7 CAMPOS/CAMPSSAH Scholars Among Newest Hellman Fellows

Seven faculty members from two important programs within the Office of Academic Diversity —a unit with the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — were among the 12 UC Davis scholars to be named in this year’s class of Hellman Fellows. 

The seven scholars from the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS), and the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities (CAMPSSAH) programs will receive grants ranging from $16,000 to $49,000.

Their work covers a wide range of topics, from the educational experiences of Venezuelan immigrants to exploring if kelp can unlock new strategies for mitigating climate change.

“We are excited to see the work these talented faculty members will continue to produce, and we are grateful for the ability to help augment their research enterprises through this ongoing program,” said Philip Kass, vice provost of Academic Affairs, which administers the Hellman Fellows Program at UC Davis.

The fellowship is a UC-wide program, having been started by San Francisco philanthropists Chris and Warren Hellman to bolster the work of faculty members who were just a few years into their careers — often enough time to exhaust their initial funding but not long enough to garner a significant amount of external funding.

The program was launched at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley in 1995, eventually expanding to all 10 UC campuses, including UC Davis in 2008. More information about the history of the program is available on the Hellman Fellows website.

In 2020 the Hellman family provided endowments to each UC campus — $6 million to UC Davis — to continue the awards in perpetuity, through each campus’s Society of Hellman Fellows. The Hellmans also intended their endowments to encourage others to contribute to the societies. 

More information on the fellowship is available on the Academic Affairs website.

The 2024-25 fellows

The CAMPOS and CAMPSSAH faculty who are among this year’s inductees to the UC Davis Society of Hellman Fellows, and their funded projects, are:

• Akua Banful, Department of English, College of Letters and Science — “Constructing the Tropics: Empire and Discourses of Climate”
• Anya Brown, Department of Evolution and Ecology, College of Biological Sciences — “Can Microbial Sharing Enhance Host Survival?”
• Veronica Lerma, Department of Sociology, College of Letters and Science — “Criminalizing Chicanas: Intersectional Criminalization and Resistance in California’s Prison Alley”
• Maria Maldonado, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences — “Understanding Kelp Photosynthesis To Develop Better Carbon Fixation Strategies”
• Alicia Rusoja, School of Education — “The Educational Experiences of Venezuelan Immigrants in Northern California”
• Shingirai Taodzera, Department of African American and African Studies, College of Letters and Science — “Resourceful African Kingdoms”
• Kathleen Whiteley, Department of Native American Studies, College of Letters and Science — “Justice in Balance: The Indians of California Versus the United States of America”

UC Davis Dateline Editor Cody Kitaura contributed to this article. Click here to read the full version of this article that originally posted in UC Davis News.