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UCLA helps faculty keep their skills polished

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Whether they’ve already risen up the ranks in their department or are still early in their careers, just about every professor is familiar with the feeling of walking into a lecture hall for the first time and standing in front of students who expect to learn something from you. While these professors may be experts in nanotechnology, award-winning architects or leading historians of ancient Chinese civilizations, it’s understandable that being able to convey that knowledge to a room full of people isn’t always second nature.

AAP Alum Featured on Fox 11 Los Angeles

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Academic Advancement Program alumna Ashley Williams ’12 was featured in a Fox 11 Los Angeles news segment honoring anchor Christine Devine. The Drew Child Development Corporation honored Devine at its “It Takes a Village Awards” for her work advocating for foster youth through her weekly segment “Wednesday’s Child,” which profiled local foster youth. Williams was one of the children featured on Wednesday’s Child and was ultimately adopted by a couple who saw her on the show, and her father made a surprise appearance at Devine’s award ceremony.

After being adopted, Williams went on to graduate from UCLA and received her law degree from Southwestern Law School. While at UCLA, she was a leader on campus. She co-founded the UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars program and was a  Sidley & Austin Pre-Law Initiative Scholar, UCLA Law Fellows Scholar, and UCLA Afrikan Graduation Co-Chair, among other leadership positions.

Associate vice provost Charles Alexander selected to contribute to Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health

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The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research selected UCLA associate vice provost for student diversity Charles Alexander as a contributor for the 2020 Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health.

The report will document key issues, progress, challenges and opportunities in oral health in the United States. It is commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Public Health Service’s Oral Health Coordinating Committee.

Kathryn Atchison, professor in the UCLA School of Dentistry’s Division of Public Health and Community Dentistry, is serving as a section editor on the report and invited Alexander to join the team that is contributing a section titled Oral Health Integration, Workforce and Practice. He will submit material and text on “Pipeline Programs to Increase Underrepresented Minorities in Dental Schools.”

The last Surgeon General’s report on oral health was published in 2000, and “generated a lot of buzz in dentistry,” Alexander said. The report’s findings led to millions of dollars being pumped into efforts to improve recruitment and diversity in the field, access to care, and curriculum reform. Now, 20 years later, the goal of the new report is to see if these efforts had a lasting impact.

“In 2000, less than four percent of dental practitioners were African American, five percent were Latino and less than one percent were Native American,” Alexander said. “How far have we come?”

Alexander has long been a champion for pipeline programs and increasing diversity in dental schools. He is currently an associate adjunct professor in the UCLA School of Dentistry and previously served as an associate dean for admissions and student affairs at UC San Francisco, where he directed the Dental Careers program.

“I’m excited to contribute to this important document that is evidence-based and that heightens the issue to create more diversity in the dental profession,” Alexander said.

New Student and Transition Programs director trains therapy dog for patients and students

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Clara with a new student orientation group

As director of New Student and Transition Programs, Roxanne Neal knows just how to make new Bruins feel comfortable and cared for during the sometimes difficult transition to college.

Now, it seems, she’s passed on those skills to a protégé – but not a human one.

Neal’s three-year-old yellow Labrador named Clara is a newly certified therapy dog. Together, the two bring smiles and comfort to hospital patients, medical staff and even UCLA students who need a few snuggles from a furry friend to get through a tough day.

Neal started training Clara in obedience when she was just five months old. Her potential as a therapy dog was apparent from the beginning, like when she didn’t even flinch while training next to a boisterous herd of cattle on the ranch where she was born. Last year, Neal began researching therapy dog certification, which is offered through a program called Pet Partners.

Neal said she was partly inspired by her mother, who interacted with a therapy dog at UCLA Medical Center while recovering from knee and hip surgery. Though her mother was never big on dogs, Neal saw how the dog lifted her spirits.

“She really responded to this dog hanging out and being really sweet to everyone. He would just go check on all the patients, and I thought that was a great thing,” Neal said. “People just transform around the dogs.”

The certification process includes a handler course for the human partner, a team evaluation during which the dog demonstrates that it can follow commands and stay calm in unexpected situations, and shadowing a real team in a hospital. Once the team passes a final evaluation, they are ready to start volunteering. For Clara, the process took about eight months; she passed in August.

Roxanne Neal and Clara

Neal and Clara now visit Providence St. John’s Health Center two or three times a month for up to two hours at a time. Upon arrival, they check in with a volunteer coordinator who gives them their room assignments for the day – either a designated floor or patients who have requested a visit. Inside the patient’s room, Clara usually sits on a chair or on the floor next to the patient so the patient can pet her.

“She loves the human interaction. She loves people and the attention and petting,” Neal said. “[With] one patient I put Clara on the chair, and Clara leaned forward with her head on the bed and the patient started petting her and talking softly and Clara just melted. She knows how to take it all in.”

The medical staff are always just as excited as the patients to see Clara, Neal said, and she makes sure they have their snuggles with Clara too. Their last visit was on Thanksgiving morning, which she said felt extra meaningful.

Clara isn’t just a fixture at St. John’s, however – Neal has started bringing her to work too. Clara has become a mascot of sorts for the thousands of freshman and transfer Bruins who attend new student orientation programs during the summer, and many orientation groups even request to have Clara in their group photo. She also brought stress relief to the Hill during midterms and finals this quarter.

Neal said students homesick for their own pets find comfort in showering Clara with affection.

“She was on so many Snapchats,” Neal said. “I joke that she thinks her name is ‘Pretty.’”

As she enters her 30th year with NSTP, Neal said she enjoys putting the skills she’s honed at work to use in a new environment where it’s all about Clara.

“Communication skills and talking to people, that’s literally my job. Being able to do that through my dog who I love gives me a different way to connect with people and do it in a way that really changes the environment a lot,” Neal said. “People that don’t normally want to socialize with a volunteer, they’ll just pet the dog, and that seems to be enough.”

UCLA’s top teachers recognized at ceremony at Chancellor’s residence

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The recipients of UCLA’s highest honor for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Awards, were honored by the UCLA Academic Senate at the Andrea L. Rich Night to Honor Teaching awards ceremony at the Chancellor’s residence on Oct. 25. The winners were selected in three categories: senate faculty members, non-senate faculty members and teaching assistants.

Undergraduate research inspires UCLA alum’s future career

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Douglas Yao discovered his passion for research as an undergraduate at UCLA. Now, he’s embarking on a PhD at Harvard in pursuit of his goal to run his own lab in the field of bioinformatics.

Yao, who graduated in June with a bachelor of science in cell/cellular and molecular biology, said he entered UCLA as a pre-med and first began working in labs on campus during his freshman year in order to prepare for applying to medical school. But he found that he enjoyed spending time in the lab so much that he wanted to make research his career.

Yao worked in four different labs throughout his undergraduate career as he attempted to hone in on which research topics he was most interested in. Ultimately, the labs of Thomas Graeber, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology, and Eleazar Eskin, assistant professor of computer science and human genetics, sparked his newfound passion for a field called bioinformatics, in which scientists collect and analyze biological data.

“Bioinformatics brings together three disparate fields: biology, computer science and statistics,” Yao said. “I saw that as a good opportunity because there has to be a breed of scientist who knows all three subjects.”

Yao presented his original research projects twice at Undergraduate Research Week and currently has a paper in review, about gene expression and genomic instability in cancer cells.

This summer, Yao began his first year in Harvard’s bioinformatics and integrative genomics PhD program. He hopes to become a professor and run his own lab one day, a goal that he acknowledges would be much harder to reach if he hadn’t gotten his start at UCLA. He’s seen how valuable the undergraduate research opportunities are at UCLA, and how they inspired and prepared him for his career ahead.

“If you don’t go to a big research school it’s so much harder to get those research experiences,” Yao said. “I was really lucky to have picked UCLA because of the research environment.”

The opportunity to conduct his own research not only taught him new skills such as how to analyze research papers and participate in scientific discussions, but also introduced him to the world of being a professional academic and researcher. He realized how much he loved learning.

“I don’t think there are a whole lot of careers that let you consistently learn every single day,” he said. “There’s so many interesting things out there in the world and we know so little. I think [research will] help me appreciate just how weird and amazing the world is.”