Project Lead: Alexander Edgar, Undergrad Student, Political Science

In order to reinvigorate UC Berkeley’s civic engagement after over a year online, the Associated Students of the University of California Vote Coalition will be hosting a free festival called Votechella to help get students registered to vote before the online voter registration deadline. There will be a headliner and opening act, a panel of politicians and community members discussing civic engagement, and free food and activities for all of the community members in attendance. To enter this free festival students are asked to show that they are registered to vote. If they aren’t, student volunteers will be walking their peers through the voter registration process and encouraging them to complete it before entering the festival. We are prepared to register a large number of students and inspire even more to vote in the primary and general elections this year.

Project Lead: Emma Tolliver, Undergrad Student, College of Letters and Science: English and Political Science - Public Service

Davis Journal of Legal Studies (DJLS) is an interdisciplinary, undergraduate academic journal. Modeled after law reviews, DJLS was created to provide undergraduate students the opportunity to write, edit, and publish research pertaining to legal studies and law. The goal of DJLS is to advance legal discourse through public scholarship and empower undergraduate students by promoting and publishing their research.

Project Lead: Greta Knight, Undergrad Student, International Relations

As an intersectional feminist organization, REVIVAL encourages women, as well as all underrepresented students, to broaden their perspectives, share their thoughts, and use their voices. Not only do we empower feminists to share inclusive opinions regarding current events or social, political, cultural, and activist issues, but we also strive to give everyone the opportunity and community to express themselves while discussing their unique experiences.

Project Lead: Paul Von Blum, Senior Lecturer, Communication

This project will present a panel of artists, journalists, and scholars who have been intimately involved in attempted censorship of major public and political art projects in the Los Angeles area. Each panelist, including the Project Director, has taken an activist role in successfully halting or retarding government attempts to change or even eliminate artworks with a powerful educational impact on large public audiences, including hidden histories of race, ethnicity, and even threats of nuclear war and catastrophe. The panel program will be both live and virtual in Spring Quarter 2022. The Program reflects the central mission of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement by adding a powerful dimension of attempted visual arts censorship.

Project Lead: Matthew Griffith, Grad Student, Higher Education and Organizational Change

The Black Graduate Student-Mental Health Project (working title - Teaching while Black) will host a series of campus dialogues with Black graduate students who also teach at the university (i.e., teaching assistants, graduate student instructors, teaching fellows). These dialogues will explore how these individuals navigate teaching while experiencing mental health issues and how they navigate them.

This project aims to use these dialogues as an opportunity to elevate the discussion and forward ideas to better support these students throughout the UC.

Project Lead: Meera Joseph, Undergrad Student, Political Science Major with Public Affairs Minor & President, BridgeUSA; Ryder Phillips, Vice President of Operations, BridgeUSA; Yiyao Ma, Vice President of Events, BridgeUSA; & Cloud Melrose, Vice President, BridgeUSA

BridgeUSA at UCLA is an organization working to combat political polarization through dialogue, ideological diversity, and solution-oriented politics. We aim to build empathy and understanding across party lines by hosting civil political discussions. By creating this safe space we encourage students to become more engaged in politics. We host biweekly meetings where we discuss various political topics like COVID regulations, Voting Reforms, Voting Rights, and more. We also host social hangs for our members to encourage a strong community with students who may not always think alike. We also partner with our organizations on campus to host events to help benefit our members. Our organization has recently started a journal where we will write about political topics from various perspectives to help build empathy and understanding in the polarizing world of politics. These journals will coincide with our biweekly political discussions.

Project Lead: Nicholas Francis Havey, Grad Student, PhD in Higher Education and Organizational Change

The primary goal of this research study is to assess the political homophily and insularity of the professoriate. Collegiality is one of the core tenets of academic work, though there is little investigation into the social organizing of the professoriate along political lines. While perception persists that American colleges and universities are disproportionately liberal, extant research demonstrates that social and political discrimination is more likely to occur at the hands of conservative members of the professoriate. Researchers have explored this phenomenon (political discrimination) and identified no evidence that conservative faculty are discriminated in college though evidence has been uncovered that suggests that liberals are discriminated against by more conservative members of their departments and universities. Further investigation into insularity and homophily is thus necessary and the goal of this study.

Project Lead: Susanne Lohmann, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy

On morally charged or politically controversial topics students are often afraid to speak freely in the classroom—afraid not so much of the professor, but of other students. One solution is to have students play games under conditions of identity protection and study their own game play data. Such data revelations provoke frank in-class discussions enabling students to find common ground across political divides.—This project will develop and publicize a toolkit consisting of a game play pedagogy, sample games, and game play data; a theoretical framework, social science literature, and sample prompts; and tips for classroom management.

Project Lead: Danielle Bermudez, Grad Student, Interdisciplinary Humanities

As part of a collaboration between the Graduate Students of Color Coalition (GSOCC) at UC Merced and the Native and Indigenous Student Coalition (NISC) at UC Merced, the Native Voices Project will be a living histories project that highlights our collective pillars of Community Building, Civic Education, Social Justice, Ancestral Knowledges, and Collective Healing. Our main objective is to continue in the tradition of our ancestral lineages of cultural reclaiming in the spirit of In Lak'ech / Tú eres mi otro yo / you are my other me – where we can recognize ourselves and our humanity in one another. The project will be two-fold: 1) a focus on transformative justice through centering indigeneity and community building, and 2) archiving the ancestral knowledge shared through a planned symposia series. We believe it can provide the UCM and surrounding community a forum to heal during trying times, as well as to collectively affirm and honor our campus and local community histories that have weaved and continue to weave our growing university.

Project Lead: Gerardo Medina, Coordinator, Leadership and Service Programs/Office of Student Life

One of the goals of the Office of Student Life at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) is to increase student interest and participation in civic engagement. A foundational function of the American university is the development of civic minded leaders. UCR is a special place uniquely positioned to develop said leaders who will help address the challenges facing our local communities. Our aim is to make civic engagement a pillar of the UCR student experience. Over the last few years—with the help of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and its VOICE Initiative Awards—Student Life has developed and piloted programs that encourage students to see themselves as the change makers our communities need. Now Student Life is looking to continue this work with the help of the 2022 VOICE Grant by developing a Civic Engagement Mini-Grant Program. This program will focus on identifying student leaders on the UCR campus who are ready to take their engagement to the next level and develop initiatives, resources, or programs of their own that will 1. address a community concern or 2. help engage other UCR students in civic engagement. UCR students will apply to receive a mini-grant ($500-$1,000) to develop their own initiatives on the UCR Campus and in the local community. These student leaders will be advised by UCR Staff member Gerry Medina, and will attend leadership development workshops to help advance and strengthen their ideas.

Project Lead: Valeria Dominguez, M.Ed., Doctoral Candidate in the School of Education & Raquel M. Rall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the School of Education

Our project aims to educate students about the intentional ways in which students participate in, lead, and change higher education. We invite student board members to present in seminars open to the UC student population and discuss their experiences, challenges, and growth as student leaders. The work of student board members is essential to maintaining the university at the forefront of social issues affecting our society. There is a great deal to learn from these students who have spent their tenure on the board constructing what it means to be a leader, what it means to be civically engaged, and what it means to make a difference. The proposed program will advance conversations around the relevance of and need for democratic participation on college campuses and further campus dialogue related to access, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. With an eye on young board members, this project stands to illuminate motivation for and best practices of how civic engagement manifests into everyday decisions of these pivotal leaders and document the legacy of these students responding beyond words to act as influential decision-makers.

Project Lead: Tiffany Taylor, Grad Student, Doctoral Student, Anthropology

This project will examine current debates, discourses, and discussions regarding how academics feel about recent initiatives and the creation of novel technologies to advance democracy and the open internet while mitigating and reducing hate speech, polarization, and disconnection. Another focus of this project is to examine the connections between censorship among campus community members and cultural inclusivity.

Project Lead: Katya Armistead, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Dean of Student Life; Maeve Devoy, Associate Director, Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; & Viviana Marsano, Civic and Community Engagement Isla Vista Liaison and Senior Advisor to Campus Organizations

The Civic Engagement Scholars Program is a collaborative effort between the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; the Dean of Students Office; Civic and Community Engagement, and the Office of Student Engagement and Leadership (SEAL). The Civic Engagement Scholars Program fosters ideals of active citizenship among our undergraduate and graduate students, engaging the next generation of leaders on issues that are of import to our campus and to the surrounding communities of Isla Vista, Goleta, and Santa Barbara. We create alliances with leaders and organizations in those communities to provide students with opportunities to develop their leadership and organizing skills and to affect measurable, positive change.

Project Lead: Jasmeet Dhaliwal, Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth & Planetary Sciences; Brynna Downey, Grad Student, Earth & Planetary Sciences; & Rachel Maxwell, Grad Student, Earth & Planetary Sciences

Our work is a continuation of a previous VOICE award, which had the goal of bringing together undergraduate students with graduate and postdoctoral mentors to discuss, investigate and question the intersections between science and society. With this additional award, we will extend this program throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, to give students more opportunities to meet in person, participate in interdisciplinary discussions, and engage with the reading material. The students have chosen between two books, The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and Paying the Land by Joe Sacco, which respectively focus on the themes of “Astronomy & Inclusivity” and “Extractivism and Ethics.” Through this year-long VOICE program, we aim to support undergraduates in becoming more comfortable discussing interdisciplinary issues, encourage them to question existing paradigms in the sciences, and develop creative ideas for greater integration of societal needs into academic disciplines.