Karen Bass. UCLA, Unabashed.
Karen Bass is Speaker of the California Assembly. She co-founded and directed Community Coalition, a grassroots model of community organizing, and is a senior fellow in the UCLA School of Public Affairs.
“Having been part of a community-based, ground-up organization, I know how important it is to have people on your team who are profoundly focused on making a difference. When I left Community Coalition as Executive Director, three of the four top executive members were UCLA grads. Today, probably 30 percent of the staff are Bruins.
“That’s no accident given the university’s powerful dedication to positive change. Not superficial or incremental. But real, transformational change. It’s made a fine science of public service by identifying leaders, feeding them insights, fine-tuning curricula, and training them to be effective from day one.
“UCLA is filled with tireless generators — Chancellor, Deans, professors, staff. They keep students fired up for community-based work and the real-world training they get while they’re there.
I first went to UCLA in high school during the 60’s and 70’s, the heyday of student activism. I got involved and turned it into a lifelong commitment.
“This culture of community involvement has produced thousands of graduates who’ve found leadership roles in the L.A. area. UCLA’s innovative Center for Community Learning prepares them for that. Its brainchild, JusticeCorps, trains students to work in ten L.A. County locations helping people file claims. Each year, thousands of litigants are the direct beneficiaries of this first-of-its-kind project.
“Of course, not all UCLA students attach themselves to existing community-based organizations. Some take matters into their own hands. Like the student-initiated UCLA Mobile Clinic project that brings a van full of med students, law students, caregivers and hope to the homeless in West Hollywood and Santa Monica.
“When I started serving in the Legislature, my office needed interns. So we called UCLA. The students we got were all bright, capable, compassionate and motivated—and intent on doing their part, making their mark and giving back to the community.
UCLA’s Center for Community Learning plugs thousands of service learners and interns into hundreds of local organizations. The communities get help, students earn college credit. Smart.
“What are the institutional responsibilities of a public university? Certainly one must be igniting civic leadership, a responsibility UCLA meets every year by producing graduates dedicated to joining others to meet the challenges in our lives and communities. Another is providing rigorous, relevant academic coursework along with incentives and opportunities to do meaningful work. That’s how the university gets leaders. That’s central to the educational experience at UCLA.
“'Learning by serving’ changes students in all sorts of positive ways. You go into an underserved community and the people there teach you more than you can teach them. I believe humility and that ‘servant-leader’ spirit are really important. “Every generation needs movers and shapers. And they’re not hard to find, once you know where to look.”
UCLA, Unabashed.
Eli Broad Brad Delson Diane Watson Julia Gouw Sherry Lansing
Moctesuma Esparza Paul Boyer Richard Ziman Warren Furutani Betsy Knapp
- Spotlights published by UCLA Marketing & Communications
- © 2009 UC Regents