Community Engagement

UC San Diego Black Like Water

Helped to create UCSD’s Black Like Water, (including its annual Black Surf Week), which is open to all students interested in learning about Black relationships to land and water. Black Like Water is a scholarly research collaboration between Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the 8 Colleges, UC San Diego Recreation, the Black Resource Center, Black Diaspora and African American Studies Program, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion.

Public Speaking

Part of my academic practice consists of public speaking engagements including participating in UC San Diego’s Black Staff Association Annual President’s Day forum, the California Parks and Recreation Society Annual Meeting, California State Parks Speaker Series, 46th Annual Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington, the Society of California Pioneers Annual Meeting, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Art in Context series, and the La Jolla Playhouse’s Discovery Sunday series (pictured).

Community Partnerships

My academic practice mobilizes key collaborations with community and community-university partners in co-creating research-based initiatives. I have partnered with non-profit organizations and research consortiums including InterTribal Youth, La Clase Magica, UC Links, Universidad de los Llanos (in Villavicencio, Colombia), and the Town & Country Affordable Housing Complex in southeastern San Diego within a community-university research project led by Dr. Angela Booker (UCSD). (Pictured: co-leading a research-based writing class that I co-created for Indigenous youth at UC San Diego for a project sponsored in part by InterTribal Youth, UCSD Extension, and an Innovation Grant from the UC San Diego Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion).