The Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement has unveiled its fifth class of Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows.

The Public Scholarship Faculty Fellowships provide concrete tools and opportunities for faculty who are navigating the unique challenges of public scholarship. The program embraces a broad and inclusive approach, recognizing that scholarship takes many forms across different disciplines and types of scholarly activity. 

The cohort will meet monthly through March 2024 to provide participating faculty with a public scholarship peer group and structured time for advancing their projects. Guest speakers will bring their university and public scholarship expertise to the group. Each fellow will receive  $1,000 in support of their initiatives.

The fellowship program is led by Tessa Hill, associate vice provost of academic programs in the Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement. The office cultivates and fosters a culture of engagement that recognizes and rewards public engaged scholarship, builds the collective capacity of UC Davis scholars, and increases the university’s impact through mutually beneficial partnerships that have local, regional and global rearch.

The 2024-25 faculty fellows are:

Nila Bala

Acting Professor of Law, School of Law
Project description: Write public scholarship pieces critiquing “civil Miranda” warnings, which inform parents of their rights during child welfare investigations.

Michele Barbato

Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Project description: Complete a journal paper on wildfire-resilient earthen construction and develop a plan for engagement with California Fire Safe Councils to increase adoption of earthen construction for wildfire-resilient communities.

Eliza Bliss-Moreau

Chancellor’s Leadership Professor, Department of Psychology 
California National Primate Center
Project description: Develop a proposal for a popular press book on animal emotions — the idea that emotions are socially constructed and inherently linked to one’s physiology and context, and therefore likely to be species-specific.

Rebecca Calisi-Rodríguez

Associate Professor, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior
Project description: Draft a proposal for a popular science book that will outline the scientific underpinnings and benefits of Green Care, covering topics such as animal-assisted therapy, horticultural therapy and therapeutic landscapes.

Debbie Fetter

Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Nutrition
Project description: Develop a book proposal about how the public can apply nutrition research findings to everyday life to create a personalized and culturally relevant healthful dietary pattern.

Liza Grandia

Professor, Department of Native American Studies
Project description: Building on her new book, Kernels of Resistance: Maize, Food Sovereignty, and Collective Power, write several op-eds and develop a bilingual website about what the U.S. food movement might learn from Mesoamerican food sovereignty movements and share curated Spanish resources about the hazards of herbicides used in genetically modified crops.

Jeannette Money

Professor, Department of Political Science
Project description: Explore why so few individuals use the United States Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS) website portal to create accounts, apply for benefits, and track their applications, and develop policy recommendations that might consist of curricular development for citizenship classes and smartphone app development.

Alessandro Ossola

Assistant Professor and Assistant Agronomist, Department of Plant Sciences
Project description: Collect ecological data, historical facts, nutritional values and recipes related to the preparation, conservation and cooking of "unknown foods" made from California's native plants to be presented in a small self-published guide, as well as a free documentary.

Kayleigh Perkov

Assistant Professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Project description: Co-organize the exhibition “The Data at Hand: Data Physicalizations of Earth and Space,” which brings together artists who wrestle with information produced by earth and space scientists in an era of global change.

Jeanette B. Ruiz

Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Communication
Project description: Develop a student-centered, student-facing website where students and university professionals contribute information for first-generation students, such as how families can support their first gen student, the importance of networking, etc.

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Learn More About Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows

• Through the Public Scholarship Faculty Fellows program, we provide concrete tools and facilitate opportunities for faculty across all disciplines to collectively cultivate a culture of engagement at UC Davis and meet their specifically designed and stated goals. Learn about our application process.
• Public engagement is all about people. Read other stories.