Opportunities

In 1971, the Black Panther Party (BPP) founded its longest-running social service program, the Oakland Community School (OCS), which operated for eleven years and served as a model for education for Black and poor children living in urban communities. Join us for a paid summer research fellowship (20 hours per week for 10 weeks July 1 -September 5) to assist with archival preservation of digital material generated by the BPOCSRC from 2021-2024, to contribute to a research and digital humanities project about the Oakland Community School, and to assist in the creation of an OCS public history project.

Specific tasks include:  

• Manage and coordinate project assignments;  
• View, review, process, and select digital material from seminars, workshops, and guest speakers;
• Create and manage metadata for digital material;
• Attend and contribute to preservation project meetings and trainings with BPOCSRC team;
• Contribute research for a web-based yearbook project featuring former students, teachers, and community supporters by exploring and archiving BPP and OCS-related documents, photos, and video;
• Assist in writing and editing copy for a physical and virtual Oakland Community School traveling exhibit;
• Assist with organizing, promote, and support a guest speaker;
• Develop a final project presentation. This research fellowship involves access to unpublished material that cannot be shared publicly without copyright clearance.

You must sign a confidentiality agreement to participate in this project.

Contact: The project will be supervised by members of the Black Panther Oakland Community School: Community Archives, Activism, and Storytelling Research Cluster:

• Angela LeBlanc-Ernest (info@angelaleblancernest.com), founder of The Oakland Community School Project LLC
• Krystal Tribbett (ktribbet@uci.edu), Curator for Orange County Regional History and Research Librarian for Orange County
• Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (j.wu@uci.edu), Professor of Asian American Studies and Director of the UCI Humanities Center

The Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect and enrich communities through Vietnamese arts and culture. VAALA has hosted many events since its inception in 1991 and has collaborated with many diverse community partners to organize culture events such as arts exhibitions, multimedia art workshops, film screenings, film festivals, plays, music recitals, book signings, and more.

VAALA is seeking talented people who are passionate about art and uplifting marginalized voices. This is a great opportunity to work specifically with the Vietnamese community in Southern California and learn more about its role within the AAPI community. By working with VAALA, the HOT Fellow will be able to engage with the Vietnamese community of Orange County, watch the latest films created by Vietnamese artists, and understand more about nonprofit programming and organization. 

A. Grants Development Fellow 

VAALA is seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Grant Development Intern to assist with researching and applying for grants that align with the organization's mission and programs. The intern will work closely with the Executive Director and Board of Directors to identify funding opportunities and develop grant proposals. This is an excellent opportunity for an individual interested in nonprofit fundraising and grant writing. The Fellow’s term begins on July 1, 2025 and ends September 2025.  Time commitment is approximately 20 hours per week for 10 weeks.  

Primary Responsibilities  

• Conduct research to identify potential funding opportunities from government agencies, foundations, and corporations.
• Assist to develop a grant calendar to ensure timely submission of proposals.
• Assist in drafting  grant proposals and  with the development of budgets and project timelines.
• Collaborate with the Executive Director and Board of Directors to ensure grant proposals align with the organization's mission and programs.
• Assist in developing a sponsorship packet for VAALA.
• Attend meetings and events as needed to learn about VAALA's programs and promote the organization to potential funders.
• Provide support for other fundraising and development activities as needed.
• Assess VAALA’s existing program evaluation measures and their efficacy and opportunities for improvement in relation to program fundraising and grant writing. 

Qualifications
The ideal candidate should possess the following qualifications: • Strong research, writing, and communication skills.

• Ability to work independently and meet deadlines.
• Attention to detail and strong organizational skills.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office Suite and Google Suite.

Contact:  Ysa Le, Executive Director; Thao Hoa, PhD, Board President

B. Viet Film Fest Programming Assistant

Project Description

The Fellow’s term begins on July 1, 2025 and ends in September 2025.  Time commitment is approximately 20 hours per week for 10 weeks. The intern will work closely with VAALA’s Managing team and under the Viet Film Fest Artistic Director to help develop specific aspects of programming for the film festival.

The Fellow for this joint UC Irvine-VAALA’s HOT Program is an energetic, forward-thinking individual who will be working with a dynamic team of art organizers, filmmakers, academics, and volunteers to help carry out the 2025 Viet Film Fest (www.VietFilmFest.com). The annual Viet Film Fest is an event that was started by VAALA to help foster the organization’s mission of connecting and enriching communities through Vietnamese art and culture. Viet Film Fest 2025 will be held October 4-19  virtually, and in-person on October 10, 11 and 12  at the Frida Cinema, Santa Ana. 

Primary Responsibilities  
Curatorial Assistance

• Help the Artistic Director and Programming Intern set the program and schedule for the Festival
• View a number of selected feature and short films in order to write synopses for the Festival’s Screening Guide and website.
• Work with the Artistic Director to compile and arrange content for the Festival
• Assist the Artistic Director in editing content on our virtual platform
• Research some filmmakers’ works and conduct multiple interviews with selected filmmakers

Filmmakers’ Panel Discussion

• Assist the Artistic Director in organizing  filmmakers’ virtual and in-person panels
• Coordinate the guest panelists, moderators, and translators for the panel
• Organize the logistics for the panel on the day of
• The Fellow will have the option to moderate a virtual and/or in-person panel, if they so choose

Publicity and Outreach

• Assist the Artistic Director in the execution of the Festival’s communications strategy by providing content for the Festival’s e-newsletter, website and social media
• Provide content for the marketing and outreach of festival programming
• Participate in volunteers’ meetings throughout the planning of the festival

Contact: Eric Nong, Artistic Director, Viet Film Fest 

The Asian American Youth Leaders (AAYL) program began as a joint project between the South Coast Chinese Cultural Association (SCCCA) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), specifically the Humanities Center. The pilot program was implemented at the South Coast Chinese Cultural Center in the summer of 2022 as a way to address the rising wave of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes across the nation. Since then, SCCCA has adopted AAYL into its family of community service programs.  

The objectives of AAYL are to:  

• Cultivate the next generation of Asian American leaders who can contribute to the social dialogue in developing just and equitable solutions to social challenges and needs.  
• Develop leadership skill sets necessary to participate in civic engagement activities and effect positive change in society.  
• Broadly increase awareness within the Asian American community on the shared and disparate histories of immigration by the various Asian ethnic and cultural groups.  
• Increase and promote contributions of Asian Americans in the United States.  

Join us for a paid summer research fellowship (20 hours per week for 10 weeks June 16-August 22) to teach and mentor community middle school and high school students as well as assist in developing a youth-centered archive. Specific tasks include:  

• Work with an undergraduate instructor and high school student assistant to teach a week-long youth program that exposes middle school and high school students to Asian American studies and to mentor them in leadership projects.
• Work with AAYL’s new year-long student cohort and fellow graduate students in developing a youthcentered archive utilizing an oral history toolkit.  
• Assist in archiving and fully digitizing past AAYL student work and exhibits for a larger, multi-year exhibition
• Assist in curriculum development for future AAYL programming.  
• Work with the South Coast Chinese Cultural Association and UCI to monitor student progress and assess the impact of the AAYL program.  

Note: Any UCI affiliates who will interact with AAYL student participants will need to clear background screening and receive Child Abuse and Neglect Reproting Act (CANRA) training.  

The project will be supervised by:

• Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (j.wu@uci.edu), Professor of Asian American Studies and Director of the UCI Humanities Center
• Tony Hwang (tony@uci.edu), Executive Director of Enrollment Management  
• Yulan Chung (principal@sccca.org), Executive Director of South Coast Chinese Cultural Center and Principal of Irvine Chinese School
• Mary Nguyen (marynguyen@sccca.org), Program Director of the Asian American Youth Leaders Program  
• Raini Do (rainido@sccca.org), Program Coordinator, Asian American Youth Leaders Program

OC Parks encompasses regional, wilderness and historical facilities, as well as coastal areas throughout the County of Orange. Featuring over 60,000 acres of parkland, open space and shoreline, Orange County’s award-winning parks and programs are enjoyed by millions of residents and visitors each year. Within OC Parks, the Cultural Resources Group manages and interprets eight historical facilities located throughout the County, each exploring different avenues of the region’s diverse history. These include, the Old Orange County Courthouse, Heritage Hill Historical Park, Arden: Helena Modjeska Historic House & Gardens, Irvine Ranch Historic Park, George Key Ranch Historic Park, Ramon Peralta Adobe Historic Site, and the Historic Yorba Cemetery. For the 2024 Humanities Out There Public Fellows Program, we are offering flexible opportunities to work at multiple sites within the Cultural Resources Group of OC Parks.

Depending on their skills and interests the fellow may work on one or more of the following areas of concentration:

Developing Virtual Tours and Engaging Digital Interpretive Content

• The fellow would assist with gathering historic photographs, writing text descriptions, editing videos, and organizing 360s photographs for a virtual tour for some of our historic sites. The goal is to provide engagement opportunities for people who would otherwise not be able to visit our sites. This project may include developing new tour plans based on interpretive themes, researching and writing text for educational signage, developing exhibits or planning small public programs. The public fellow will also evaluate OC Parks’ current historical and cultural social media posts to view high and low trends for future content focus. They will review and compile data on current trends for social media posts with top agencies in the field, such as the National Park Service. The fellow should explore possibilities such as live talks, recorded programs, self-guided experiences, game nights, and children’s programs. Then they will develop recommended virtual education content for each of the historic sites with assistance from Curator staff.

Creating Docent Training Materials

• Many visitors experience a volunteer docent led tour on their first visit to our historic parks. Ensuring that docents have all the tools they need to provide visitors with a positive, compelling and historically accurate experience, often encourages them to continue to engage with local historic sites in the future. Using the materials that have already been developed for Arden as a standard, the fellow will work on creating new materials or revising outdated existing materials for new volunteer docents at Heritage Hill, Irvine Ranch Historic, and the Old Orange County Courthouse.

Creating Interpretive Exhibits

• There are several opportunities to redesign or create public interpretive exhibits at various historic sites. This would include developing exhibit planning materials, researching exhibit concepts and details, creating exhibit layout mockups and collaborating with exhibit installation. Exhibits may be focused on a variety of topics, including the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2025, or important historical figures in Orange County history.

Contact: Dennis Shaffer, Historic Curator 

About the School of Humanities
UCI’s School of Humanities was one of the five original founding divisions on campus and is currently the largest school, home to 22 majors, 37 minors and the largest number of faculty on campus. Including intellectual foci that span from global cultural and historical studies to languages, literature and media to philosophy and critical theory, the School of Humanities’ graduate programs in literary criticism & theory, English and history are among the top-ranked public programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

The Communications team within the school is responsible for all inward and public-facing communications, including the website, social media and physical marketing campaigns.

Project Specifications

Persuasive Numbers & Story Brochure
The School is currently undergoing a modest rebranding that will be utilized in the work that the HOT fellow does this summer. Last October we launched an updated website and new physical banner campaign (The Power of Imagination), and this summer we will finalize a rebranding of the School’s color palette and public-facing communications (updated newsletter branding, for example).

Drawing upon the work that Truf, our design firm, will do over the spring quarter, we’d like to work with a PhD student to create a digital and physical brochure that highlights the strengths of UCI’s School of Humanities. It could be an impact brochure – a short (1 or 2 page?) document that conveys the highlights of the school. It could be a short video accompanying some important stats/visuals in order to help make the case to…prospective students/parents/donors?! It could be a mix of different objects that combine to make the case for UCI SOH.

Part of the work this summer will be researching what’s going on nationally in terms of trends around impact brochures. What’s interesting and creative about how other universities and schools make their case? What kind of boring, traditional brochure should we avoid? How can we combine the new design work from Truf with our The Power of Imagination Campaign in this communication? This research will extend to conversations with Dean Miller, Associate Dean Yong Chen, and others within the School.

The other part of the work will be collecting the data to display, and working with the communications team to design, the public-facing products (think printed brochure, webpage, etc.). Experience with design software is not necessary, though welcome. 

Alumni Profiles  
In addition to the above project, we’d like the HOT Fellow to write engaging and dynamic 1,100-word profiles of PhD alumni for our website and newsletter. We are looking for someone who is a strong writer/storyteller and interested in interviewing PhD alumni. Desired Qualifications The Communications team is looking for an intellectually curious PhD student who is skilled at design, researching and writing. We would love to work with someone who is:

• Interested in the “so what” of studying the humanities, and telling that story via images, video, and written text;
• A strong writer interested in writing about PhD alumni, and helping us pitch stories that capture the impact of pursuing a PhD in the humanities;
• Intrigued by the idea of strategic communications, and would like to help further the reach of humanities impact stories.

What You Can Expect from Us
In addition to hands-on experience working on the above, we offer: 

• The opportunity to work as part of a team and engage in lively collaborations with faculty and staff. We have fun. And work hard. 
• The opportunity to expand (and/or develop) a communications portfolio that includes short written pieces and persuasive visual communications.
• Mentorship from an experienced supervisor who understands the benefits (and limitations) of doctoral training as well as the kind of professional development opportunities critical to support post-PhD professional trajectories.

Contact: Kelly Anne Brown, PhD | Director of Media Relations and Communications | SoH 

The UCI Humanities Center coordinates and supports the work of various centers and groups and provide new synergy and connectivity for research in the School of Humanities. We manage approximately 20 centers, research clusters, and projects. The Humanities Center has received three Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar awards, two Mellon Foundation graduate training grants, and an NEH and a Luce Foundation project grant, as well as other funding, over the past ten years.  

The fellow would primarily work on four projects: 

• Expanding the webpage dedicated to the Mellon Sawyer seminars with more comprehensive summaries and collecting photos. This would also include interviewing graduate students and faculty who were involved in these projects.
• Webpage dedicated to the cross-disciplinary GSR program from 2020-2025. This would include descriptions of the projects, interviews with faculty and graduate students, as well as any relevant photos.
• Refresh and update Humanities Out There website, with an eye towards engagement with potential donors. We have been working on creating a more dynamic visual experience of previous placements by using Storymaps, a digital humanities tool, and would like to complete this work this summer.
• Work with Humanities Center staff and create an impact report that will be published online for 2024-2025. 

Other work that may be of interest to the fellow in connection to their professional development goals will also be incorporated, as possible.

Contact: SueJeanne Koh, Assistant Director of Graduate Futures and Research Engagement