In many ways, Jessi Jarrin’s story at UC Davis is just beginning to be written. A first-year MFA in poetry student, Jarrin was awarded a prestigious Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, providing her with full tuition and fees plus a stipend for two years to support her graduate education.
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.
UC Davis graduate student Nicole Claiborne and her advisor, Professor Karen Zito, are among the 45 doctoral students and their advisers awarded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Gilliam Fellowships to advance diversity and inclusion in the sciences.
"Ten years ago I arrived alone in the US with nothing but a dream. Now I am proud to call myself a scientist, a Ph.D. student, and a mentor. My family, while loving and supportive, never imagined that I would become a scientist. To be honest, neither did I."
Devin Horton, Ph.D, the Graduate Diversity Officer for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the University of California, Davis, is among the scientists and leaders recognized in a list of 100 inspiring Black scientists in America, published last month.
Elizabeth Sturdy, Director of Mentoring and Advising for Graduate Studies, sent the following email to the mentoring list on June 2, 2020. To receive future messages about mentoring and advising guidance, please subscribe to Graduate Studies' mentoring list.