Historicizing UC Links: Sustaining Resistance and Responsiveness in University-Community Partnerships

• In Event: Historicizing University-Community Links at 30: Proleptic Learnings in Resistance, Responsiveness, and Reimagining Education

Abstract

The AERA Call for Submissions asks specifically for submissions representing “California as examples of rich local histories of education and equitable and thriving futures” (The American Educational Research Association, 2025, p. 3). Thirty years ago, California eliminated affirmative action in higher education and in response, a group of university-community partners came together to form the University-Community Links (UC Links) network as a strategy to forge alternative equity strategies by working collaboratively to develop and sustain research programs that connect young people from historically marginalized communities with university students from diverse backgrounds in innovative informal-learning activities that prepare P-12 students for higher learning while preparing university students for graduate and professional training and future careers (Author, 2021; Authors, 2024; Cole & Distributed Literacy Consortium, 2006; Vásquez, 2003).

This presentation anchors this collaborative work in historicity (Author2, 2022), and examines 20+ years of quantitative programmatic and institutional data and knowledge through the lens of a sociotechnical activity system (Author, 2021). By historicizing this work, understanding the UC Links network as an organizational system and the institutional and global pressures that comprise the macrosocial system, we can explore institutional sustainability and change in the UC Links network over time.

This presentation builds on and extends sustainability work originally conducted in 2013 by UC Links founding members. Data sources used to understand the organizational system of the UC Links network include aggregated, quantitative data collected by UC Links programs as part of annual program evaluations (1996-2024) including the number of participating faculty, P-12, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the number of program sites. Data sources used to understand institutional and global forces at play in the macrosocial system include annual funding for the UC Links network as well as institutional and historical knowledge of the program directors.

By historicizing the UC Links network over almost 30 years, we see clear patterns of both resistance and responsiveness. The UC Links network as an organizational system has responded to opportunities and constraints in the macrosocial system. Leaps in initial funding in 1998-99 were followed by dramatic and relatively sustained increases in numbers of participants. Cuts in funding in the early 2000s were reflected in corresponding decreases in the number of program sites and faculty. Interestingly, the number of program sites faculty seems to recover and stabilize over time and participation seem relatively resistant to macrosocial forces until the COVID-19 pandemic.

This knowledge serves both as institutional history and context for the three following presentations focused on primary work systems (individual UC Links programs) and sets the stage for the intentional practice of futuring by engaging with our historical past.

Authors

• Eros Najera, University of California - Berkeley

• Mara Welsh Mahmood, University of California - Berkeley

• John Cano, University of California - Berkeley