State support now covers less than 15 percent of UC Irvine's total budget. Now, more than ever, private gifts are vitally important to ensure the excellence of the School's varied scholarly activities. Individuals, foundations and corporations that value our work have a profound and beneficial impact on research, scholarships and fellowships and community outreach programs. For general support and online giving
The School appreciates support in its priority giving areas, described below.
For additional information, please contact:
Doug Colby
Senior Director of Development
(949) 824-0383
dccolby@uci.edu
Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI)
Better communities and more effective solutions to common problems through integrative planning and collaboration beyond jurisdictional borders – those are the aims of the Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI), a collaboration between the departments of Planning, Policy and Design and Criminology, Law and Society in the School of Social Ecology. By sparking and sustaining thinking about the connections among seemingly disparate community problems, the initiative will bring together individuals and groups in a process of discovery, strategic thinking and planning. MFI research focuses on the interlinkages between various demographic, social, and economic processes and their consequences for the social relations and well-being of persons living in the southern California region. Concretely, these processes include studying the intersections among air quality, energy, water, and land use; the distribution of jobs and housing and transportation network supporting this distribution; and the connections among crime, neighborhood well-being, segregation, and social conflict within the region.
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Thanks to a generous seed gift from Five Point Communities and the Great Park Neighborhoods, the Initiative plans its first Regional Progress Report for May 2012.
To join this proactive discourse or join in the consortium of investors, please contact Mickey Shaw at shawmm@uci.edu or (949) 824-1874.
Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA)
In the modern era environmental change and global transformations are happening with increasing speed, fundamentally changing the nature of our communities and how we live our lives. Meeting the human and environmental security challenges of the 21st century is the mission of The Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA). CUSA’s Unconventional Security Research Group conducts and promotes interdisciplinary, field-based research on the relationships between processes of global change (especially climate and environmental change) and transnational security problems including violent conflict, political violence, population displacement, and underdevelopment. For example, research conducted at the Center has identified links between deforestation and social strife in northern Pakistan, land scarcity and violent conflict in Nepal and Rwanda. The role of technology in understanding and addressing these problems is the focus of CUSA’s Transformational Media Lab. Recent research, for example, assesses the role of documentary films in deepening understanding and mobilizing activity around complex global challenges.Finally, CUSA recently has created the Earth Studio to create bridges from the science and social science communities to the arts community around the issues of sustainability and human security.
The Center places considerable emphasis on diffusing research findings into the policy and practitioner worlds in the U.S. and abroad. For example, it has played a unique, hands-on role helping the United Nations integrate natural resource management into peace building operations. Likewise, it has worked with U.S. Marine Forces Pacific on developing a plan for managing a potential avian flu pandemic, and has worked closely with various government agencies on rethinking security in the post-Cold War world. In addition to its policy activity, a key focus for the Center is on developing solutions that empower and protect communities with heightened vulnerability to processes of global change.
By encouraging students to critically examine these issues, and supporting their efforts to do so, CUSA is producing future leaders who will play a key role in navigating how we respond to the many challenges facing the 21st Century.
CUSA works closely with the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, as well as other entities on campus such as the Center for Hydrologic Modeling in the Samueli School of Engineering and the Environment Insitute in the School of Physical Sciences. A magnet for corporate, foundation and individual interest on a wide scale, CUSA invites your support and partnership. Learn More...