UC Davis will host its third institute for the Mandela Washington Fellowship, the flagship of the U.S. government’s Young African Leaders Initiative.

The U.S. State Department and IREX, the international nonprofit organization that administers the fellowship program, announced 27 colleges and universities as institute hosts for 2018, saying they will welcome a total of about 700 fellows from sub-Saharan Africa for six-week summer programs in business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, and public management.

In 2016, UC Davis pioneered the fellowship’s first energy-themed institute and held the second one last year. This year UC Davis will host about two dozen fellows for “Managing Globalization: Public Policy and Development in the 21st Century.”

Organized by Global Affairs, the institute will address the public management process; the evaluation of public regulations, policies and programs; and the planning and financing of public services and infrastructure. It will be held June 20 through July 29.

Peter Hartsough, an assistant project scientist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, is academic director of the institute; Jennie Konsella-Norene, assistant director of sponsored programs and special projects in Global Affairs, is its administrative director.

International Connections Reception: March 2

Global Affairs is hosting its annual International Connections Reception, Friday, March 2, offering the opportunity to network with faculty, staff and scholars who are internationally engaged, and make connections with other collaborators who are working in similar world regions.

The reception also serves as the venue for announcement of the Chancellor’s Awards for International Engagement, Seed Grants for International Activities, Grants for Regional Faculty Groups and Global Affairs Faculty Ambassadors.

The reception will be from 4 to 6 p.m. in the multipurpose room at the International Center. Please register here.

Global Affairs also asks for your help in identifying where UC Davis faculty, staff and students are engaged — and you can so by completing or updating your profile in the UC Davis International Linkages Database.

Here are your campus Grad Slam finalists

They are pictured above, from left:

Top row — Olumayowa Adegboyega, Anthropology; Hanjiro Ambrose, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Emery Anderson-Merritt, Geology; Riley Hughes, Nutritional Biology; and Divya Kernik, Biomedical Engineering.

Bottom row — Maci Mueller, Animal Biology; Augustina Mushale, Nursing Science and Health Care Leadersh, Stela Petkova, Neuroscience, Rachel Wigginton, Ecology; and Tooka Zokaie, Public Health.

Eighty students from across the university’s 99 graduate programs submitted proposals for this year’s competition. Grad Slam calls on master’s and doctoral students to explain their research in a clear, direct and interesting manner — in three minutes or less

The qualifying round was held last Thursday (Feb. 8). Judging panels of faculty and staff volunteers settled on the top 10 to go to the final, scheduled from noon to 3 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Ballrooms A and B at the Activities and Recreation Center. Everyone is welcome to this free event. Please RSVP here.

The winner of that campus final will advance to the UC Grad Slam, to be held Thursday, May 3.

Mental health webinar promotes stigma-free UC

All faculty and staff in the UC system are invited to attend a webinar from 1 to 2 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, about ending stigma surrounding mental illness — stigma that can prevent people from seeking help. With this program, UC Human Resources launches an effort to raise awareness about mental health issues and reduce barriers to treatment.

Stephen Hinshaw, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley, and professor of psychiatry, UCSF, will present the lead-off webinar, speaking on the social and personal costs of the stigma surrounding mental illness — especially what can be done to open dialogue and ensure access to needed treatments. He will share insights gathered both through his distinguished research career and his family history, explored in his 2017 book, Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness.

Here’s the link to participate online.  Or, you can attend by phone: Call 408-638-0968 (Meeting ID 941 574 800). A recording will be available on the UC Living Well website as soon as possible after the event.

More information about UC’s behavioral health benefits, including free services through faculty and staff assistance programs, is available here.

Police Accountability Board winter quarter meetings

The UC Davis Police Accountability Board (PAB) has scheduled its winter quarter meetings for Wednesday, Feb. 21, on the Davis and Sacramento campuses. The meetings will be held simultaneously, noon to 1 p.m. — with some members of the board attending the Davis meeting, and others attending the Sacramento meeting. Here are the locations:

• Davis campus — Garrison Room, Memorial Union
• Sacramento campus — 3103 Education Building

The board invites the public to attend to learn more about the board’s work, how to file a complaint, and to raise any issues or concerns.

Napolitano: Consider donations to cancer research

UC President Janet Napolitano is asking the UC community to consider donations via their state income tax returns to a pair of cancer programs that the university administers on behalf of the state of California. “All donations, no matter the size, make a difference, and 95 percent of contributions go directly to research and education efforts,” Napolitano said in a Feb. 12 letter.

Forms 540 and 540 2EZ each include a page where you may designate voluntary contributions to a number of funds, including:

• Line 405 — California Breast Cancer Research Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund
• Line 413 — California Cancer Research Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund

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