Engaged Scholarship in the Central Valley: Stories from the Field

Join us for a relaxing evening at the Buehler Alumni Center's patio and gardens! We will eat, drink, hear stories from faculty and graduate students doing engaged scholarship projects, and celebrate the opening of the 25 STORIES FROM THE CENTRAL VALLEY photo exhibit, http://twentyfive.ucdavis.edu.

When: May 5, 2009: 4:00-6:00 pm
Where: The Buehler Alumni Center patio, UC Davis

4:00-4:30: View photo exhibit.
4:30-5:30: Speakers talk about their roles in engaged scholarship projects in the Central Valley.
5:30-6:00: Informal reception and another chance to view the photos.

Co-sponsors: Community Development Graduate Group, Environmental Justice Project and the Center for Regional Change.

Speakers

Tracy Perkins is the creator of 25 STORIES FROM THE CENTRAL VALLEY, a multimedia project that documents the work of the women leaders of the environmental justice movement in the San Joaquin Valley. Her project expands on interviews she conducted for her master's research, in collaboration with activists from the San Joaquin Valley and faculty, staff and students from UC Davis. Tracy is a graduate of the community development master's program at UC Davis, and currently a Ph.D. student in sociology at UC Santa Cruz.

Maggie La Rochelle is a graduate student in the Community Development Graduate Group, and works with the Environmental Justice Project at UC Davis. Her current projects include an assessment of the Environmental Justice Project and its potential to foster mutually beneficial working relationships between local communities and UC Davis affiliates, and creating environmental justice teaching tools for use in classroom settings from the 25 STORIES project material with Tracy Perkins.

Jonathan London is director, Center for Regional Change; assistant professor, Human and Community Development; and senior researcher, Environmental Justice Project. He is an educator, planner and action researcher with 15 years of experience in participatory community development. His research focuses on rural social movements, community participation in environmental and natural resource management, and questions of environmental justice and social equity in rural California. Prior to coming to UC Davis, Jonathan was the executive director and co-founder of Youth In Focus, a pioneering non-profit organization that engages typically marginalized youth in participatory action research. In this role, he served on the board of the Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship and on the steering committee for the National Rural Funders Collaborative. He currently serves as president of the Board of Directors for the California Institute for Rural Studies and is a co-founder of the Community and University Alliance for Justice. Jonathan holds a master's in city and regional planning and a Ph.D. in environmental science policy and management from UC Berkeley.

Moderator

Julie Sze is an associate professor of American studies at UC Davis as well as the founding director of the Environmental Justice Project for UC Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment (http://ej.ucdavis.edu). She also serves as faculty advisor for 25 STORIES FROM THE CENTRAL VALLEY.