Institute for Social Transformation (IST)
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Education Week
What Trump’s $100,000 Visa Fee Could Mean for Schools
Education Department Chair Lora Bartlett wrote an opinion article explaining how new visa fees could affect school districts struggling with teacher shortages.
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KSQD
Making Sense of the U.S. Invasion of Venezuela
Sara Niedzwieck is a professor of politics at UC Santa Cruz and studies South American politics. She offers her analysis of what is currently happening in Venezuela, a developing story.
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The Guardian
School closures have rocked this LA-area district – are they destroying it, or saving it?
“Just because a district needs a loan from the state does not mean it should be – or always is – put into receivership,” said Rene Espinoza Kissell, an assistant professor of education at UC Santa Cruz who studies school funding. Where wealthier districts may get supervision, lower-income districts with majority students of color are…
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Audobon
Do Nations With the Most Birds Attract the Most Bird Tourists?
Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, who is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wanted to understand what drives bird-loving tourists to bring their binoculars—and their wallets—to particular countries and how to encourage more of that.
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Education Week
Free-Speech Lines Blur for Teachers in Wake of Charlie Kirk’s Killing
The government’s move to revoke state-issued teaching licenses in response to teachers’ personal opinions posted to social media—notably not in the classroom or in public school forums—is part of a movement to curtail the free speech of Americans,” said Lora Bartlett, chair of the Education Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Education Week
Getting Recess Right: A Researcher Shares Best Practices
Community-engaged researcher and professor of sociology Rebecca London recently spoke to Education Week about the role of recess. She addressed both best practices for recess—like how to structure it and when to schedule it—as well as the big-picture ramifications
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Los ecosistemas invisibles en la lucha contra la crisis climática
Scott Winton, ecólogo de la Universidad de California Santa Cruz, llevó a cabo tres años de extenso trabajo de campo para desarrollar el primer mapa basado en datos de turberas recientemente documentadas y previstas en los Llanos Orientales y la Amazonía colombiana.
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Marketplace
How regional Federal Reserve banks contribute to monetary policymaking
Regional Fed Presidents are chosen by independent boards and then sent to the Board of Governors in DC for approval. “It’s just more layers away from DC and that allows a little bit more protection of independence,” said Galina Hale, an economics professor at UC Santa Cruz.
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Lookout Santa Cruz
In high-cost Santa Cruz County, a generation of young workers increasingly turns to unions
Young local workers once viewed service jobs as temporary steppingstones. Now, more than 80% told UC Santa Cruz researchers that they are open to unionizing, motivated by both economic pressures and a broader vision of workplace democracy.
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Euronews
Birdwatchers flock to Colombia and South Africa- so why are Venezuela and DRC being left behind?
“Over the years, we’ve seen Colombia really explode as a birdwatching destination, and we often asked ourselves why more countries aren’t similarly recognized as great places for birdwatching,” said Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, lead author of the new UC Santa Cruz study.
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Santa Cruz Sentinel
The state of labor on Labor Day 2025
Teresa Ghilarducci, a research fellow at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Labor and Community, wrote an opinion article about the need to defend workers’ rights, voice, and the truth about their conditions.
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KION
UCSC study links immigration status to COVID deaths, survival rate
“This was the first study to really link immigration status and make it possible to link legal immigration status to excess death rates,” said Alicia Riley, and associate professor of sociology and core faculty member in the Global and Community Health Program.