Inclusive Excellence Spirit Awards

Inclusive Excellence Spirit Awards support faculty activities which promote equity, diversity, and inclusion on campus among faculty, students, and staff, as well as the community served by UCI. The 2022-23 call for proposals received 32 applications representing diverse areas of UCI. The enthusiastic response underscores the interest of our faculty in augmenting the campus capacity to advance inclusive excellence. All funded proposals addressed at least one of five goals of the program:

  • Deepen the understanding of race, gender, class, sexuality, immigration status, and/or other identities
  • Promote emotional intelligence and intercultural competency
  • Build and sustain partnerships with community-based organizations
  • Advance achievement among educationally disadvantaged communities
  • Contribute to an affirmative climate for all members of the Anteater community

Each funded proposal received immense support from a department chair or school dean. Additionally, all funded proposals promise to have an enduring impact on inclusive excellence in UCI’s teaching, research, and service mission as a public land grant university.

Please note: Awardees who are planning to use Inclusive Excellence Spirit Award funding for any partial course buyout must provide evidence in their submissions that unit support for the balance has been prearranged (e.g., reflected in the chair or dean letter of support).

Applications for the 2023-24 Inclusive Excellence Spirit Awards are temporarily delayed. A link and deadline for the online submission will be posted soon.

For questions regarding the Inclusive Excellence Spirit Awards, please contact the Office of Inclusive Excellence at inclusion@uci.edu.

Funded Proposals

Funded Proposals 2022-2023

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Lonnie Alcaraz Arts "Mojada - Brown Bag Theatre Company Production"
Will Bowman Materials Science and Engineering  "Strengthening the Engineering Pipeline"
Maritza Campo Business "LXi Persistence in Professional Schools Survey"
Belinda Campos Chicano/Latino Studies "Emotional Consequences of Social Mobility"
Isabel Algaze Gonzalez Emergency Medicine "Resident and Fellow Scholars Academy"
Simon Leung Studio Art "The Side of the Mountain, Act 2"
Alessandra Pantano Mathematics "Identifying and Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Minoritized Graduate Student Admission, Acceptance, and Success in the UCI Math Department"

Funded Proposals 2021-2022

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Mu-Chun Chen Physics & Astronomy "Celebrating Black in Physical Sciences"
Carol Major Obstetrics & Gynecology  "Our Story: A Conversation Between Providers, Medical Trainees and Black Birthing Patients"
Ana Rosas Chicano/Latino Studies and History "Public Scholarship Summer Institute"
Bo Ruberg Film & Media Studies "Gender Inclusion for Everyone: Educational Resources on Transgender and Non-Binary Allyship for the UCI Community"
Karna Wong Teaching, Urban & Public Policy "University of California Campus’ Food Pantries Evaluation"
S. Ama Wray Dance "From Ancestral Movement Practices to Phenomenal Being"

Funded Proposals 2020-2021

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Lee Bardwell Developmental and Cell Biology "UCI-HBCU Faculty Seminar Exchange"
Tonya Bradford Paul Merage School of Business "Building Community through the Launch of the Merage School Black Management Association"
Judith Kroll Language Science "Bilingualism Matters in California"
Alessandra Pantano Mathematics "Leveraging the Cultural Capital of UCI Latinx Students to Transform a Mentoring Program for Underserved Kids in the Wake of a Global Pandemic"
Zachary Price Drama "Black Arts and Black Publics - Start Up"
Cyrian Reed Dance  "The Moving Manuscript"
Damien Sojoyner Anthropology "Contested Truths: Archival Formations and the Carceral State"
Jane Stoever School of Law "Teen Dating Violence Prevention: From the #MeToo Movement to Sustained Social Change"
Candice Taylor Lucas Pediatrics "Work of HEArt (Health Equity & Art): Increasing Awareness about Black Maternal and Infant Health Disparities through Theatre and Reflection"
Michael Yassa Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the School of Biological Sciences "Training of Trainers' Facilitation for the End Racism Initiative"

 

Funded Proposals 2018-2019

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Long Bui International Studies “First Gen Faculty Podcast”
Elana Craemer Family Medicine “Building an Interdisciplinary Gender Affirming Community at UC Irvine and Beyond”
Glenda Flores Chicano/Latino Studies “Pursuing Medicina [Medicine]: Latina/o/x Physicians in California”
Kathleen Johnson Earth System Science “UCI Natural Reserves and Building Relationships with Native Nations as Kuuyam (guests) on Indigenous Homelands”
Keramet Reiter Criminology, Law, & Society “Creation and Implementation of a program to grant UCI Bachelor’s Degrees to People Who are Incarcerated”
Clare Yu Physics and Astronomy “Promoting Inclusive Excellence in Science Featuring Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell”

 

Funded Proposals 2017-2018

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Larisa Castillo Humanities Core Common Humanity: Developing Pedagogies of Inclusive Difference and Diversity
Laura Enriquez Chicano/Latino Studies UCI Dream Center Scholar-in-Residence Program
Kathleen Johnson Earth System Science Cultivating Consciousness in Acjachemen and Tongva Homalands
Kyung Kim East Asian Studies Establishment of the Korean Comfort Women Oral History Archive at UCI Libraries
Bonnie Ruberg Informatics Diversifying Esports at UC Irvine through Inclusive LiveStreaming
Brian Sato Molecular Biology & Biochemistry A Mixed-Method Examination of the Impact of Active Learning on Underrepresented Minority, First-Generation, and Low-Income Students
Aaron Trammell Informatics Feminist Illuminati event with Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Sheron Wray Dance Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Virginia Johnson
Judy Wu Asian American Studies A Double Minority: Undocumented and AAPI

 

Funded Proposals 2016-2017

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Zeev Kain; Michelle Fortier; Belinda Campos Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care; Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care; Chicano/Latino Studies Sustaining Researcher-Community Partnerships to Transform Pediatric Surgical Care to Better Serve Latino Families
Simon Leung Studio Art Three Essays on Racial Melancholy Across Time
Alessandra Pantano Mathematics UCI Diversity in Mathematics Festival
Paul Piff Psychology & Social Behavior Reducing Anxiety in Interclass Interactions Through Cross-class Friendship and Improving Psychological Educational Outreach
Darryl Taylor Music 20th Anniversary African American Art Song Alliance Conference
Julio Torres Spanish & Portuguese Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard African American Studies Evicting Our Best: The Political Work of Doing Political Science as a Scholar of Color at UC Irvine
Sheron Wray Dance Toward a Research Center for Reconnecting the African Diaspora

 

Funded Proposals 2015-2016

Name Department Title of Funded Project
Laura Enriquez Chicano/Latino Studies Identifying “Best Practices” to Support Undocumented UCI Students
Emily Grossman Cognitive Science Tools to Enable Research for Individuals with Low Vision or Blindness
Justin Shaffer Developmental & Cell Biology Closing the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology at UC Irvine
Damien Sojoyner Anthropology Forced Migration: The Deleterious Impacts of Public Education and Incarceration upon Black Families in Los Angeles, CA
Adria Imada and Emily Thuma History; Gender and Sexuality Studies In Treatment: Mental Illness, Health, and Modern Sexuality
Kojiro Umezaki Music New Expressions: Women in Music Technology Symposium
Linda Vo Asian American Studies Documentary: One Boat, 40 Years Afterwards; Art History Exhibition: Vietnamese Focus: Generations of Stories

Post-Funding Report

Each funded applicant is required to submit a funding report detailing how the funding was used. Funding should be used as awarded. Additionally, each report should detail how the funded project impacted inclusive excellence in the community, or met one of the five goals set by the program:

  • Deepen the understanding of race, gender, class, sexuality, immigration status, and/or other identities
  • Promote emotional intelligence and intercultural competency
  • Build and sustain partnerships with community-based organizations
  • Advance achievement among educationally disadvantaged communities
  • Contribute to an affirmative climate for all members of the Anteater community

Please use the online submission form for your Post-Award Final Report found here.

For questions on reporting, please contact the Office of Inclusive Excellence at inclusion@uci.edu.