Dear CRC Community,
There has been a significant amount of transition at the Center for Regional Change (CRC) over the past few years. As current and former CRC faculty affiliates, community partners, staff, students, advocates, and allies, you have been an essential part of our dynamic journey.
🌅 Closing of the CRC
Please see the message below from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Dean’s Office, sharing news about the closure of the CRC and letters from the CRC’s two faculty directors, Jonathan London and Catherine Brinkley, reflecting on the work of the Center. Please take a moment to click on the blue text to share your favorite memories and reflections about the CRC.
➡️ Continuing the Work
Ahna, Brandon, and Shayla will be transitioning their current projects and grants focused on youth participation, engagement, and action research; basic income; and adolescent health and wellbeing to the UC Davis Institute of the Environment, led by Clare Cannon, the Acting Director of the Institute of the Environment and long-standing faculty affiliate and member of the CRC Executive Committee. Carly will be continuing her important work in the Dean's Office.
We would love to stay in conversation with you about our current projects or work with you to co-design new ones. Please let us know if you want to stay connected by contacting us at [email protected] or [email protected].
đź’š Gratitude
We are grateful for the expansive CRC network which has been essential to our work over the past 20 years. Many of you have been affiliated with the CRC much longer than those of us who are still here. Since 2006, when the Planning Committee led by Ted Bradshaw proposed the launch of the CRC, hundreds of community partners, student scholars, staff members, faculty members, Regional Advisory Committee members, donors, and funders have contributed to realizing the CRC’s goal of producing innovative, collaborative research to inform the building of healthy, prosperous, sustainable and equitable regions in California and beyond. We will close out the CRC in the same spirit that has guided this work for the past 20 years. We are grateful for the path we have forged with you and look forward to future partnership.
In Community,
✨ The CRC Team ✨
Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman, Brandon Louie, Carly Andrade, and Shayla Campbell
Message from the Dean's Office
Dear Faculty, Staff and Supporters,
After a lengthy review process and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to sunset the Center for Regional Change (CRC) in its current form, effective July 1, 2026. This is not an end to our commitment to the critical community-engaged work of our college but a shift in how we support it.
The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences continues to face incredibly hard decisions surrounding funding allocations given the campus-wide request to reduce budgets. While we can no longer sustain the CRC’s costs as an administrative unit, we remain deeply committed to supporting our faculty, staff, students and alumni who are engaged in community-based research, teaching and extension. We are in the process of transitioning staff, existing grants and projects. The work being led by Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman and Brandon Louie will continue within a new unit, and we will foster the impactful work of donor-funded awards in other areas of the college.
Established in 2006, the CRC has served as a foundational hub for groundbreaking inquiry into implementing change to better the lives of Californians. The CRC was instrumental in helping to launch incredibly impactful research programs and community initiatives that we value deeply.
I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who played a role in supporting the efforts of the CRC. This includes its founder, the late Ted K. Bradshaw, donors William B. Lacy, Ann M. Evans, Kamaljeet Singh-Khaira and Ravinder Khaira, faculty directors Jonathan London and Catherine Brinkley, faculty affiliate researcher Nancy Erbstein, executive directors Bernadette Austin and Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman. The impact of the CRC’s contributions will continue to resonate both on campus and throughout the communities it has supported. We are proud of what the CRC accomplished and look forward to our continued emphasis on the importance of the community-based work for which our college is known.
Sincerely,
Ashley M. Stokes, DVM, PhD, MBA
Dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
University of California, Davis
https://caes.ucdavis.edu/
Message from Jonathan London
Dear CRC community,
When Ted Bradshaw invited me to help him develop the Center for Regional Change in 2006 I was inspired by the opportunity to develop an organization dedicated to linking the university, public agencies, and communities for collaborative and applied research. This aligned with my own values and experiences with participatory action research inside and outside the academy. While Ted tragically passed away that year before we could launch the Center, I was honored to carry out and build upon this original vision for the next decade and a half. In collaboration with faculty from across campus and partners in philanthropy, policy, and community advocacy, we developed multiple engaged research initiatives that informed the growth of prosperous, healthy and sustainable communities and regions in California and beyond.
Among the many highlights from these years include:
The establishment of the Ted Bradshaw Student Scholars program. Inspired by students associated with the center, the program placed a diverse cohort of undergraduate and graduate students with university and community hosts for powerful action research and professional development opportunities.
Healthy Youth/ Healthy Regions. The first regional and multi-issue analysis of youth health and well-being in the Sacramento region, synthesizing trends in education, physical and mental health, economics, and civic engagement. HY/HR integrated socio-spatial mapping, quantitative analysis, ethnographic methods, and youth-participatory action research and has influenced decades of philanthropy and policy in the Sacramento region. This project also spun out the CRC’s two major interactive mapping platforms: The Regional Opportunity Index and Putting Youth on the Map.
Cumulative Environmental Vulnerability Analysis. In collaboration with a diverse coalition of environmental justice organizations throughout the San Joaquin Valley, a CRC team developed a mapping method that combined environmental and social indicators. This work went on to influence the development of California’s CalEnviroScreen, used to allocate billions of dollars of investments in disadvantaged populations.
The Struggle for Water Justice. This collaborative project with water justice organizations and foundations mapped the hundreds of Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities in the San Joaquin Valley and identified opportunities for improved access to safe drinking water. This research helped inform the development of the state’s billion dollar fund for safe and affordable drinking water.
Along with dozens of other projects, under my directorship and the following leadership, the CRC has engaged scores of students, faculty, and community partners to make research truly matter for regional change. Launching and directing it was an honor of a lifetime. I am proud of all that we accomplished and take great satisfaction that the work continues to have a positive impact over time.
In community,
Jonathan K. London
Professor and Program Director, Community and Regional Development/ Department of Human Ecology
Message from Catherine Brinkley
Dear CRC Community,
As I reflect on the Center for Regional Change’s 18+ years of work, I am filled with deep gratitude and admiration for what we have built together. Serving as the Faculty Director (2021-2024) was one of the great honors of my career. The chance to further the Center’s extraordinary impact across California and beyond remains a personal goal, and I am heartened by how many of us will continue the valuable work.
From the beginning, the CRC has stood for a simple but powerful idea: research should be done with communities, not on them. Over nearly two decades, that principle has guided partnerships that are reshaping policy, strengthening local leadership, and expanding what equitable, community-driven research can produce.
I am especially proud of the Yolo Basic Income project, which has become a national model for how universities, counties, and families can co-design policy from the ground up. We are still publishing the findings from this partnership with participants and Yolo County Health and Human Services staff. Some recently published findings emphasize the relief that guaranteed income provided families living in deep poverty with children. The ongoing collaboration between policymakers and researchers demonstrates how we can both make and measure such impacts to model how we could grow promising programming—particularly programs that center communities as experts in their own lives and invest in their visions for stability and dignity.
Our collaborations with state agencies on climate-ready planning have also shown the power of bridging academic research with public-sector action. Together, we have helped shape tools and strategies that support communities facing the accelerating realities of climate change—particularly those historically left out of planning processes. It was an absolute joy to work with non-profits and academic collaborators across the state in building these tools and putting them to use in serving local plan-making.
These projects came about as extensions of the Center’s long-standing commitment to environmental justice—one of its most defining strengths. Whether advancing data tools, supporting frontline organizations, or elevating youth leadership, the CRC has consistently worked to ensure that those most affected by environmental burdens are centered in the solutions.
None of this work would be possible without the partners who have trusted us, challenged us, and co-created with us. To our community organizations, government collaborators, and philanthropic supporters: thank you for believing in the CRC’s mission and for walking alongside us in the long work of regional change. To our funders: your investments have allowed the Center to take risks, innovate, and sustain long-term partnerships that truly matter. The endowed student scholarships will continue—and just last week, a student in office hours shared with me that she was accepted to all her master’s programs—a feat she attributes to having won the Isao Fujimoto Student Engaged Scholar Award! Thank you to the hundreds of people who have donated to make that student support a reality. Last, thank you to our Regional Advisory Board for providing your advice and energy in shaping the Center and its work.
To our students: you are the heart of this work. Your curiosity, creativity, and commitment to justice have shaped every project and pushed the Center to grow in new directions. And to the Dean’s Office: thank you for your support of community-engaged scholarship and for recognizing the importance of research that is accountable to the people and places it serves. The CRC’s legacy is not just in its reports, maps, or policy wins—it is in the relationships built, the trust earned, and the communities strengthened. I am grateful to have been part of this story.
With appreciation and solidarity,
Catherine Brinkley Former Faculty Director, Center for Regional Change
