Dear Colleagues:
Following the completion of the standard five-year administrative review process, I am pleased to announce that David Yoo has been reappointed to serve as vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC) for a second term. We thank Vice Provost Yoo for his efforts to build upon and extend the IAC’s legacy as one of the nation’s most important spaces for the study of subjects like race, ethnicity, indigeneity, immigration, gender, and sexuality.
Since his appointment in 2016, Vice Provost Yoo has focused much of his work on bolstering the foundation of the IAC. Under his leadership, the institute and its ethnic studies centers have secured nearly $25 million in funding to support racial and social justice research, programs, and partnerships on and off campus. His stewardship allowed the IAC to surpass its Centennial Campaign goal, more than doubling the initial fundraising target. Additionally, over the past year, Vice Provost Yoo has helped the IAC develop its identity and chart a course for the future by leading a collaborative process to revise the institute’s strategic plan. The new plan establishes four main goals for the IAC: facilitate societal change to achieve racial equality and justice through research, training, and engagement; create infrastructure to promote a more comprehensive public understanding of social justice issues; democratize access to IAC information and offerings; and produce a state-of-the-art digital repository for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of racial justice resources.
During his tenure, Vice Provost Yoo also has helped to expand the institute’s influence by building and sustaining partnerships between its centers and other campus units. The institute has partnered with the Center for the Study of Women on its Associate Professor Research Excellence Awards; with Alumni Affairs on diversity programs and initiatives; and with the Office of Research and Creative Activities on new projects such as the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship pilot and the Racial and Social Justice Seed Grant program. In association with the Division of Enrollment Management, IAC faculty and staff have been closely involved in recruitment and yield events for students traditionally underrepresented in higher education. The IAC also is a partner alongside the Academic Personnel Office and the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion on a three-year UCOP Advancing Faculty Diversity grant. Through the Bunche Center, it is playing an important role in the Rising to the Challenge initiative.
Finally, under Vice Provost Yoo, the IAC and its centers have focused on deepening the social impact of new scholarship and projects. Recent initiatives such as Archiving the Age of Mass Incarceration, the creation of a multilingual COVID-19 resource hub, and the mapping of hate crimes have taken on some of the pressing issues of our time. In partnership with the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, the IAC also has been engaged in providing research content for ethnic studies curricula, training teachers, and developing open access resources.
The IAC’s work is critical to our understanding of American history, society, and culture, and the institute plays an important role in advancing social justice at UCLA and far beyond. I hope that you will join me in extending gratitude to Vice Provost Yoo for his dedicated leadership of the institute over the past five years and in wishing him well in his second term.
Sincerely,
Emily A. Carter
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost