Shalom Staub reflects on his legacy of community and connection

Since the beginning of his remarkable career spanning government, the private nonprofit sector and higher education, Shalom Staub has advanced cultural competency and diversity, equity and inclusion - long before those ideas were part of our everyday vernacular. He earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology at Wesleyan University before earning his doctorate in folklore studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, Staub spent time as the state folklorist of Pennsylvania before leading the Pennsylvania Heritage Affairs Commission, a state agency tasked with promoting and conserving ethnic and folk traditions and multicultural education.

He then founded and led a nonprofit organization called the Institute for Cultural Partnerships, where he combined cultural heritage and conflict resolution work, linking the arts with refugee social services. Eventually, Staub found his way back to higher education at Dickinson College at a time when the school sought to deepen relationships between the campus and its local community. As associate provost for academic affairs and civic engagement, he introduced community-engaged learning across the curriculum at Dickinson and spent 15 years there before coming to UCLA.

Now assistant vice provost and executive director of the UCLA Center for Community Engagement, Staub is officially retiring in June. He joined UCLA in 2018 for the opportunity - and the challenge - to make community-engaged learning a cornerstone of the student experience. He's helped UCLA accomplish that and much more, including gaining national recognition for our faculty in community-engaged scholarship. He also led and managed the implementation of Strategic Plan Goal 1: Deepen our engagement with Los Angeles, which has been incorporated into the chancellor's UCLA Connects flagship initiative.

Newsroom sat down with Staub to talk about his work in support of UCLA Connects and One UCLA.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is your primary role at UCLA?

Since arriving, my focus has been on embedding community-engaged learning across the curriculum at UCLA, where we now have community-engaged coursework in more than 40 undergrad and graduate departments across campus.

For the past eight years, I have worked with both the undergraduate and graduate councils to create a framework for defining community-engaged learning, which places students directly in community settings, deepening their subject learning and creating value for partner organizations. I wanted to make it easier for faculty who wanted to design and implement community-engaged courses across different fields at different curriculum levels. We now have a unified, community-engaged course framework that can guide the development of coursework at every level of instruction.

What is a project you're working on - and why is it important?

In 2022, I was invited to lead the development of Goal 1 of the strategic plan in tandem with faculty, staff, students, alumni and local community partners. A key element is to provide the structural support needed to facilitate community-engaged work on campus and throughout Los Angeles. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt appointed Michelle Caswell as his special advisor for community-engaged scholarship. We established a network of community-engagement advisors appointed by their deans in every school and division to advance this work within and across their units. We also established the UCLA L.A. Community Engagement Council, which included community members who worked with us to guide the implementation of Goal 1 in a way that was responsive to community needs and interests - while also being built around community assets.

We wanted to incentivize faculty to develop new community-engaged courses, so in 2023 we launched a program to provide course development grants and support model departments that were committed to seeing community-engaged learning integrated into their curricula. And we also launched something that I'm really proud of, the Social Impact Collaboratives program, which provides funding for new research and creative projects done in partnership with the community and addresses equity across different disciplines.

Another focus was on removing barriers to doing this kind of community-engaged work and how it gets counted toward faculty tenure and promotion. In 2024, the Council on Academic Personnel released guidance recognizing the scholarly activity of community-engaged teaching and research, ensuring it is counted toward faculty research and teaching output. Now, 10 schools and divisions have additional guidance for faculty on how their community-engaged research and teaching will be evaluated and considered.

Is this kind of community-engaged scholarship framework unique to UCLA, or does it exist elsewhere?

While this work happens at other institutions, UCLA serves as a model for its community-engaged course framework. With the infrastructure of the Center for Community Engagement, we certainly stand out among our peer institutions. And UCLA has certainly been a leader with its multilayered approach to guiding community-engaged faculty through their promotion and tenure review.

How does this work align with UCLA Connects?

When Chancellor Frenk arrived on campus, I saw how profoundly he understood and supported the idea of community-engaged scholarship and community-engaged teaching and research, especially given his public health background.

So when his ideas for the flagship initiatives coalesced, UCLA Connects emerged in part with a focus on connecting the campus to itself through initiatives like Dialogue Across Difference and connecting UCLA to the broader community. The Center for Community Engagement's work became a natural fit for the outward-facing program of UCLA Connects. Our UCLA Community Partnership Summit last March brought together faculty, community partners and program officers from area foundations to conceptualize new opportunities for university and community partnerships in Los Angeles. So that's really an embodiment of the chancellor's UCLA Connects vision.

What do you love about working at UCLA, and what will you miss the most when you retire in June?

Well, that's an easy question to answer. Because what I have loved most about being here is my colleagues and the students. I have had the extraordinary opportunity to work with such dedicated, creative and passionate faculty who care about research and teaching that impacts the world. Having been in a position that stimulates and advances this work institutionally has been so rewarding. And I find UCLA students to be some of the brightest, most passionate students I could ever imagine working with. They are so driven by their desire to give back, and one of the consistent comments I hear from them is how the work opens up career possibilities for them that they never knew existed. That's what coming to UCLA has meant for them.

And that, again, is what has been so rewarding and powerful - the connection with my colleagues and the ability to work with such curious and passionate students. It has been absolutely amazing.