UCSB Faculty & Graduate Research
Faculty and graduate students at UCSB are eligible for funding to support projects that address community-centered and equity-based issues along the Central Coast of California. A Call for Proposals is issued during Spring Quarter, as is our annual research symposium featuring original campus projects. We are in our second year supporting research focused on the Central Coast and look forward to projects that address employment and wages, education, health, housing, climate risk, and political representation, and that foreground social justice, including (but not limited to) research on regional issues with disparate impacts by race, class, gender, indigeneity, and citizenship status. Research may focus on the causes, dimensions, consequences, and/or responces to inequality in the Central Coast, and it may span the three target counties or be located within a single county.
Past Award Announcements
Past Symposia
Past Funded Projects
Awardees are invited and welcome to share any project materials with our Blum Center audience. See below for access to resources and/or deeper insight into central coast regional equity issues:
Ph.D. Candidate Sandy Sum, with Assistant Professor Tamma Carleton as the PI, from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management conducted region-wide research on water quality disparities within agricultural communities. Among the significant findings is the role of systemic racism in affecting the quality of farmworkers' drinking water supplies as evidenced by drought-vulnerable communities on the Central Coast in comparison to other agricultural regions in California.
"The Disproportionate Effects of Drought on Drinking Water Quality" - presentation slides