanity, from first breath to last, oftentimes running generations deep. They are truly boundaryless, and these lived experiences mark much more than the walkway beneath the traveler’s feet.

The UCI School of Social Sciences is home to some of the world’s leading experts, brightest up-and-coming minds, and top-notch research facilities committed to understanding and solving these complex societal issues that impact so many.

Massive amounts of data - both qualitative and quantitative are helping them discover trends that explain the long-term effects of incarceration on families, the causes and consequences of homelessness, and what happens when we increase the minimum wage. From hosting one of only 29 Census Research Data Centers in the country, to fostering studies on immigration and supporting student programs that make education achievable and affordable for first-generation college students, UCI social scientists are dedicated to understanding and addressing the foundations of inequality, and helping advise and design policy that stops it in its tracks. The following stories highlight some of their most recent work.

We’re seeking your help to forge new pathways for our students, their families, and the billions of people in our world whose trajectories don’t have to be set in stone.

Help us build tracks. uci soc sci | 25

C H I L D H E A LT H U C I s o c i o l o g i s t K r i s t i n Tu r n e y s t u d i e s h o w p a r e n t a l i n c a r c e ra t i o n a n d f o s t e r c a re i m p a c t t h e h e a l t h , b e h a v i o r, a n d l i f e o u t c o m e s o f h i g h l y v u l n e ra b l e p o p u l a t i o n s

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onditions out of a child’s control can have a tremendously negative impact on health, behavior, and later life outcomes. Just ask Kristin Turney, UCI sociologist. Her research dives deeply into the long-term penalties of parental incarceration and the often overlooked disadvantages it causes for the children left behind.

Learning disabilities, ADHD, behavioral and conduct problems, developmental delays, and speech and language problems are all very real outcomes children face when their pathways intertwine with parental incarceration. Given its unequal distribution across the U.S. population, she finds incarceration to be a major player in creating racial and social class inequalities in children’s health. And that’s an issue that touches more than 2.6 million U.S. children who have a parent in jail or prison at any given time.

Her research on the topic has been published in the Journal of Health & Social Behavior, and it’s the subject of a book she’s working on with a one-year fellowship funded by the Russell Sage Foundation.

She also studies another vulnerable population: children in foster care. Children in the U.S. who are in foster care have significantly greater mental and physical health risks than children who are not in the system.

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Her research finds that developmental delays, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, asthma, obesity, and depression are all experienced at greater rates among children who are placed in foster care.

Her work, which has been published in Pediatrics, is the first to offer a health comparison using a nationally representative sample of U.S. children.

“Each year, nearly 1% of U.S. children spend time in foster care with 6% of U.S. children placed in foster care at least once before their 18th birthday. The health outcomes this segment faces are significant and require a closer look if we are to

“ Children who have spent at least some time in foster care struggle more in school, have trouble finding employment, and abuse drugs and alcohol in early adolescence and early adulthood more than their non-foster peers.

understand how foster care really affects child well-being.”

Across the board, she found kids in foster care carried with them the maltreatment and risk factors that put them into the foster system – poverty, parental drug and alcohol abuse, neighborhood disadvantage, and epigenetics.

school, have trouble finding employment, and abuse drugs and alcohol in early adolescence and early adulthood more than their non-foster peers. This is important for the research and pediatric community to hear as it suggests foster care placement is a risk factor for childhood health problems.” •

“They experience more depression/ anxiety, ADHD, and behavioral/conduct problems than children living with two biological parents and children living with never-married single mothers,” says Turney. “Children who have spent at least some time in foster care struggle more in

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“ The vast majority of Orange County residents at risk of or who are physically homeless are so because they simply can’t afford a permanent home.

-Laura Archuleta, President, Jamboree Housing Corporation

In addition to academic research, UCI supports works that bring research to life, like this “214 sq. ft” installation that stood for a month in Social Science plaza, recreating a motel room that put visitors in the shoes of OC’s working poor.

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HOMELESSNESS U C I s o c i o l o g i s t s p u r s u e g ro u n d b r e a k i n g r e s e a rc h o n h o m e l e s s n e s s i n O ra n g e Co u n t y

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range County annually spends $299 million addressing health, housing, law enforcement, and other issues related to homelessness. That staggering figure was discovered by UCI sociologists David Snow and Rachel Goldberg when they conducted the county’s first cost study on homelessness. What’s more, they found that Orange County would save $42 million a year by placing people who chronically live on the streets into housing.

Put another way, it would be much cheaper to invest in a “housing first” approach to get homeless people off the street than to continue to pay for a revolving door of emergency and interim services.

The study, co-commissioned by Orange County United Way and Jamboree Housing, can serve as a clear blueprint for local government, community, and non-profit leaders looking for cost effective solutions to homelessness, says Sue Parks, CEO of Orange County United Way. “While the true cost of homelessness is the personal impact felt by those without a place to sleep, this study demonstrates that every Orange County taxpayer, whether he or she lives in north, central, or south county, bears the financial burden of this growing problem,” she says.

The study’s aim was twofold: Estimate the economic outlay for homelessness in OC by government agencies and non-governmental organizations, and show how costs vary from people who live on the streets, in shelters, and in housing programs.

The UCI analysis put the financial burden on local hospitals and emergency departments at $77 million. The county government spends an estimated $62 million.

Non-governmental agencies that serve the homeless, such as housing agencies like Jamboree, made up the $40 million balance.

The study assigned an average annual cost of $45,000 per homeless individual for all

services provided. Care related to health and medical issues was the most costly, and homeless people on the street who use those services most heavily drive up the expense disproportionately, Snow and Goldberg found. If the most costly 10 percent were dropped from the analysis, the mean annual cost per person drops to approximately $10,000.

The study also debunked some commonly held myths about OC’s homeless population, assumed by many to have come from another state or country.

“The vast majority of the county’s homeless, whether male or female, are U.S. citizens and long-term OC residents of over 10 years,” says Snow. “Well over two-thirds are 10-year plus residents and 90 percent are U.S. citizens.”

Struggling to stay afloat due to Orange County’s well-publicized high cost of living, most of those at risk of or dealing with actual homelessness say it’s due to economic factors (lack of affordable housing, inability to retain jobs with sustainable wages, or the death of a key wage-earning family member). Still others cite domestic violence or other family dysfunctions for their housing instability.

“Too many point to substance abuse or mental health issues as reasons why so many are homeless,” says Laura Archuleta, Jamboree Housing Corporation president.

“Those problems are real and do exist but only in less than a quarter of the homeless population. This study confirms what those of us working closely with this population have known for quite some time: that the vast majority of Orange County residents at risk of or who are physically homeless are so because they simply can’t afford a permanent home.”

On-going research by Snow, Goldberg, and others at UCI continues to examine the underlying factors contributing to homelessness and possible solutions aimed at alleviating them. • uci soc sci | 29

M I N D O V E R M AT T E R U C I s o c i o l o g i s t Pa u l Ha n s e l m a n d i s c ov e r s t h a t w i t h l e s s t h a n o n e - h o u r o f o n l i n e t ra i n i n g , s t u d e n t s c a n e x p a n d t h e w a y t h e y t h i n k a b o u t t h e i r i n t e l l e c t u a l a b i l i t i e s a n d i m p rov e t h e i r G PA s

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ow much does mindset really matter when it comes to achievement? A new multi-university study found that high school freshmen who took a short online course that taught and reinforced intellectual abilities as fluid, not fixed, earned higher grades and enrolled in more challenging math courses than their peers.

He wanted to better understand conditions under which a growth mindset can be taught most effectively and how this might impact longer-term success throughout a student’s educational career, so he teamed up with sociologists, economists, psychologists, education specialists, and statisticians to launch the National Study of Learning Mindsets.

“The concept is known as a growth mindset,” says Paul Hanselman, UCI assistant professor of sociology and study co-author.

“And we show it’s something students can develop with just two 25-minute online trainings, the results of which can have lasting benefits.”

During the 2015-16 school year, more than 12,000 freshmen at 76 high schools around the nation participated in the study, representing the largest-ever test of a growth mindset program in the U.S.

He first became interested in the topic as a graduate student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He had been studying educational inequalities in schools – where they come from, and what we can do about them – when he came across a set of social and psychological approaches that had been found to help students struggling in school.

“With just small shifts in how you see the world, you can change your sense of belonging, how you view your potential, and your motivation to face challenges,” he says. “These small messages can have a really important impact.”

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Students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first completed two 25-minute sessions of a growth mindset activity that explained how intelligence can be developed and brains strengthened by persisting on overcoming challenges. The second group completed two activities that focused on brain functions, but did not encourage a developmental way of thinking.

“The intervention had benefits for both lower- and higher-achieving students. It improved grades in core academic subjects - mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies - in 9th grade among previously lower-achieving students. It also increased enrollment in advanced mathematics courses in 10th grade

among both higher- and lower-achieving students,” he says.

For students whose grades were below the median in their school, the intervention improved their GPA in core courses by 0.10 grade points relative to similar students in the control condition. The intervention also reduced the proportion of these students with a D or F average in their core courses by over 5 percentage points.

And the intervention increased students’ likelihood of taking Algebra II or higher in 10th grade by 3 percentage points. Why is higher level math enrollment important?

The answer is two-fold, says Hanselman.

“For one, math is a subject where students in our society often receive fixed mindset messages and hold fixed beliefs,” Hanselman says. “Think of the idea that ‘I’m just not a math person.’ Someone who believes this may not do as well in math as someone who believes their ability can grow.”

The other, he says, is that math progression is linked with positive later life outcomes.

“The sequencing of mathematics curriculum in our educational system means that the farther you progress, the more learning opportunities you tend to have in high school

“

With just small shifts in how you see the world, you can change your sense of belonging, how you view your potential, and your motivation to face challenges.

and the more options you have for college and beyond. Higher level coursework is associated with better adult outcomes – income and job opportunities, to name a few.”

Understanding, then, that a growth mindset can positively impact both low and high achieving students is really important, particularly among new high school freshmen who are at a critical juncture in their educational pathway.

“As a sociologist, the most exciting aspect of these findings is that we are seeing how individual orientations interact with the educational context,” Hanselman says. “It’s not just about your individual mindset, but how this interacts with your social environment.”

From here, more research is being done to understand how math teachers’ messages in particular factor into the growth mind-

set equation. For his part, Hanselman is looking more closely at the structure of opportunities students experience in schools, especially in mathematics.

“The way students are sorted into different classes and courses has a big impact on their opportunities to learn. I’m really interested in taking our growth mindset findings and learning how they apply to students in different levels of courses.” • uci soc sci | 31

“ Given the risks from opioids, this research makes it hard to identify a ‘positive’ associated with their prescription.

LABOR ECONOMICS Ec o n o m i s t D a v i d N e u m a r k s t u d i e s w o r ke r w a g e , h i r i n g , a n d h e a l t h p ra c t i c e s w i t h h i s l a t e s t s t u d y t a k i n g o n t h e o p i o i d c r i s i s a n d a n y p o t e n t i a l b e n e f i t s t h e y h o l d f o r h e l p i n g e m p l oy e e s r e t u r n t o w o r k

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mployee pay, hiring practices, and health are all topics that labor economics expert David Neumark, UCI Distinguished Professor, tackles as he seeks to uncover inequities that contribute to inequality and poverty. His work, which has been featured everywhere from top journals to international news, finds that increasing the minimum wage results in long-term job loss. His research on older workers has found evidence of negative stereotyping, lay-offs among higher-paid workers, and bias in hiring - particularly among women - all of which makes a compelling case that employment barriers do exist for older workers. And on the topic of employee health, his latest work took on a very timely and grave topic: the opioid crisis.

The Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in 2017 in response to the nationwide opioid crisis. To put it into perspective: in 2016, 116 Americans died every day from opioid-related drug overdose – that’s one person every 12.5 minutes. More than 11.5 million people admitted to misusing prescription opioids, and more than 80 percent of injection drug us-

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ers admitted to abusing opioid pain relievers prior to heroin. Costs to treat the epidemic are staggering, estimated at over $500 billion.

“It’s clear that opioids have done a lot of harm. But they potentially have some medical value via pain reduction,” he says. “The question is whether they have provided benefits for injured workers, enabling them to get back to work faster. The short answer is no.”

Neumark teamed with co-authors at the Workers Compensation Research Institute to assess the impact of opioids in the workers’ compensation system on the duration of temporary disability, during which workers receive benefits before - in most cases – returning to work.

They specifically looked at local prescribing patterns - which have a strong relationship with whether injured workers receive opioid prescriptions - for workers with lower back injuries. These cases represent anywhere from 11-19 percent of workers’ compensation claims with more than seven days of lost time, says Neumark, and opioids are more

commonly prescribed for low back pain claims than in most other injury groups.

Information for the study came from the Workers Compensation Research Institute Detailed Benchmark/Evaluation database, spanned five years (2008-13) and covered 28 states representing over 80 percent of benefits paid. They found that longer-term opioid prescribing leads to considerably longer duration of temporary disability.

“Opioid use is common among workers injured at work,” says Neumark. “Studies have shown that more than half of injured workers off work for more than a week with pain medications who did not have surgery received an opioid prescription, and many of them received opioids on a longer-term basis. However, given the risks from opioids, this research makes it hard to identify a ‘positive’ associated with their prescription.”

With respect to returning injured employees to work, Neumark points to the study results as a rationale for policies that try to restrict long-term use of opioids that are not medically indicated. •

UCI economist and center co-director David Neumark is pursuing on-going research on age discrimination in the employee hiring process with a $156,000 grant from the Alfred Sloan Foundation.

C E N T E R F O R P O P U L AT I O N , I N E Q U A L I T Y, A N D P O L I C Y New UCI research center takes on causes and consequences of socioeconomic inequality

Understanding the causes and consequences of socioeconomic inequality in the U.S. is the focus of a new UCI Organized Research Unit. Under the auspices of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy, 26 faculty representing five schools and units on campus will study widening gaps in economic, educational, health, and other outcomes among the U.S. population, and in other countries. Research within the center will serve as a guide for policies and other strategies designed to improve wellbeing - including employment, education, health, housing, and income - of the less advantaged.

Additional emphases of research within the center include parental citizenship and its impact on child health and well-being; mass incarceration’s effect on fertility, mortality, and morbidity among U.S. populations with highest risk of criminal justice contact; children’s performance in reading, math, and science and ties to inequality; school-entry skills and behaviors that affect later academic achievement and attainment; and prisoner reentry and consequences of criminal justice contact for employment, mental health, and political participation. •

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H E A LT H & C U LT U R E C h i ca n o / La t i n o s t u d i e s a s s o c i a te p rofe s s o r Be l i n d a Ca m p o s s t u d i e s h ow t h e La t i n x a p p ro a c h to re l a t i o n s h i p s y i e l d s m e nta l a n d p hys i ca l b e n ef i t s

Can a person’s culture help or hinder personal health? Research by Belinda Campos, Chicano/Latino studies associate professor, says yes. She finds that in Spanishspeaking cultures, social relationships provide quite a few health benefits.

“We know, based on lots of research, that close relationships are associated with better psychological and physical health – from improving daily well-being to reducing mental illness relapses and easing the burden of chronic disease,” she says.

For 15 years, Campos has examined factors promoting high-quality relationships, and she’s learned that cultural norms play a very important role. She has published studies on the topic in Emotion, the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, the Journal of Social & Personal Relationships, and Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology. Her findings make clear distinctions among how European Americans and Latinx Americans view and conduct relationships.

“In the first group, they’re thought of in terms of independence – the idea that the self is separate from others and you rely on yourself in order to do well,” Campos says.

“In Latinx culture, there’s more emphasis on interdependence, being connected to others in a more fundamental way. You draw support from relationships, especially the family, and think of yourself as more ‘in it’ with someone else than forging your own path.”

She’s currently working on a three-part study funded by the National Science Foundation to understand why certain health problems - like neuroticism, which can lead to anxiety, depression, and stressrelated disease - are less prevalent in Latinx populations. Participants in the study sign up with a friend and keep a 30-day diary about their life experiences, including their relationships, and how they deal with stress. After a month of self-reporting, they come to UCI for behavioral testing in Campos’ Culture, Relationships & Health Lab. One of the friends then undergoes a standardized stress test to measure cortisol levels, which indicate how the body responds to stress.

“What really excites me about this work is that we’re going to see not only the effects of culture at an observational level, but also whether the cultural contexts in which we live – that shape our social interactions – have consequences for our bodies,” she says.

“If we determine that there is a protective element combating neuroticism’s adverse outcomes in Latinx culture, we can try to incorporate this in other cultural groups.

If we can reduce the costs of neuroticism, we’ll have an even larger community of people who are happier and healthier. And it would be pretty wonderful to be able to contribute to something like that.” •

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p ro g ra m fe a t u re :

UCDC AND SAEP S c h o o l - s u p p o r t e d p ro g ra m s a n d f u n d i n g a i m e d a t f i r s t - g e n c o l l e g e s t u d e n t s h e l p e d C r y s t a l H o ’ 1 9 h a v e l i fe c h a n g i n g e x p e r i e n c e s i n D.C . a n d a t U C I

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s a little girl, Crystal Ho envisioned herself as a businesswoman, wearing a white pantsuit, exuding power and success. But while that vision of success inspired her to work hard in school, there was also a fear pushing her forward. As a first-generation college student and the daughter of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants, Ho felt a constant pressure to prove to her parents that their sacrifices were worth it.

“I joke to my mom that I’m her sole investment,” laughs Ho, who is an only child. “But I really felt like I needed to compensate for her sacrifices, and I think a lot of us feel like we owe our families something.”

She chose UCI because of its proximity to her family in Los Angeles County, and because of the business economics major offered by the School of Social Sciences.

“Business economics struck the perfect balance between following my own passions but also being practical about gaining skills that would lead to a well-paid job,” she says.

Determined to wring every experience out of her four years of college before entering the working world, Ho arrived at UCI with a bucket list, which included studying abroad. She checked that off her second year by spending a quarter in Hong Kong.

But Ho kept herself open to all kinds of opportunities, and it was those unexpected experiences that proved the most transformational.

“When I came to UCI, I didn’t expect to be doing research, learning how to code, or interning in Washington, D.C.,” she says. Ho became more interested in politics after the 2016 election - when a woman in a white pantsuit narrowly lost the presidency.

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She decided to head to the capital as part of the UCDC program - a UC-wide program in Washington, D.C., where students from each campus take classes, do internships, and experience life inside the Beltway.

“There’s something transcendent about staying in our nation’s capital to live, work, and engage the heart of American democracy,” said Matthew Beckmann, associate professor of political science and faculty director of UCI’s capital internship program.

To earn a spot in the program, Ho needed to first secure an internship in D.C. Fortunately, her hometown Congressional representative is Judy Chu (CA-27), the first Chinese American woman elected to U.S. Congress, and Chu’s office jumped at the opportunity to hire their constituent.

UCI smoothed the way for Ho and other Pell Grant recipients like her to participate in the UCDC program by offering a $1,000 need-based scholarship. Since that scholarship was introduced on campus, UCI has nearly doubled the number of UCI Pell Grant recipients participating in UCDC. “One of the things that makes UCI so special is that we don’t just teach students about notions of civic duty and public service; our curriculum provides opportunities for students to put those ideas into practice,” says Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences, which helps fund the needbased scholarship program.

The benefits of the UCDC program extend beyond students to the capital itself. Research from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that Congressional employees, for example, often lack diversity, even in offices that represent ethnically diverse districts.

“By building a pipeline from the nation’s greatest public university system into the nation’s capital, the University of California has allowed students to gain the experiences, hone the expertise, and build the networks that will allow them to overcome historical barriers that have stood too tall, too long,” says Beckmann. For Ho, the UCDC experience included meeting with the Asian & Pacific Islander Caucus, reading and summarizing dozens of news clips each day to keep the congresswoman and her staff abreast of emerging issues on the Hill and back home, and working long hours - usually sipping Soylent at her desk for lunch.

There were moments of Washington glamour, too. Ho helped plan the book release party for a U.S. Congress publication that celebrated the history of Asian Americans in Congress from 1900 to 2017. Ho and her colleagues from the congresswoman’s office were guests at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies annual gala - a glitzy affair for up to 1,000 people, with tickets going for $500 per person.

“It felt surreal to be running around the Capitol of the U.S. - literally the Capitol,” says Ho. Ho says her experience in Washington, D.C., changed her life, and as she begins her post-college job hunt, her internship on Capitol Hill is one of the crown jewels of her resume.

“My advice to other students, regardless of major, is that if you can take a chance on going to UCDC, go,” she says.

UCDC wasn’t the only program that shaped Ho’s college experience in unexpected ways. Her freshman year, she participated in the School of Social Sciences’ research-focused Summer Academic Enrichment Program.

SAEP is an intensive, five-week on-campus residential program designed to enhance the academic experience of first-gen university students. There is no out of pocket expense to participants; all costs are covered by financial aid and program funding.

SAEP is a landmark program on the UCI campus and represents a successful model that offers a rigorous research experience.

Participants receive eight units of academic credit toward graduation. Functioning as an academic bootcamp, SAEP strives to help students strengthen analytical and research skills that prepare them for academic research; orient them to graduate education; and prepare them for working with historically underserved and underrepresented communities through volunteerism and internships.

Through SAEP, Ho began a research project on women of color in entrepreneurship, a topic that continued to interest her throughout her career at UCI. So much so, that she added a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship from The Paul Merage School of Business, and her senior year,

Crystal Ho, Class of 2019, UCDC and SAEP Alumna

she gave a business pitch at the UCI New Venture Competition.

“I’m trying to educate myself so that one day down the road, I can do something that could help other women start businesses and create a pathway for their own independence,” Ho explains. In her final year at UCI, Ho seized another unexpected opportunity: she learned coding in an economics class taught by Brian Jenkins, assistant teaching professor of economics.

nomic information. She expects this skillset will be critical in helping her land a job as a business analyst or economics researcher.

“As a first-gen, low-income, Asian-American, female college student, I was empowered by UCI to explore all the possibilities,” she says. “Sometimes even beyond the scope of what I thought I could achieve.” •

“This is a game-changer for me,” says Ho. “Without it, I would be stuck with economic theory in my notebooks.” Instead, she can create infographics and models that help people see and understand complex eco-

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EMERGING CONFLICTS The giant sequoias of California are an absolutely breathtaking sight to behold. The root system of just one has been known to cover more than an acre of land in an effort to support the iconic Golden State tree. Their resiliency to thrive, weathering thousands of years of natural and man-made elements, is truly miraculous.

The same can be said for the human spirit. In the midst of global conflict and chaos created by power and political struggles, economic and racial inequality, resource scarcity, and religious strife - the sheer magnitude of which affect us all - humanity perseveres. Understanding these roots of conflict and identifying ways to alleviate them while elevating those who are most impacted requires a boundaryless approach.

The following stories spotlight some of our foremost experts on topics like population, policy, and politics in China, global threats posed by misinformation campaigns, warfare and human rights, pollution, and resource scarcity, to name a few.

Their research pursuits extend far and wide to understand the volume, causes, and consequences of some of the heaviest global topics. Also featured are the school’s dynamic student programs – from the Diversity, Inclusion, and Racial Healing Ambassador Program to the Deconstructing Diversity Initiative – that take this information and spread it through experiential learning programs that reach populations from local OC high schools to diverse regions around the country.

We’re seeking your help in growing our ability to tackle some of the most pressing global issues. Through research and student program support, you will play a critical role in extending the reach of our work that gets to the heart of the human spirit that thrives in every single one of us.

Help us reach higher.

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A WAT E R S H E D S T U DY U C I a n t h ro p o l o g i s t s c o n d u c t f i r s t o f i t s k i n d l a r g e - s c a l e s t u d y o f S o u t h e r n California community water understanding and use

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ishing, machine cooling, irrigation, and of course drinking are just a few of the many ways in which people use water. And getting to know how water is used is one of the first steps in learning how it can be shared and conserved – a precautionary action particularly important to the people and agencies tasked with its care.

In water-conscious Southern California, that job belongs to the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) – a joint-powers agency formed by five water districts within the Santa Ana River watershed. The agency enlisted a team of university and non-profit partners – including UCI researchers – to gain a better understanding of how water is thought of, used, and conserved by people living and working within its boundaries.

“Water management is a collective process that includes people who use it and people who provide it,” says UCI anthropologist Valerie Olson who specializes in research on the anthropology of environmental systems. Her prior work has looked at how groups relate to large spaces – like outer space and marine areas.

She’s one of the lead researchers on a three-year, $6.3 million project funded by SAWPA’s Disadvantaged Community Involvement Program.

“This project aims to improve the collective process and increase hydro-social justice by finding out how underserved communities think about and use water. This can change the way water management companies interact inclusively with people they deliver vital services to. Ultimately this can increase conservation and make its benefits more equitable,” she says.

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We all live in watersheds - areas of land that drain runoff from snow and rain into a central water body, like a river or lake. UC Irvine sits within the Santa Ana River watershed which encompasses 2,840 square miles of semi-arid coastal plain, hot and dry inland valleys, and highland mountains and streams, all of which drain into the Santa Ana River. The footprint stretches from the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains on the north to the San Jacinto Mountains on the east and Santa Ana Mountains to the south. It empties into the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach, marking an expanse of land that’s bigger than the state of Delaware, and nearly twice the size of Rhode Island. The area is home to over six million people, which would make the Santa Ana River watershed the 19th most populous state. By any measure, the area is massive, and efforts to understand how the diverse people who call it home think about and use water is a big undertaking, says Olson.

“Thinking about how to manage and conserve water at this scale shows us that our water system reaches far beyond the pipes that deliver water to our homes,” she adds.

Olson is working with Emily Brooks, a postdoctoral scholar who completed her anthropology Ph.D. at UCI, to design a “community water ethnography:” a qualitative strengths and needs assessment of communities in the watershed. The two are collaborating with researchers from Cal State Bernardino and Fullerton, as well as non-profit partners at the Local Government Commission, the California Rural Water Association, and the Water Education Foundation, to carry out the assessment. The community water ethnography includes training for a team of water and policy professionals, fellows, and student interns to conduct the community-engaged

ethnographic research. The researchers will coordinate with SAWPA to develop an engagement and education program, tailored by the research findings.

“This project is one of the first of its kind in California. We’re working at a large scale, collecting ethnographic data on underserved and underrepresented communities across the watershed, building relationships with people in those communities, and developing specific recommendations to

“Water management is a collective process that includes people who use it and people who provide it,” says UCI anthropologist Valerie Olson who specializes in research on the anthropology of environmental systems.

increase well-being and promote environmental justice,” says Brooks. “Water agencies will learn about strengths, needs, and opportunities from the communities they serve, and people living and working in those communities will learn how their participation in the water management process can help bring needed change to their communities.”

When the project is complete, the researchers hope it will serve as a feasibility

study or roadmap for future ethnographically-informed assessments, and help local water agencies develop more equitable best practices for responding to individual communities’ needs and strengths.

SAWPA is looking forward to the findings, which it plans to include in its updated stakeholder-driven One Water One Watershed (OWOW) Plan for how to sustainably manage all aspects of water in the Santa Ana River Watershed.

“Benefitting from the expertise of partners like UCI, this program will ensure that members of low-income and overburdened communities contribute their voice to the decisions made about water in the Santa Ana River Watershed,” says Mike Antos, Senior Watershed Manager at SAWPA. •

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When it comes to drones and warfare, the U.S. seems to have forgotten some valuable historical lessons.

On March 6, President Trump signed an executive order that revoked the requirement, formulated under the Obama administration, that U.S. intelligence officials must publicly report the number of civilians killed in CIA drone strikes outside declared war zones.

In this decision, Trump is bringing the U.S. back to where it once was: the state of non-transparency that defined Obama’s first term.

As a researcher who has studied the ethics of war and written extensively on drones,

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I recognize that the U.S. has returned to a time when the CIA drone program was not governed by ethics, but shrouded in mystery, a time when it discounted the importance of civilian casualties.

U N D E R S TA N D I N G WA R FA R E UCI political scientist Daniel Brunstetter studies the ethics and history of war

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nderstanding causes and consequences of war, how technology and the use of drones change the way we think of war, and ways in which history often repeats itself is something with which UCI political scientist Daniel Brunstetter is intimately familiar.

The author of two recent books on the topic - The Ethics of War: Moral Challenges in an Era of Contested and Fragmented Sovereignty and Just War Thinkers (War, Conflict and Ethics) – his work on just war thinking spans the historical to the contemporary, including themes such as the history of the just war tradition, cultural heritage, the contested notion of ‘barbarians,’ armed drones, and contemporary debates about the use of force.

In a recent piece for The Conversation, he was quick to pounce on a new U.S. executive order revoking the public reporting requirement of civilian causalities as a result of drone strikes. Writing extensively on the topic, he pushes for more transparency in warfare policy that recognizes the importance of civilian casualties so that the true costs of war are known.

His work has been published in Ethics & International Affairs, the Journal of Military Ethics, Political Studies, the Review of International Studies, the International Journal of Human Rights, Raisons politiques, and elsewhere.

Brunstetter is the director of UCI’s Center for Citizen Peacebuilding. He’s currently on the editorial board of the journals Ethics & International Affairs and Champs de Mars. •

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“The 150 million families with only one child, one in three Chinese families, will in the coming decades be one of the greatest social and economic liabilities for China,” says UCI sociologist Wang Feng.

P O P U L AT I O N P O L I C Y I N C H I N A C h i n a a b a n d o n e d i t s o n e - c h i l d p o l i c y – b u t n o w w h a t ? S o c i o l o g i s t Wa n g Fe n g weighs in

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fter 35 years of limiting couples to one child, the world’s most populous country, in 2016, upped the allowable number to two children per family. But UCI sociology professor Wang Feng, one of the leading demographic experts in the decades-long push to have the policy revoked, says the move is too little, too late to change the trajectory of the country’s aging population and the looming labor shortage of working age adults.

“The one-child policy will go down in history as another textbook example of flawed science made use by over-zealous politicians,” says Wang Feng. “Such a costly and painful example only serves to highlight the crucial need for sound social science and

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democratic public policy making institutions.”

“The 150 million families with only one child, one in three Chinese families, will in the coming decades be one of the greatest social and economic liabilities for China.

These liabilities will have global implications that will become more evident as time goes by.”

He’s provided expert perspective featured in The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Japan Times, South China Morning Post, NPR, Science, The Washington Post, and LA Times, to name a few, and he continues pursuing research on the policy’s long term ramifications. •

“ The 150 million families with only one child, one in three Chinese families, will in the coming decades be one of the greatest social and economic liabilities for China.

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A G L O B A L T H R E AT U C I a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s K i m a n d M i ke Fo r t u n s t u d y e n v i r o n m e n t a l r i s k and disaster and their long-term effects on human health

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ore than 4.6 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution.

This means that air pollution is responsible for more deaths worldwide than automobile accidents.

UCI anthropologists Kim and Mike Fortun tackle this heavy topic in their research on environmental risk and disaster. They use experimental ethnographic methods to understand how people in different geographic regions and organizations deal with environmental problems, health risks, and major disasters. Their fieldwork has spanned highly populated regions in India, China, and the United States focusing on catastrophic disasters and more recently on slower moving disasters, including air pollution.

They’ve found that scientific research on the sources and health impacts of air pollution has consolidated impressively in recent decades, showing that air pollution is not only responsible for a host of respiratory ailments, but may also contribute to conditions like Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

Working with collaborators around the globe, they’ve found that air pollution has reached dangerous levels in India and is responsible for a growing number of health concerns.

With their research, new understanding of the significance of air pollution is transforming approaches to public health, challenging governments at municipal, state, regional, and national levels as well as organizations like the World Health Organization. •

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Anthropologists Kim and Mike Fortun have found that air pollution has reached catastrophic proportions in India and is responsible for a growing number of health concerns.

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ISRAEL STUDIES U C I p o l i t i c a l s c i e n t i s t Je f f r e y Ko p s t e i n s h e d s n e w l i g h t o n t h e s o u rc e s o f m a s s e t h n i c v i o l e n c e a n d h o w understanding the past can help guide our future

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hen do people commit mass violence against an ethnic, religious, or racial group in their midst? Does the demand for minority rights inevitably spark existential fears and violent reactions from the majority group?

In his book Intimate Violence, co-author Jeffrey Kopstein, UCI political science professor, examines a particularly brutal wave of violence that occurred across hundreds of predominantly Polish and Ukrainian communities in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. He traces the roots of violence in efforts to maintain Polish and Ukrainian dominance rather than in anti-Semitic hatred or revenge for communism. His work cuts through painful debates about relative victimhood that are driven more by metaphysical beliefs in Jewish culpability than empirical evidence of perpetrators and victims.

Kopstein’s expertise in Jewish studies and research angle as a political scientist guides the school’s interest in developing an Israel studies program that creates and sustains cross-regional and interdisciplinary research discussions. The program will build strong ties with Israeli academic institutions to develop a world class modern Israel studies program, encourage scholarship, research, and exchanges in Israel studies by younger scholars, and integrate the study of modern Israel into the general curriculum of the social sciences and at the same time collaborate with the offerings in Jewish and language studies within the humanities. •

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“Fake news works because propagandists know how to take advantage of social ties and connections to promote the beliefs they want people to hold,” says Cailin O’Connor, logic & philosophy of science associate professor.

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M I S I N F O R M AT I O N A G E Re s e a r c h b y l o g i c & p h i l o s o p h y o f s c i e n c e p r o f e s s o r s C a i l i n O ’ Co n n o r a n d Ja m e s We a t h e ra l l s e e k s t o u n d e r s t a n d a n d m i t i g a t e m i s i n f o r m a t i o n i n a m e d i a - f r e n z i e d a g e

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rom a simple “like” on social media to a damning headline of false facts on national news, contributors – unknowing and otherwise - to the rise of fake news can be found everywhere from high school desks to bullpens at some of the most reputable news agencies. In their new book, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread, UCI logic and philosophy of science professors Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall explain how the seeds of fake news are planted, who some of the biggest culprits are, and how we can all work to kill it before it grows legs.

They find that most people, including academics, who have thought about false beliefs and fake news assume that the main problem has to do with psychological biases.

“We accept new information that fits our

current beliefs,” says O’Connor. “But we want to push back on this idea. We think that to really understand why false beliefs can persist and even spread, you need to recognize that there is a deep social aspect to what we believe.”

Think about where virtually all beliefs, true and false, come from: someone you know and trust.

“Fake news works because propagandists know how to take advantage of social ties and connections to promote the beliefs they want people to hold,” she says.

Read more about how O’Connor and Weatherall are working to uncover the ways in which misinformation spreads and how, through inquiry and action, we can work together to stop it: socs.ci/misinformationage2019 •

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OC high school students participating in DIRHA work with a UCI mentor to develop a project that promotes understanding of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, religions and abilities among their peers.

p r o g ra m f e a t u re :

D I V E R S I T Y, I N C L U S I O N & R A C I A L HEALING AMBASSADOR PROGRAM

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s news of race-based protests and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, began to unfold in August 2017, the country watched in horror as another act of hate claimed the life of Heather Heyer. The moment was a tipping point that led the Samueli Foundation to donate $300,000 to UC Irvine in 2018 to launch the Diversity, Inclusion & Racial Healing Ambassador Program.

In 2019, the Samuelis committed another $300,000 for its work. And more than $100,000 in additional grants have come in from the California Wellness Foundation, the Orange County Community Foundation, and the Jewish Federation’s Rose Project to support the program that seeks to reduce stereotypes through academic preparation, experiential learning, and leadership development.

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High school students involved with DIRHA attend four UCI faculty- and staff-led seminars focused on making complicated topics – such as race, gender, and religion – digestible, thought-provoking, and ageappropriate.

They work with UCI faculty and program mentors to develop a school project around one of those subjects and then share and discuss them at a reception for all member schools. The work helps participants build empathy and cultural competency and pass on their knowledge to peers.

“It’s incredible to witness what DIRHA is doing for student participants and its potential for changing entire high schools and communities,” says director Teresa Neighbors, a UCI lecturer.

“ It’s truly remarkable to watch students make such a difference at the local level that can, ultimately, change the world.

-Teresa Neighbors, Director, DDI & DIRHA

Last year’s cohort at San Juan Hills High School, in San Juan Capistrano, launched Unity Week, a five-day lunch seminar series with speakers addressing different issues.

“We had close to 200 students attend each day,” says Spanish teacher Fernanda Villalba, the school’s DIRHA coordinator. “The participants not only have grown as leaders but have been educated in some very important topics and exposed to new ways of thinking. Our first Unity Week was a huge success, and I know that this is just the beginning of a cultural change that, hopefully, will become a norm, uniting many more students in the future.”

“Youth have significant influence within and beyond their peer groups,” she says.

“By showing them how to counter actions and messages that perpetuate hate, we can alter belief systems that will last through adulthood. It’s truly remarkable to watch students make such a difference at the local level that can, ultimately, change the world.” •

The two-year program that began with Orange County’s El Modena, Capistrano Valley, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, and Westminster high schools now boasts 17 participating OC high schools whose collective projects have reached more than 62,000 teens with messages of inclusion, hope and healing.

The success of the program has sparked hope among so many that change can happen, says Neighbors.

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UCI students in the Deconstructing Diversity Initiative visit the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. where guests are invited to alter the water’s flow, realizing that they, too, can influence the course of history. The Association of American Colleges & Universities cited DDI and the Diversity, Inclusion & Racial Healing Ambassador (DIRHA) Program in recognizing UCI as one of 13 new Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Centers.

DRIVEN BY DIVERSITY U C I n a m e d o n e o f 1 3 n e w Tr u t h , Ra c i a l H e a l i n g & Tra n s f o r m a t i o n C a m p u s Ce n t e r s

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ake two lists: one with your top three role models and one with the names of five people outside of family with whom you spend the most time. Now ask yourself: Are these people the same religion, race, ethnicity, education level and socioeconomic background as me?

Nora Beik loves leading high school students through this exercise as part of UCI’s Diversity, Inclusion & Racial Healing Ambassador (DIRHA) Program.

“It’s such an eye-opener for them to see how the people they hang out with and aspire to be are, most often, just like them,” says the international studies and political science major. As the discussion turns to the comfort students feel when

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they’re with people like themselves, Beik’s opportunity to spark even the smallest sliver of change arises.

In January, the Association of American Colleges & Universities cited DIRHA, the Deconstructing Diversity Initiative (DDI), and similar racial justice programs on campus in naming UCI one of 13 new Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Centers.

The designation came with an invitation for five center team members to attend the AAC&U’s annual summer institute in Atlanta and $20,000 to help fund the UCI center – which will serve as a hub for collaborative racial justice and inclusion programs on campus and in the surrounding area.

Nora Beik, international studies and political science major and student leader in the Diversity, Inclusion & Racial Healing Ambassador Program and Deconstructing Diversity Initiative.

“Right now we’re in a really important time where people are ready to talk about difficult issues in our communities,” says Teresa Neighbors, director of DIRHA and DDI. “Conversations about race are already happening, and we need to focus on bringing people together rather than increasing the divide. Now is a perfect time for something like this both for UCI and Orange County.”

It wasn’t until the end of her first year as an Anteater that she found her footing, thanks to a course she took on deconstructing diversity.

It’s welcomed by many at UCI, including Beik whose childhood experiences spurred her interest in the UCI campus and its focus on racial justice.

The class motivated her to become involved in campus groups with diversity at their core, including DDI. Part of its inaugural cohort, she spent a summer visiting Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and meeting with social justice advocates. And as one of the first members of the Diversity, Inclusion & Racial Healing Ambassador Program, she’s working hard to change the diversity narrative for others.

“When you’re not in the majority, you feel small, unheard,” she shares. “Growing up as an Arab Muslim in post 9/11 America, I had an acute awareness of the fact that I was different from my peers.”

“For the first time, I got to be part of discussions about controversial issues like race, gender, religion and sexuality,” Beik says. “And it was amazing.”

“Nora’s experience of feeling like an outsider because of her religion and culture is one of the key things we’re working to mitigate,” says Neighbors. “Our programs seek to build empathy, foster cultural competency and reduce stereotypes based on a false belief in a hierarchy of human value.

Through experiential learning, mentorship and leadership development, we provide youth with tangible skills to improve relations across racial, religious, cultural, sexual and economic divides, along with the selfefficacy to work toward more equitable communities.”

For Beik, the value of the work really hits home as she leads the DIRHA group at her alma mater, Fountain Valley High School.

“I get to help these students grow into the adults they want to be, even if they don’t know it yet. I get to help in a way that’s real, and I get to see the impact of what I’m doing as they implement their projects,” she says. “It’s amazing to see the breakthrough in their eyes when they realize the gravity of the lessons we cover. That’s where, I think, we start to create change, and that’s so incredibly rewarding.” •

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DEAN’S CHALLENGE From climate legislation to technological innovation, California leads the charge in making the world a better place for all. That sentiment is echoed in our Dean’s Challenge to see things in a new way, to change perspective, to build a bold strategy for the future of the school and our complex, interconnected, rapidly changing world. To meet the challenge, we’re seeking an endowment that will name the deanship in perpetuity and provide funding and flexibility for strategic investments and new initiatives in programs, faculty, and students.

The school relies on key leaders from our community to be our ambassadors and advocates.

With help from our community friends via the Dean’s Leadership Society and Alumni Network, the dean supports student scholarships, fellowships, and award-winning programs that are part of our key initiatives, including Mock Trial, which consistently ranks among the top teams in the nation; the Summer Undergraduate Research Program which provides funding for UCI undergrads to pursue formal academic research; the highly successful fiveweek Summer Academic Enrichment Program for first-gen undergrads aspiring to graduate school; and UCDC, which affords many first-gen students an incredible opportunity to visit and work in our nation’s capital on policy-relevant projects. We presented Crystal Ho earlier who, thanks to SAEP and UCDC, had lifechanging experiences at UCI and in D.C. In the following pages, you’ll learn about Akil and Daniela for whom external funding has been paramount to their educational advancement. You’ll also learn about our Dean’s Leadership Society and Alumni Network which help support students like Crystal, Akil, and Daniela.

Whether they earn a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D., our student alumni - numbering more than 58,000 Anteaters strong - take their world-class education across the globe as they make their mark in courtrooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and entrepreneurial endeavors. With your support for our Dean’s Challenge, we can fund the educational experience of tomorrow’s leaders today.

Help us change lives.

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“I’ve seen the way people treat women and people of color online and I know I can’t change it, but maybe I can assuage it,” says Akil Fletcher.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED Fu n d i n g f ro m a c o m p e t i t i v e Na t i o n a l S c i e n c e Fo u n d a t i o n f e l l o w s h i p i s h e l p i n g a n t h ro p o l o g y g ra d s t u d e n t A k i l F l e t c h e r p u r s u e r e s e a r c h o n ra c i s m i n o n l i n e g a m i n g

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kil Fletcher was only 9 years old the first time a racial slur was directed at him through an online game. Today, as he plays video games with his 4-year-old daughter, he worries about her experiencing the same thing.

The first-generation graduate student at UCI has turned his lifelong love of gaming into the subject of his research for a Ph.D. in anthropology: the online experience of black gamers.

“I’ve seen the way people treat women and people of color online and I know I can’t change it, but maybe I can assuage it,” says Fletcher.

This year, Fletcher earned a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which provides funding for outstanding graduate students in

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NSF-funded disciplines. In 2019, only 31 anthropology graduate students in the entire country received the honor. The funding will enable Fletcher to spend his time focused on research activities and opportunities to apply for additional travel stipends to attend academic conferences to present his work.

“A growing body of scholarship uses anthropological theories and methods to look at how humans interact with technology and how technology is shaping society,” says Tom Boellstorff, professor of anthropology and Fletcher’s advisor.

“At the heart of the issue is not just a concern about the technology, but what humans are doing with it. Akil’s research contributes to a growing body of work in digital anthropology that helps us think about what happens with humans online.”

Getting online Born in Trinidad and raised by a single mom in Brooklyn, New York, Fletcher was among a few kids in his East Flatbush neighborhood to have constant access to a computer.

“My mother, like most immigrants, believed that education and technology would break the economic shackles that bound me, and saw the computer as a tool to facilitate my success, despite what it cost,” Fletcher says.

As he grew up, Fletcher’s time on the computer evolved from strictly using educational CD-ROMs to web surfing and eventually playing massive multi-player online games, or MMOs. He thrived on connecting with gamers all over the globe, and participating in online culture and communities. But he also experienced the gaming world’s systemic racism - from the stereotypical ways black characters are portrayed in games to the frequent use of racial slurs by players.

At Kingsborough Community College, and then City College New York, Fletcher hardly had any time for online gaming. He worked as a security guard to support his wife and newborn daughter, while also working as a research assistant on an NSF-funded project exploring gentrification in Brooklyn.

Convinced that higher education would change his life and his family’s life for the better, Fletcher considered going into the armed forces to help pay for a master’s degree. He was surprised and delighted when one of his professors told him that if he earned his doctorate, he could get paid to go to school.

Akil Fletcher

Powering up at UCI Fletcher found UCI to be an ideal place to study the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Southern California supports a thriving gaming community, and UCI has some of the strongest collegiate esports teams. Plus, gamemakers Blizzard and Riot are headquartered in the Southern California area.

As an undergraduate, Fletcher read Boellstorff’s seminal work on internet ethnography and hoped to be able to conduct research with him. Then, when Fletcher visited UCI, he was impressed by how the Department of Anthropology’s faculty and students welcomed his wife and daughter, making the program family-friendly.

Clinching the deal was the Competitive Edge Summer Research Program, which invited him to campus early to get oriented to graduate student life.

UCI’s Competitive Edge Summer Research Program brings graduate students from diverse backgrounds to campus the summer before their graduate program officially starts. The participants begin conducting research, attend workshops, and participate in reading groups - essentially jumpstarting their graduate careers. The program also pairs students with faculty and peer mentors who help the students revise and refine their proposals for funding opportunities like the prestigious NSF graduate fellowship.

“Competitive Edge helped with common issues like imposter syndrome,” says Fletcher.

“It also helped me meet and connect with people across campus, so now I have a network of researchers in other fields across the university who I can go to.”

He now serves as a mentor in Competitive Edge, helping other students get acclimated to the campus and research, and providing pointers for a new wave applying for NSF graduate research fellowships.

Racism in real and virtual worlds Fletcher hopes his research will answer questions about how individuals navigate online gaming spaces, and how virtual worlds can be made more fun and safe for people of all colors, genders, and sexual orientations - which will expand existing research on how black people navigate hostile spaces in real life. In addition to conducting research online, Fletcher will meet with gamers in real life, visiting the physical spaces in Southern California where gamers congregate and play.

Fletcher points out that video games rarely include black characters, and when they do, the characters tend to lean heavily into stereotypes. The widely held belief that there are relatively few black gamers playing only exacerbates the situation. Fletcher adds that there are multiple socio-economic and cultural barriers - for example, the high cost of gaming PCs, and that gaming consoles are much more popular among those on a budget - which further entrench this idea.

Today, game developers like Riot and Blizzard support high school teams in competitive online gaming, which Fletcher thinks will likely increase the diversity of players in the future, but he is still concerned about which high schools will take priority for these companies.

Despite the ways that game developers have contributed to creating today’s online gaming culture, there are limits to what they can do to change it. As Boellstorff says, “One thing we’ve learned is that companies will try to put technological bandaids on things that really need to be fixed socially.

We can’t just hope that some new software update will fix society.”

For a kid who grew up loving to play online games, getting to study gaming for his dissertation - with support from NSF - is a dream come true.

“Akil has had various experiences in his life that shaped his interest, and it really helps to have some sort of personal investment in your project,” says Boellstorff. “That’s what gets a student excited and gives them the energy to devote years of their life to studying it.”

Fletcher says the only thing he enjoys as much as video gaming is teaching. That’s why he hopes ultimately to return to New York and teach youth in neighborhoods like the ones he grew up in, where the internet can be costly and expensive gaming computers are still rare luxuries.

Fletcher’s work might just make the real and virtual worlds a little better for those students. •

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A LIFE TRANSFORMED Fr o m n a t i o n a l f u n d i n g a w a rd s t o c a m p u s p r o g ra m s , a s p i r i n g l a w y e r D a n i e l a E s t ra d a ’ 1 7 s a y s a U C I d e g re e w o u l d n o t h a v e b e e n p o s s i b l e w i t h o u t the tremendous help she received in pursuit of her education

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y age 8, Flavio Estrada was picking tobacco in the fields of Mexico. He yearned to join the other little boys and girls going to school, but his family couldn’t afford it. He never got the chance. Fast-forward 46 years: His daughter Daniela graduated in June 2017 with high honors in political science and was named both a Fulbright and a Truman scholar.

“I’m extremely proud of my daughter and all her accomplishments. I know she’s not stopping here. She has dreams that are even bigger than this,” says Estrada, who works 60-hour weeks as a cook in Orange County. He has ceaselessly urged his children to seek education: “I always tell them, ‘Your mother and me, we have struggled, and we have put our bodies to work. Be smart; use your mind.’”

UCI alumna Daniela Estrada says her father’s words and both her parents’ hard labor have provided powerful motivation.

Combined with an array of mentoring and other resources offered by UCI, it put her on track to achieve what was once a “faraway dream” to be a lawyer.

Cultural shift Estrada transferred from Golden West College to UCI as a junior. She loved the campus’s big, beautiful buildings and friendly people but was intimidated. Estrada had felt that before as the youngest child of working poor parents in a coastal resort town. She was stunned when she went to friends’ large homes to study and could see the surprise in their faces when they came to her family’s rented apartment.

Orange County’s demographics have shifted markedly: More than half of all residents now are nonwhite, according to recent census figures. “There are a lot of Hispanics in Garden Grove, Anaheim, Santa Ana – and Vietnamese,” Estrada notes.

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“We’re a big population of first-generation immigrants, and we’re a big part of Orange County, too.”

Her father arrived in the U.S. seeking work at 14 and has been a cook at Huntington Beach’s popular Sugar Shack Café for decades. Her mother, Estela Estrada, does laundry at an assisted-living facility. They both became U.S. citizens via President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty process. “I have seen my parents work long hours doing manual labor my entire life,” Daniela Estrada says.

She brought their work habits with her to college and it paid off in spades. After graduating in 2017, she flew to Colombia to begin her Fulbright project, teaching English in the nation’s capital. When she returns, she plans to attend law school and become a public defender to help indigent people accused of crimes. She was the only University of California student – and one of just two Californians – selected in 2016 for the prestigious $30,000 Truman Scholarship, awarded for graduate studies related to public service.

‘You can do this’ Estrada’s path wasn’t easy. Many first-gen college students experience loneliness and self-doubt, and motivation and grades can suffer the first semester, according to published research. Quick intervention can make the difference. In her case, the SAGE Scholars Program provided friendships, counseling, and invaluable support.

“I had this faraway dream of wanting to be an attorney. It seemed impossible. A classmate told me about a clerk job at a law firm, but I was so intimidated,” she recalls.

Estrada explained to the SAGE director that she wanted to apply but had nothing to offer. He set her straight. “You can do this,” he said – and then coached her through preparing a resume.

She landed the job and went on to intern with both the county district attorney’s office and UCI’s Saturday Academy of Law, showing Santa Ana high school students that legal careers are possible. The experiences confirmed that law is her true calling. The profession offers prestige and decent pay, Estrada says, “but beyond that, I really like it.”

Social mobility UCI is one of the top colleges in the nation whose students experience huge income growth after graduation. Anita Casavantes

Once an insecure first-gen student at UCI, Daniela Estrada ’17 is now a confident Fulbright and Truman scholar ready to take on law school.

“ I account my achievements to the public servants and professors who have mentored me throughout my time in higher education, as well as the assistance I’ve received from public service organizations I’ve been a part of.

Bradford, UCI associate professor of Chicano/Latino studies, says that Estrada’s transformational journey reflects a key role played by the University of California and other colleges: as engines of social mobility that educate a workforce and create critical thinkers to play key roles in a democracy.

“It’s important that students who are smart and committed get a chance to come to universities … to learn to make arguments, to clarify their thinking and their values,” she says. “It’s not just about making a living, but about sitting on school boards, seeking

public office, and making policy and law.”

For Estrada, that certainly rings true.

“I account my achievements to the public servants and professors who have mentored me throughout my time in higher education, as well as the assistance I’ve received from public service organizations I’ve been a part of,” she says. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have been able to be at UCI. And I think that has motivated me to help others and be a public servant – because I see how powerful it is.” •

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DEAN’S LEADERSHIP SOCIETY B o l d . M o l d B re a ke r s . M a v e r i c k s . Le a d e r s i n p h i l a n t h r o p y.

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he Dean’s Leadership Society in the UCI School of Social Sciences provides an opportunity for alumni, parents, community, faculty, and staff to support the school, its programs, faculty, and students at various commitment levels while receiving special recognition and opportunities to engage in the school’s growth. Members join an influential and diverse network of supporters and like-minded individuals who are deeply committed to enriching national prominence and fostering a new tradition of excellence. Some of the school’s areas impacted through DLS membership dues include: Scholarship support for worthy students Support for scholarships helps ensure the school’s continuing ability to attract and retain students of the highest caliber. This support can help directly enhance undergraduate education with hands-on experience in labs, seminars, and award-winning programs like UCDC, Mock Trial, Global Connect, and the Summer Academic Enrichment Program. At the graduate level, it helps us compete against UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvard - schools our Ph.D. students have turned down to attend UCI. Critical research projects Our programs are supported by highly competitive federal government and private foundation grants, state and local governments, and private donors. As government funding declines, generosity from individual donors at all levels becomes more important than ever before.

Recruitment & retention of world-class faculty The School of Social Sciences has attracted top notch faculty who are building robust measures, innovative models, and powerful methodologies for understanding the human condition in a diverse and digital age. We are now routinely faced with raiding efforts from top universities in the country, including the University of Michigan, Stanford, and the other UCs. Needed resources to pursue new initiatives The school’s openness to new approaches and collaborations has kept it nimble and at the cutting-edge in fields as different as transportation economics and cultural anthropology, the philosophy of physics and biology, and the sociology of mass movements.

And our faculty, graduate students, and undergrads are discovering new connections every day.

Learn more at www.dls.socsci.uci.edu and contact us directly to get involved. •

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SOC SCI ALUMNI NETWORK Le a r n h o w y o u c a n g e t i n v o l v e d i n a n o r g a n i z a t i o n t h a t ’s m o r e t h a n 5 0 , 0 0 0 A n t e a t e r s s t r o n g

5

0,000 is a pretty big number to wrap your head around, no matter what you’re counting. In the UCI School of Social Sciences, that number became personal in 2018 as we watched our Alumni Network grow to include more than 50,000 social sciences Anteaters. Can we get a ZOT, ZOT, ZOT?!

We know that our UCI social sciences Anteaters are a different breed. From the halls of justice in D.C. to international relations work in capitals around the world, and from entrepreneurial endeavors touching millions of lives to courtrooms across the nation, boardrooms in some of the world’s top companies, and classrooms around the globe, they’re breaking the mold to create positive change in society, economies, and for human well-being. And we couldn’t be more proud to see the UCI soc sci maverick spirit alive, well, and thriving in each and every one of our Anteaters.

In recognition of this milestone, we launched our #50for50 campaign to harness the power of our bold Anteater alumni base. The ask is small - just $50.

(And if you think about it, that’s basically one cup of coffee out a month that you decide to forego). But when you multiply that $50 by 50,000 alumni, the power of UCI social sciences Anteaters becomes truly transformative. Scholarships for students in need. Research support for outstanding faculty. Classroom improvements that enhance teaching in the 21st century. Just imagine the possibilities a $50 gift can support when it’s multiplied across the soc sci Anteater network.

Oh, and that new number to wrap your head around? $2,500,000. That’s the power of UCI social sciences #50for50.

Interested in getting involved? Visit us at alumni.socsci.uci.edu to learn more. •

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Bill Maurer, Professor and Dean

wmmaurer@uci.edu | 949.824.6802

Tracy Arcuri, Executive Director of Development tarcuri@uci.edu | 949.824.8093

Elizabeth Dahl, Director of Development dahle@uci.edu | 949.824.8079

Ian Delzer, Associate Director of Development idelzer@uci.edu | 949.824.7616

Melissa Churlonis, Development Department Operations Coordinator mchurlon@uci.edu | 949.824.7472

www.socsci.uci.edu

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