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Welcome to Grad Summit 2022!

Each year, UCGPC hosts an annual Graduate Summit. During Grad Summit, we take the pulse of the incoming and current graduate student body to determine priority areas and advocacy agendas for the upcoming years. We encourage UC graduate and professional students, stakeholders, and other experts to apply to present on issues they would like to see represented in UCGPC's advocacy agenda. We also invite all UC graduate and professional students to attend and provide input and feedback on our priorities. After Grad Summit, UCGPC's Council will vote on our advocacy agenda for the duration of the academic year. The Council is comprised of elected student body leaders at each UC campus.

This year, we feature speakers passionate about these topics:

Financial Aid & Student Debt Relief Announcement

Midterm Election Proposition Analysis

Grad Student Mental Health

Mentorship Standards and Grad Student Rights

Anti-ableism in the UCs

Reproductive Justice

Housing and Cost of Living

Climate Justice and the UC Green New Deal Coalition

DACA Policy and Opportunity 4 All Campaign

Grad Summit will be held virtually on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30am to 3:00pm. We invite graduate/professional students and student affairs professionals in the UC system the opportunity to provide input on panelists' presentations.

Didn't register? Watch live on YouTube

The meeting will me livestreamed from Zoom. Use the comments section to engage with the community! We'll get back to your comments and questions after the event.

Watch the livestream on our YouTube channel

Program Schedule

Activity	Time	Speakers
Welcome and introduction	9:30 am	Hayden Schill, UCGPC President and Kiley Barton, UCGPC Council Chair
Student and Community Safety Speaker	9:45 am	Jody Stiger, Director of Community Safety, UC Office of the President
UCGPC: Financial Aid and Student Debt Relief Announcement & CA Midterm Election Propositions Analysis	10:05 am	Patriccia Ordonez-Kim (UCGPC Executive Director), Spencer Lively (UC Berkeley Representative), Kiley Barton (UCGPC Council Chair) and Yaritza Gonzalez (UCGPC Legislative Affairs Director)
Graduate Student Mental Health Presentation	10:30 am	Dr. Evelyn Vazquez, Principal Investigator & Manasi Rajadhyaksha, UC Riverside Doctoral Student and Graduate Student Researcher for Engaging the Academy to Address Underrepresented Graduate Students' Mental Health Needs
Mentorship Standards and Grad Student Rights Panel	11:00 am	Victor Wang (UC San Diego Doctoral Student) and Somchate Wasantwisut (UC Riverside Doctoral Student and Riverside UAW 2865) with Hayden Schill, UCGPC President
Lunch	11:40 am
Basic Needs Panel: Anti-Ableism, Reproductive Justice, and Housing Insecurity/COLA	12:20 pm	Megan Lynch (UC Access Now Founder), Zora Mihaley (UC Irvine Doctoral Student), Patriccia Ordonez-Kim, (UCGPC Executive Director)
Civic Engagement Panel: Climate Change Coalitions and Opportunity 4 All Campaign	1:00 pm	Caroline Hung (Graduate Student Representative for UCOP Pathways to Fossil Free Campus Task Force), Adam Cooper (UCGPC Organizing Director and UC Green New Deal Coalition), Carlos Alarcon Garcia (UCLA Graduate Student and Opportunity 4 All Campaign Representative)
Attendee Coalition-Building and Discussions	1:40 pm	All Attendees, moderated by UCGPC Officers
2022 Vote to Determine UCGPC Annual and Permanent Advocacy Priorities	2:10 pm	UCGPC Council Members / Campus GSA External Vice Presidents
Closing Remarks	2:20 pm	Hayden Schill, UCGPC President
CLOSED SESSION: Systemwide Committee and StARs Nominations	2:30 pm	UCGPC Council Members / Campus GSA External Vice Presidents

Speakers

This year, our speakers come from UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UC Los Angeles. They represent student issues, are involved in projects, and work with external organizations to further the issues they are passionate about. Read more about them here!

UC San Diego

Hayden Schill

Hayden is the current president of UCGPC. She will give welcoming and closing remarks to mark the occasion. As President, Hayden represents UCGPC and the UC graduate community to the UC Office of the President, the Board of Regents, and other stakeholders. Previously, she served as the Vice President of External Affairs for the UCSD Graduate & Professional Student Association and UCGPC Board Member. Her advocacy interests include equity in higher education and issues related to climate change, such as food security and transit.

UC Irvine

Kiley Barton

Kiley is UCGPC's Council Chair this year. She is the head organizer of Grad Summit 2022 and will be moderating discussions and council voting. She is the Vice President of External Affairs for UC Irvine's Associated Graduate Students. Previously, Kiley served as the Legislative Director for the External team for AGS, a time during which she represented UC Irvine for UCGPC. Kiley is passionate about public service and advocating for social justice. She is dedicated to uplifting graduate student voices as Council Chair, as well as helping to further UCGPC's continued growth as an organization.

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UC Riverside

Patriccia Ordoñez-Kim

Patriccia currently serves as UCGPC's Executive Director. She will report on the recent PSLF opportunity and housing insecurity status in the UC. Pat worked with the UCR 4 COLA coalition of students in 2020, working closely with the coalition's leaders, Margarita Vizcarra (rest in power), Sara Grummert, and Yajaira Calderon. Last year, Pat served as the External Vice President for UCR's GSA, sitting in multiple committees, including the Teaching Evaluation and Implementation Committee, the STEM Academy Advisory Committee, and the Committee on Courses. As EVP and UCGPC Council Member, she was part of the UCR delegation to the California Capitol to speak with congress representatives about housing affordability and COLA for Riverside graduate students.

UC Office of the President

Jody Stiger

Jody Stiger joined UC Office of the President in July 2022 as the Systemwide Director of Community Safety. Mr. Stiger has most recently served as the aide to the Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Commission, where his duties included revising the department’s system for investigating use of force, workplace and community complaints and increasing oversight. Jody has worked with POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) in revising their Basic Academy Workbook to incorporate procedural justice into statewide training for officers in California and advised the University on trainings. Mr. Stiger has testified as an expert witness in numerous cases involving police use of force, including testifying to when use of force has been excessive.

Mr. Stiger is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and has served as an officer for 7 years in the Los Angeles Police Department. He then became an instructor in the academy, training over 3,000 officers in de-escalation techniques and best practices in patrol work. Jody later served as a sergeant for 8 years, where he partnered extensively with business and community leaders and conducted reviews and oversight of all use of force incidents. He is the president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, representing African American employees within the Los Angeles Police Department.

UC Riverside

Manasi Rajadhyaksha

Manasi Rajadhyaksha is a Ph.D. candidate in the School Psychology program at the University of California Riverside. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of systemic factors on social-emotional development and mental health outcomes in individuals in the K-12 and higher education systems. As an international graduate student and member of a historically marginalized community, Manasi is particularly interested in the race-gendered experiences of individuals and how these experiences determine student outcomes. She is currently working as a Graduate Student Project Leader on the Engaging the Academy project and is responsible for co-leading the Mental Health Taskforce.

UC Berkeley

Spencer Lively

Spencer is a Masters of Public Policy student at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and serves as the Intercampus Liaison for the Graduate Assembly as well as GSI (TA) for the Political Science Department. He is originally from Northwest Washington, where he previously worked as a higher education lobbyist and political consultant.

UC Riverside

Dr. Evelyn Vazquez

Dr. Vazquez is the principal investigator of multiple projects at UCR, including "The Social Connectedness and Collective Healing in the Academic Profession: a Photovoice Project," "Healing the Academy," and "Engaging the Academy to Address Underrepresented Graduate Students' Mental Health Needs." She is also a faculty mentor in the Coachella Valley Free Clinic, a student-led clinic through the UCR School of Medicine. Her experiences informs her positionality and intentionality as a community psychologist. She has conducted research on different topics, including mental health and well-being in higher education settings, social determinants of health, and health inequity during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is part of the leadership of HABLAMoS (Hispanic and Bilingual Ambulatory Medical Studies) program. For Grad Summit, she will discuss her personal and professional insights about the current situation of the mental health of graduate and professional students.

Website: http://www.healingtheacademy.com/

Twitter: @DrEvelynVazquez

UC Riverside

Somchate Wasantwisut

Somchate is a 5th year doctoral candidate in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at UCR. He is the campus unit chair and bargaining team member of the teaching assistants, tutor, and readers union (UAW 2865) at UCR. He also serves as the vice president of the Thai Student Union Club, and has served as the president of the Chemical and Environmental Engineering mini-GSA at UCR. Through his years at UCR, he has advocated for greater rights for international students and scholars in various capacities: at the International Student Concern Committee of the UCR GSA, as a founding co-president of the International Student Advisory Committee (ISAC) at UCR, meeting with local and state legislators, leading petitions during the pandemic allowing international students t continue working & learning abroad and extending the non-resident supplemental tuition waiver to international grad students for up to 1 year, and finally working on the International Scholar and Immigrant Support article with the academic student workers' union (UAW 2865). He believes that the University of California as a renown world-class research and educational institution has attracted many talented international students and scholars from oversea. Many of whom arriving in the USA for their very first time. To accomplish the UC's mission of being a diverse and inclusive institution, the University should provide resources and create an environment where international students and scholars can thrive and succeed. Somchate will talk about his experience and work advocating for international student rights in various capacities, the challenges facing international students and potential ways to overcome them, and provide a list of recommendations to UCGPC in order to improve international student experiences in the UC.

UC Irvine

Zora Mihaley

Zora is a 2nd year Political Science doctoral student at UCI. She has an MA in Social Science, Demographic and Social Analysis from UCI as well. Zora currently serves on the Title IX Student Advisory Board for the UC system, which works closely with campus assault resources. Zora has always been passionate about preventing gendered and sexual violence. Friends of hers have personally experienced or have been impacted by sexual assault or violence in some way. Reporting of assaults in the UC has been turned into a game of hearsay, impacting the viability of action against assailants. She believes that students need to feel safe on a UC campus. As a UC Title IX student advisory board representative, she believes that it is imperative to begin a discussion and start taking steps towards hiring at least one on-call forensic nurse for each UC school. She hopes that this discussion can begin at the UCGPC Grad Summit 2022, taking us one step closer to a more just, safe, healthy, and equitable UC school system where all students have the chance to succeed.

UC San Diego

Victor Wang

Victor is a 6th year PhD student in Chemistry at UC San Diego. Victor has previously served as the UCSD GPSA's Vice President of External Affairs and Vice President of Academic Affairs. He has also previously served as a UCGPC Board Member and as Council Chair. Passionate about improving the graduate student experience and creating a more sustainable academic enterprise. Victor worked on mentorship standards extensively in his department and at his campus. He added a mentoring experience section to the UCGSES in the latest iteration. He has a good understanding of the organizations at the systemwide level that will be making the decisions on the mentorship standards and faculty-student bullying, and therefore can stand in the way of this progress. He believes that student researchers need a way to honestly provide feedback, have access to an unbiased and transparent reporting system, and work with advisors who are able to understand and support individual student's well-being and future aspirations.

UC Riverside

Caroline Hung

Caroline Hung is a 4th year PhD student in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at UC-Riverside. Her study focuses on the interplay of living systems and changing environments (i.e., drying lakes, ocean anoxia) throughout Earth's geologic time. Her broad understanding of the often complex networks involved in natural as well as anthropogenically-influenced systems lend her an interesting perspective when it comes to tackling the current climate crisis.

Caroline serves as the graduate student representative of the UC Office of the President's Global Climate Leadership Council and a voting member of the Sustainability Steering Committee. She promotes and facilitates communication between students and UC's main leadership when it comes to building policy for sustainability and climate action.

She hopes to identify this task as an area of advocacy for UCGPC and student communities to help move the UC forward on sustainability efforts. As the world's most successful university system and positioned in the State of California where effects of climate change can be seen on every level of life, it is in the UC's best interest to be the leader in research and organized climate actions towards electrification. Because students on each campus are the pivotal existence of such an establishment, providing financial capital and the research for such an institution to proliferate, it is crucial for students to participate in this process from ideation to fruition.

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UC Davis

Megan Lynch

"Megan Lynch is a Masters student in the Graduate Group of Horticulture & Agronomy at UC Davis. In addition to being a horticultural scientist, she's a disability advocate and activist, speaking to groups within and outside UC about carob (Ceratonia siliqua) as well as ableism and accessibility. She founded UC Access Now, a loose coalition of students, staff, and faculty working to dismantle ableism throughout the University of California system."

UC Los Angeles

Yaritza A. Gonzalez Rodriguez

Yaritza A. Gonzalez Rodriguez (she/her/ella) was born and raised in Inglewood, CA to Mexican immigrants from Guadalajara, Jalisco, and is a proud role model to her two younger sisters. In 2016, Yaritza earned her B.A. in Geography with a minor in Public Policy from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Over the past five years, she worked as a Paralegal in the Community College Legal Services at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) in Los Angeles, CA. Currently, Yaritza is pursuing her M.A. in Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and working as a Policy Fellow for the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. Yaritza is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of an organization called ING Fellowship, whose goal is to inspire, nurture and guide young people in Inglewood, CA, to organize, mobilize and address different issues that affect the Inglewood community.

UC San Diego

Adam Cooper

Adam is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at UC San Diego. Previously, he served as the Legislative Liaison for State Affairs for the UCSD Graduate and Professional Student Association and its Legislative Advocacy Committee. He is an active member of the Sunrise Movement & University of California Green New Deal Coalition and organizes for climate justice, clean energy & fair labor practices. As Director of Organizing, he is dedicated to connecting and amplifying issue-based grassroots organizations fighting for a better UC system.

UC Los Angeles

Carlos Alarcon Garcia

Carlos is a UCLA graduate student and will present on the Opportunity 4 All Campaign.

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