As my journey through graduate school progresses, I occasionally find myself wondering why I was admitted. Surely, there must have been a mistake, a system error, anything?! If you can relate to this sentiment, you're not alone.
UC Davis wasn’t even on Daniel Castaneda’s radar when he was an undergraduate at UC Riverside; but it is where he ended up. And, because of the Envision UC Davis program, he discovered it was exactly where he was meant to be.
“The Envision program was the first time that I thought, I’m actually qualified to be in a program like this and people want me to come to their university,” Castaneda said. “It was nice to feel like I have a future opportunity here and there are people at UC Davis who want to help me do it.”
Graduate Studies is committed to protecting and supporting all our students' and scholars' well-being, and we proudly stand in solidarity with them. We demand justice when crimes have been committed and will continue to engage in and lead meaningful efforts to dismantle racism and other forms of hate.
We want to reaffirm our resolute support of our Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, and staff. We will continue to work in solidarity to address the xenophobia, racism, violence in our own community and beyond.
Proposition 209 will continue to challenge the university’s efforts to be equitable and inclusive as it seeks to attract the best and brightest students from all backgrounds, while ensuring equal opportunity for all. Proposition 209 has forced California public institutions to try to address racial inequality without factoring in race, even where allowed by federal law. The diversity of our university and higher education institutions across California, should — and must — serve the rich diversity of our state. We will work to increase our investments and efforts in this area given that racial equity is paramount to fulfilling our mission to produce the intellectual capital of California that has economic and social benefits.
