- Author: Saoimanu Sope
In celebration of Black History Month
Through music, movies and other media, many people know about Compton, a city located in southern Los Angeles County. Keith Nathaniel knows it from firsthand experience. Before Nathaniel and his family moved to Compton in the 1970s, the LA Watts Riots of 1965 underscored the tension brewing between law enforcement and the Black community that was felt not just in California but nationwide.
“Before we moved, Compton was changing from a predominantly White city to a Black city. The Watts Riots changed that and suddenly, you've got White flight out of Compton and into the suburbs,” said Nathaniel, UC Cooperative Extension director in Los Angeles County.
Growing up, Nathaniel was surrounded by people who looked like him. “It was a typical community of people who supported each other. The adults knew each other, and the kids knew each other,” he said.
Nathaniel remembers his teachers in elementary and middle school, identifying them as first-generation college students – most of whom graduated from universities following the 1954 civil rights case, Brown vs. Board of Education, which resulted in the desegregation of public schools across the United States.
“Those teachers had this real desire for us to match, if not exceed, their success or level of educational attainment,” said Nathaniel. “They were committed to seeing us become healthy and thriving adults.”
Although Nathaniel and his peers had influential Black leaders in their schools, prioritizing academic success was challenged by the introduction of crack cocaine. “With drugs came influx of gangs. Then, you start to see the community become unstable because gangs want to control this block or that corner,” Nathaniel said.
“We used to have shootouts at our high school. But it was Black and Brown lives being affected so it wasn't newsworthy in that sense. Not like today where you see an epidemic of school shootings making the news. This was happening back in the day, too,” he said, emphasizing that he and his peers were constantly reminded to be cautious while out at social events in the community.
“It was scary to think that you could be mistaken for being in a gang even if you had no ties.”
Students that were once friends in elementary or middle school became enemies by the time they started high school. Although Black boys were highly favored as gang recruits, Nathaniel said that his strong family foundation and focus on academics kept him out of the crossfire that others stepped into.
After graduating from high school, Nathaniel started college at UC Davis, where he pivoted to sociology after realizing that engineering was not for him. “I intended to graduate with a degree in engineering, but it was so competitive. I was in classes with pre-med students, and they were jacking up the grading curve,” he joked.
What Nathaniel did not realize prior to college, however, is that academic aptitude would not be the most important aspect of his experience in education. It was also the connections and relationships he built with others. Reflecting on the five years he spent at UC Davis, Nathaniel said that it was the best five years of his young adulthood.
Grateful for the teachers and advisors that kept him grounded, Nathaniel decided he wanted to become a teacher himself. From Davis, he pressed on for his master's degree at Florida A&M University where he studied educational leadership. Despite his high school advisor discouraging Black students from attending a historically Black university or college, Nathaniel felt the urge to do just that.
“My advisor was just incredible. Her goal was to get everyone to college,” said Nathaniel. “But she didn't like the idea of us going to an HBCU because it's not how the real world looks. She would tell us that it's better for us to integrate ourselves on campuses that reflect the world we live in.”
During graduate school, Nathaniel's mother died, and he returned to California. Although his loss led him to believe that returning to school was not ideal at the time, Nathaniel said that his professors reached out to him while he was away, and their concern swayed him.
“They checked up on me and it made me realize how much support I had back in Florida. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have been the case if I wasn't attending an HBCU,” Nathaniel said.
He went back to Florida to finish what he started. While earning a master's degree, Nathaniel said he was encouraged to pursue a doctorate degree and he seriously considered it, but not immediately. By then, his vision evolved into becoming a principal or superintendent and expanding his influence beyond the classroom. “I wanted a seat at the table, but I knew that I needed the credentials first,” he said.
Upon returning to California, Nathaniel applied for teaching positions and stumbled upon an ad in the Los Angeles Times seeking applications for a 4-H program coordinator. He was not offered the position he applied for, but he was offered a coordinator role for the Americorp/VISTA volunteer program instead and willingly accepted.
Since 1994, Nathaniel has been a part of UC Cooperative Extension and started out by managing the Americorp/VISTA volunteers who were responsible for introducing the 4-H program to communities across Los Angeles. The program grew quickly, engaging 4,000 to 5,000 kids daily. The power of the program was not just in its passionate volunteers, but the fact that the volunteers lived in the communities they served.
Prior to 4-H, Nathaniel worked for the Campfire Council and was introduced to informal education such as teaching youth in life skills and connecting with them outside of the traditional classroom. This experience served Nathaniel well as he transitioned into 4-H, inspiring him to pivot from his original goal of working in the formal K-12 system.
In 1997, Nathaniel was accepted to UCLA where he earned a doctorate of education while working full-time. “Going back to that seat at the table… by this time in my career, I knew that I wanted to influence policy that would benefit young people. I wanted to do more than teach. And I also knew that I needed the credentials to do it,” said Nathaniel.
Now, Nathaniel enters his 30th year of service to the community through UC Cooperative Extension. Realizing how far he has come, Nathaniel said that the adversity of his childhood helped build his character and prepared him for the battles ahead.
Emphasizing the significance of connecting with people, Nathaniel said that it is fulfilling to serve the community that raised him and credits the mentors and peers he has met along the way for his triumphs.
“If we surround ourselves with people that have our best interest in mind, we'd believe that we're going places,” he said. “It's about being selfless, too. So that we can help others see themselves the way we see them; so they feel empowered to do whatever it is they want to do. That's what I had, and that's what I hope to give back.”
/h3>- Author: UCLA News
Reposted from UCLA Samueli Engineering Newsroom
Drone sensors for deployment into a local ignition event Courtesy of Kevin Schwarm
Using new drone sensing technology, Schwarm has helped contribute to a new way of measuring the emissions of fires — carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulates, volatile organic compounds, etc. — so researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the way wildfires behave.
When controlled properly, the so-called prescribed burns — fires that are intentionally set to clear out vegetation that otherwise could end up fueling larger, more catastrophic fires — can play a key role in maintaining the health of a forest. They help prevent the kinds of wildfires that have wiped out homes and caused devastating losses of lives across California in recent years.
While setting fire to the forest mayseemcounterintuitive to the goal of preventing wildfires, it draws inspiration from Native American practices of setting controlled fires to improve the habitats for deer and other game animals.Since the Gold Rush, however, the amount of plant life in forests in California has proliferated. While this growth is ostensibly good for the health of the forests, the extra vegetation actually increases the risk of extreme wildfires as it provides large amounts of fuel.
Located about 142 miles east of UC Berkeley on the western slope of the central Sierra Nevada, the 4,400-acre Blodgett Forest Research Station has been a living laboratory since 1933. In April, Rob York, an assistant Cooperative Extension specialist and adjunct associate professor of forestry at UC Berkeley, directed a field campaign involving four days of controlled burns. Scientists and forestry experts from other universities, including UCLA and UC Riverside, joined in the effort to reduce wildfire risk.
Working with engineers from OptoKnowledge, Schwarm was a part of several research teams in charge of measuring the emissions of the prescribed burns. They monitored the emissions using a drone that features on-board, optical sensors that can measure levels of airborne carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The team also used the data to create aerial maps that correlate the emissions with the fires, as well as other ground and air measurements.
Schwarm, whose doctoral research focuses on optical diagnostics for combustion systems and harsh environments, was responsible for monitoring the data collection, working with the optical sensor equipment and guiding the drone pilots during the tests.
“The objective was to capture as much information as possible on the emissions of these fires and also to relate those to the burned vegetation that was inventoried beforehand,”saidSchwarm, who works in the lab ofMitchellSpearrin, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineeringatUCLASamueli. “We are hoping that the results of this field campaign will help to further our understanding of wildfire combustion science, the role of wildfires in our local and global climate, and to help us develop more efficient wildfire management strategies.”A Maine native who loves the outdoors, Schwarm was initially interested in research involving internal combustion engines when he first visited UCLA in 2017 as a prospective graduate student. After meeting Spearrin and learning about his research on laser diagnostics and combustion systems, Schwarm was intrigued and decided to join Spearrin's research group that fall.
“I found Professor Spearrin's research very compelling, with laser diagnostics providing an avenue for engine research while also remaining an elegantly simple yet powerful measurement tool with wide applicability,” Schwarm shared.
Last fall, Spearrin introduced Schwarm to the multicampus wildfire project. “I found it a very exciting opportunity to use our expertise in combustion diagnostics to play a role in enhancing our understanding of both wildfires and climate change, which could lead to better methods for managing these grave issues,” Schwarm said.
According to Schwarm, the preliminary results from emissions data collected during the field campaign indicate that the drone sensor was very effective in capturing the multi-dimensional gradients of emissions in the fire plumes.
The team has been able to create three-dimensional spatial maps of the emissions concentrations, tracking how they change over time. This finding provides the researchers with insight into how fires behave, such as where the boundaries of the fire are and where new ignition sites emerge.
“This is very exciting as a new sensor capability to provide a deeper level of information for a wide range of applications in wildfire science and management, and we are currently working with the other researchers involved in the burns to place that information into context,” Schwarm said. “This was the first full-scale, real-world test for our drone sensor, and it will serve as a strong foundation for future deployment and expansion of our methods.”
Sara Hubbard contributed to this story.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're a beekeeper, a food retailer, in honey production or just want to know more about honey adulteration and food authenticity and what you can do about it, this one's for you.
An online Honey Adulteration Symposium, hosted by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and featuring keynote speaker Michael T. Roberts of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, will take place Thursday, April 22 from 9 to 11:30 a.m.
Registration for the 2.5-hour symposium ($30 per ticket) is underway here. The last day to register is April 18.
Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center, said the symposium is an opportunity "to learn how honey adulteration affects our food system and an opportunity to take action. Honey is the world's third most adulterated food, right after milk and olive oil."
The symposium, she said, is geared toward "educating specialty food retailers who actively educate their consumers." Presenters will address issues of pollination, economic adulteration and threats to beekeeping. A panel of specialty food retailers will discuss how they source and select products and educate and inspire their customers.
According to his website: "Roberts entered the field of food law when, in 2000, he left his law practice and enrolled in the LL.M. program on agricultural law at the University of Arkansas School of Law, the only such program in the U.S. Since then, Roberts has engaged in a variety of professional capacities related to food law and policy. A few years after completing the LL.M. program, he was invited to join the University of Arkansas School of Law as a Research Professor of Law and as the Director of the National Agricultural Law Center. Roberts has broad experience in practicing food law, including being of counsel in Washington D.C. with Venable LLP, as a member of the firm's food and agricultural law practice group. He was also a visiting scholar and consultant to the FAO in Rome."
Roberts teaches two courses at UCLA Law: "Introduction to Food Law and Policy" (for second- and third-year law students) and "Emerging Scholarship in International Food Law" (a "modes" class for first-year law students). He has also been instrumental in the organization of a UCLA food studies certificate graduate program and was the co-instructor of the program's Introduction to Food Studies course.
The Resnick Center performs cutting-edge legal research and scholarship in food law and policy to improve health and quality of life for humans and the planet, according to its website.
Also, at the UC Davis symposium, five retailers will discuss the ways they educate their customers. The speakers are:
- Amelia Rappaport, Woodstock Farmers' Market, Woodstock, Vermont
- Danielle Vogel, Glen's Garden Market, Washington, DC
- Grace Singleton, Zingerman's Deli, Ann Harbor, Mich.
- Kendall Antonelli, Antonelli Cheese Shop, Austin, Texas
- Ralph Mogannam, Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, San Francisco
Among the other speakers will be Chris Hiatt, vice president, American Honey Producers Association, and a third-generation beekeeper at Hiatt Honey, Madera, Calif., who will share his insights.
Lead sponsor is Nature's Nate, but other sponsors are needed, Harris said. She may be contacted at aharris@ucdavis.edu for more information.
The Honey and Pollination Center, affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is located in the Robert Mondavi Institute on Old Davis Road, UC Davis campus.
- Author: www.nbcnews.com by Stephen A. Nuño
Headed by University of California, Los Angeles Professor David E. Hayes-Bautista, and Werner Schink, CEO of Latino Futures Research, the report commissioned by the non-partisan group Latino Donor Collaborative estimates the total GDP of the Latino population based on data that is publicly available at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Labor.
In a discussion with NBC News over the phone, Hayes-Bautista said that most studies on Latino economic power look at Hispanics one-dimensionally, through their spending power. But by looking at Latinos beyond consumption and instead through their economic production, Latinos' contribution to the nation can be seen more as an investment than an expense.
“I've been studying Latinos for over 40 years, and you can point out some amazing things about Latinos, but people just yawn. But if you reframe Latinos in terms investors can understand, by size and growth rate, we can have a better idea of Latinos' importance in the U.S. economy," said Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the School of Medicine, UCLA.
According to the report, “The U.S. Latino GDP is growing 70 percent faster that the country's non-Latino GDP.”
For instance, 70 percent of the growth in our workforce is Latino. In the 75 years he has reviewed data, said Hayes-Bautista, Latinos have consistently ranked at the top, with the highest labor force participation rates.
Another common misperception around the country, the report finds is that non-U.S. citizen Latinos do not participate in the work force as much as other populations. In fact, male Latino non-citizens have an extremely high work force participation rate, over 90 percent for young mature workers aged 25 to 49.
Poll: 62% unhappy with economy 16:28
Hayes-Bautista has spent his professional career dispelling myths about Latinos, and working in California, first at Stanford and then at UCLA, he has seen how the Hispanic population has changed over the decades. Our perception of Latinos is based on an old model, he explained.
Immigration since the 1990s has effectively ceased being the largest factor in the demographic growth of the Latino population. “Immigrant growth has been fading out, and their kids are taking over, the millennials and post millennials are going to be driving our economy,” he said.
When you look at burgeoning cities throughout the country since the 1970s, Latinos have revitalized or saved those regions from massive decline as the non-Latino white population ages.
Hayes-Bautista said that misperceptions about Latinos evoke policies under false assumptions that ultimately do more harm than good for the nation as a whole.
“Latinos work more hours, work less in the public sector, and have the lowest rates of welfare utilization," Hayes-Bautista said. Yet despite their low relative burden to taxpayers, “their reward is the highest level of poverty in the nation.”
If the U.S. realized how vital Latinos are to the future of the United States, there would be greater investment in education, infrastructure, job training, and health care, rather than a constant flow of negative messaging about gangbangers, Hayes-Bautista said.
The report's takeaway is that the country's economic future depends on the interconnectedness between ethnicities and generations.
“The ability of the baby boomers to retire and use their benefits, such as health care and their investment portfolio," said Hayes-Bautista, "depends on Latinos."
Source: Published originally on nbcnews.com A New Look at How Latinos are Powering the U.S. Economy: Report by by Stephen A. Nuño
- Author: UCLA Newsroom by Jessica Wolf
More than 10,000 adults offered their thoughts on health care reform, immigration, climate change and other issues.
To capture a demographically and geographically diverse snapshot of the electorate, the survey queried more than 10,000 people and was conducted in five languages.
Initial findings from a UCLA-led nationwide survey of more than 10,000 adults reveal some of the differences and similarities among whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians when it comes to the White House agenda on immigration, taxes and health care reform.
Survey results showed significant differences in support toward both improving the Affordable Care Act and federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid and health services. Majorities from all groups — 77 percent of black respondents, 70 percent of Latinos, 68 percent of Asian respondents and 54 percent of white respondents — said they think that Obamacare should be amended and improved, not repealed. And while 57 percent of white respondents supported increasing spending for Medicaid and Medicare, the numbers were higher for all other groups — for Asians it was 60 percent, and 68 percent for Latinos and 76 percent for blacks.
UCLA political scientist professors Matt Barreto and Lorrie Frasure-Yokley served as co-principal investigators with Janelle Wong, professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and Edward Vargas, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“With this data, we can better understand how racial and ethnic groups differ in their views toward today's most pressing political and policy issues,” Frasure-Yokley said.
The survey asked people in the four groups their opinions about the 2016 election and ongoing public policy issues that also included climate change, federal spending, policing, racial equality and more.
To capture a demographically and geographically diverse snapshot of the electorate, the 2016 “Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey” queried more than 10,000 people and was conducted in five languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. To include the most comprehensive list of electoral, civic and policy-related survey questions, 86 researchers from 55 colleges and universities contributed questions. A full list of collaborators and access to topline results is available at Latino Decisions, the political opinion research firm that led the data-gathering effort.
In spring 2016, with the presidential primaries in full swing, the co-principal investigators began building a national cooperative of scholars in the social sciences whose research interests focus on the study of U.S. racial and ethnic politics. With its collaborative focus, the CMPS also contributes to building an academic pipeline of scholars in the social sciences, by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of researchers at varying stages of their careers, Frasure-Yokley said.
Majorities of respondents across all groups surveyed said they believe that taxes on the rich should be increased to give the middle class a tax break — 73 percent of all black, Latino and Asian respondents agreed with this sentiment, and 63 percent of white respondents did as well.
“While there was dovetailing agreement on many pressing issues, we see that race still matters in America,” Frasure-Yokley said.
Strong majorities from all racial groups surveyed favor a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — 76 percent of black respondents, 81 percent of Latino, 69 percent of Asian and 71 percent of whites. Yet whites were much more likely than other racial groups to support deporting of undocumented immigrants. However, even in that case, less than one out of three whites said they supported deportation. Whites are the only group in which a majority supported increased public spending on border security and police.
Less than a quarter of Latino, white and Asian respondents agreed that there should be a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Slightly more —27 percent — of black respondents favored such a ban. Unusually, in response to this statement about a third of respondents in each group neither agreed nor disagreed.
Black and Latino respondents were the strongest supporters of increased spending on public education at 80 and 70 percent, respectively. Sixty-one percent of whites favored increased education spending and 66 percent of Asians.
“As academics and analysts we have a responsibility to help bring to light information that will aid in policy decision-making,” said Barreto, who is co-founder of Latino Decisions.
Participating scholars, which includes junior and senior faculty as well as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, will convene to share findings during a conference this summer at UCLA. All who provided content and financial backing for the survey received access to responses from the complete set of 394 questions.
“One of the most exciting aspects of this project is that it is truly collaborative from across the country,” Barreto said. Frasure-Yokley and Barreto also were part of teams that conducted smaller post-election multi-ethnic surveys after the 2008 and 2012 elections. “Bringing a diversity of views and voices to the project greatly improved the topics and content we covered.”
Of those surveyed, 60 percent were registered voters. Of those voters, 92 percent of black respondents voted for Hillary Clinton and 5 percent for Donald Trump. For Latinos, 77 percent said they voted for Clinton and 19 percent voted for Trump. Asian respondents voted 73 percent for Clinton versus 22 percent for Trump. And 37 percent of white respondents voted for Clinton and 57 percent for Trump.
Attitudes were split on climate change. Only 49 percent of white respondents said the federal government should pass laws to combat climate change, compared to 69 percent of Asians, 65 percent of Latinos and 62 percent of black respondents.
Personal experiences with discrimination also varied widely, as did feelings about Black Lives Matter. Nearly two thirds of blacks support activism by the Black Lives Matter movement, along with nearly half of all Latinos and nearly 40 percent of Asians. Thirty-seven percent and 42 percent of Latinos and Asians, respectively, neither support nor oppose the movement's activism. On the other hand, 44 percent of white respondents oppose such activism.
The cooperative survey was self-funded through the purchase of question content by contributors. The survey is among the first to use an online platform in combination with web-based random sampling directly from the voter registration rolls. It included video and audio stimuli and split-sample experimentation in question wording, consistent with the latest methods and approaches in survey research. After collecting all responses, researchers weighted the final data with a standard model to bring it in matching balance with the 2015 U.S. Census demographics for each racial group.
Source: Published originally on UCLA Newsroom. UCLA leads nationwide, multiracial survey of attitudes about politics and policy, by Jessica Wolf, March 10, 2017.