News Archive

August 10, 2016 — The University of California San Diego’s Institute of Arts and Humanities (IAH) is adding two programs to its already culturally rich offerings—Chicana/o and Latina/o Arts and Humanities (CLAH) and Third World Studies (TWS). Both are established campus programs now administered through the institute. CLAH provides a broad introduction to the histories and cultures produced by Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, while TWS analyzes and explains issues facing the “Third World” from a multi-disciplinary approach.

August 5, 2016 — The University of California San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance is one of the top theater training programs in the nation for a reason—it produces promising artists. This fact wasn’t lost on the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, an organization that supports emerging artists, when it recently named its Princess Grace Award winners for 2016. Among them were three UC San Diego alumni: Christopher Scott Murillo, ’13; Keith Wallace, ’16 and Jiehae Park, ’09. Murillo and Wallace each won in the category of Theater and Playwriting, while Park was awarded a grant for a Works in Progress Residency. The three former Tritons, along with other winners, will be celebrated at the annual Princess Grace Awards Ceremony in New York City, Monday, Oct. 24.

July 15, 2016 — The University of California San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities includes three new associate deans. In addition to their faculty and research work, David Gutierrez from the Department of History will serve as the new associate dean for the division, and John “Jody” Blanco from the Department of Literature will fill the role of associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Natalia Molina of the Department of History has been selected to serve as interim associate dean of the division until Gutierrez returns from a scheduled sabbatical in 2017.

June 9, 2016 — UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance ranks high in the nation for a reason—the transferable training it provides to its graduate students through a unique partnership with the world-renowned La Jolla Playhouse. Proof of that collaboration’s success lies in, “The Last Tiger in Haiti,” an award-winning play by UC San Diego alumnus Jeff Augustin, ’14, which premieres during the playhouse’s upcoming 2016/2017 season, June 28 – July 24, 2016, in the Mandell Weiss Forum. This marks the first time that a former UC San Diego theatre student’s production has premiered during the playhouse’s regular season.

June 9, 2016 — Nick Forsch relies heavily on clinician feedback for his research. As a bioengineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego, he is developing computational tools to enable doctors to better understand their patients’ diseases. The challenges of translating his research to real-world doctors and patients led Forsch to join a new program at UC San Diego that places Jacobs School of Engineering graduate students and MBA students in the same Rady School of Management classes, including Rady’s signature Lab to Market program.

May 17, 2016 — The University of California San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities significantly increased its presence on the recently released list of 2016 – 2017 Hellman Fellowships, a university program designed to provide financial support to promising faculty for activities that enhance progress toward tenure. Last year’s divisional recipients included an associate professor from the Department of History, but this year four junior faculty earned recognition. Making up one-third of the 12 awardees, they are: Amy Marie Cimini, Department of Music; Deborah Isobel Stein, Department of Theatre and Dance; Matthew Werner Vitz, Department of History; and Alena Williams, Department of Visual Arts.

May 3, 2016 — University of California San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities launched a new initiative last fall by establishing the Institute of Arts and Humanities (IAH)—a cultural hub that fortifies academic, administrative and community outreach efforts within the division. Now, the division has appointed the institute’s first new director and associate director—Luis Alvarez and Mark Hanna, respectively. Both are faculty members in the UC San Diego Department of History. They assume their new leadership posts July 1.

April 25, 2016 — University of California San Diego’s Luis Martin-Cabrera has been named a 2016 Whiting Public Engagement (WPE) Fellow by the Whiting Foundation for his proposal to investigate the lives of indigenous groups living in a region known as the “Saudi Arabia of Lithium.” A key component in rechargeable batteries for laptops and cell phones, lithium is actively mined in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. This activity is changing the landscape and the lives of people living in the region. As a fellow, Martin-Cabrera will receive $40,000 to fund six consecutive months of leave to work on his ambitious, public-facing project.

April 22, 2016 — University of California San Diego Department of History Professor Mark G. Hanna recently earned the 2016 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, an annual prize from the Organization of American Historians (OAH) given for an author’s first scholarly book about a certain aspect of American history. Hanna earned the prestigious award for his book, “Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 – 1740” (University of North Carolina Press), which demonstrates that pirates were essential to British colonialism, including patterns of development that shaped early America.