Director’s Initiatives

Dr. Taft has recently begun her tenure as the Huerta Center Director and is currently working on developing three new programs that all aim to strengthen relationships, build community, and bolster the research and social change efforts already taking place at UCSC.  

The Youth Activist Research initiative will support student and youth organizations and leaders to imagine and conduct high-quality research projects that can further their own social change goals, especially those aimed at transforming local institutions (including our own campus) to better meet the needs of youth of color, immigrant youth, and youth from low-income communities.  We are currently meeting with students and community leaders to develop this work and welcome interested individuals to reach out.

Faculty thematic lunches are a new opportunity for faculty members to gather with other researchers from across campus who may be working on similar topics or areas in an informal setting.  Finding time and space to connect across disciplines, divisions, and the dispersed landscape of our campus can be a challenge and these lunches aim to reduce some of the barriers to this kind of casual scholarly interaction.  If you are a UCSC faculty member who’d like to discuss the possibilities of a Huerta Center-facilitated faculty lunch gathering, please email us.

Graduate student Thinking Out Loud brown bag lunches are similarly intended to be sites of informal intellectual engagement.  In this series, graduate students are invited to bring a specific puzzle, challenge, or research and writing dilemma to a group of supportive Huerta Center community members for collective problem-solving and discussion.