Vision

The Center for Regional Change and partners collaborate to create healthy, prosperous, and sustainable regions in California and beyond.

Mission

The Center for Regional Change is a catalyst for collaborative, action-oriented research grounded in social and environmental justice.  We engage in research, reciprocal learning, capacity building, and training with transdisciplinary, multi-sector community and campus partners to generate evidence that informs positive social change.

We conduct our work under these guiding principles

• We center the knowledge and priorities of peoples who have been historically marginalized from institutional research activities.
• We prioritize the topics of social and environmental justice, civic and youth engagement, food and housing security, and health equity.
• We use the frameworks of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) to produce research that promotes change toward equity and justice.
• We democratize data through communication platforms, community engagement, science translation and dissemination, technical assistance, and curricula.
• We build bridges between decision makers, legislators, government agencies, community members, students, and academics.
• We believe that we learn best when we work hands on. We create opportunities for community-engaged scholarship and experiential learning for UCD students, community members, and scholars.
• We foster a learning community among our professional and student staff, leadership, student scholars, faculty affiliates, advisors, and partners as a community of practice that strives to enact our mission.
   

History

The idea for the UC Davis Center for Regional Change arose in a dialogue between the faculty in Community Development and Environmental Design/Landscape Architecture as a model of cross-departmental collaboration. This challenge was taken up by the late Ted Bradshaw, Professor of Community Development. Based on his commitment to engaged scholarship and university innovation, Bradshaw conceived the idea for a Center for Regional Change as a way to break down disciplinary silos and to better bridge campus-community divides. The faculty and administration of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences embraced the concept as a way to expand the base of excellence of the College to address the social, economic, political and environmental dimensions of sustainability on community and regional scales.

In 2005, CA&ES Dean Van Alfen appointed an ad-hoc committee of faculty and regional leaders to develop the framework for the Center under Bradshaw's leadership. Bradshaw completed this proposal several weeks before his death in the summer of 2006. At that point, Jonathan London, who had worked with Bradshaw to plan the Center, was appointed as Interim Director. London was subsequently hired as Director in conjunction with an appointment as Assistant Professor in Community Development in July 2008. The Center for Regional Change hosts an annual Ted Bradshaw Memorial Distinguished Lectureship each fall, manages a Bradshaw Memorial Fund to support outstanding Community Development graduate students and alumnae, and has benefited from the generous donation of much of his library by his widow, Betty Lou Bradshaw, to form the basis the Center for Regional Change reference library.

Contact Information

For media inquiries or general questions, please contact us at (530) 752-3007 or at crcinfo@ucdavis.edu.  

Our mailing address is:

UC Davis Center for Regional Change
150 Mrak Hall Dr.
One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616

If you are on the UC Davis campus, please visit our office in 152 Hunt Hall.