You don’t have to wait until next year’s Comic-Con to live your best geek life. Just ask these Bruins

There's nothing unusual about Superman, Tron's Ares, Lewis Carroll's Alice and a gnome sitting among the audience of a San Diego Comic-Con panel during the annual four-day event.

What is unusual is that this July 26 crowd trekked nearly a mile from the hustle and bustle of the seaside-situated San Diego Convention Center, swapping crowded exhibitor halls for a modern glass-walled room soaring above downtown on the ninth floor of the San Diego Central Library. They also didn't need a Comic-Con badge to be there.

The satellite venue, complete with SDCC's signature eye-logo branding and sweeping views of the city, is home to the convention's free Conference for Educators and Librarians, where teachers, student affairs professionals, students, researchers and community members gather to explore how pop culture can become a tool for learning, belonging and student success.

On this Sunday, the final day of the annual event, that conversation featured a strong UCLA presence.

Among the presenters were Bruin alumnae Isabel Wong and La'Tonya Rease Miles, who joined GeekEd, a collection of higher education professionals who use comics, games, film and television, and other fandoms as entry points for conversations about identity, community and education.

For Wong and Miles, GeekEd represents more than a speaking engagement. It reflects a philosophy that students and professionals shouldn't have to leave the things they love at the classroom door.

For Wong, who graduated from UCLA in 2022 with a degree in global studies, that idea first took shape long before she became an SDCC panelist.

Wong attended her first Comic-Con with her family in 2016. The convention's convergence of fandoms made a big impression on her then-teenage self, who had traveled all the way from Minneapolis to be there. As an admitted student visiting UCLA several years later, Wong attended an out-of-state welcome event on the Westwood campus where UCLA lecturer Tara-Prescott-Johnson spoke candidly about fandoms for everything from "Star Wars" to scuba diving. Wong was so inspired that she wrote Prescott-Johnson a handwritten letter after returning home.

That note sparked a mentorship that eventually led Wong to GeekEd, where she attended her first SDCC educator panel, and several years later, returned as a presenter herself.

"My story begins here at Comic-Con," Wong told Sunday's attendees.

Her path also reinforced that her passions weren't distractions from her professional ambitions. They could be part of them.

As an undergraduate, Wong wrote an honors thesis examining a quarter-century of anime convention culture before launching internships with Nintendo, Hasbro and PlayStation, the latter of which she ultimately joined as full-time staff to build her career in interactive entertainment marketing.

During Sunday's panel, she encouraged educators to embrace the interests that students already bring with them.

"People love to see when you love something," she said, explaining that authentic enthusiasm can create opportunities for connection that more traditional approaches sometimes miss.

While Wong's fandom helped launch her career, Miles has spent much of hers using pop culture to help students see themselves in higher education.

Miles earned her Ph.D. in American literature from UCLA in 2004 and later served as UCLA's executive director of first-year experience and student affairs strategic partnerships before continuing her work supporting first-generation students through teaching, speaking, and through her nonprofit, My Tribe Media.

She also authored the memoir "Smart Girl: A First-Gen Origin Story," and co-created and edited the anthology "First Gen & Juice: Exploring First-Gen College Student Narratives in Pop Culture and Mass Media."

At the heart of her work is a simple but powerful idea.

"Media, and I'll include pop culture in that, lets us know who does and doesn't belong in college," she said.

Earlier in the run up to SDCC, Miles brought that concept to a My Tribe Media event at the University of San Diego, asking participants to share the television show or movie that first shaped their perception of college.

"It was so fun and fiery, because people got into a heated conversation about whether or not Rory Gilmore was or wasn't [a first-generation college student], and why that mattered," said Miles, who currently serves as an adjunct professor at the Santa Clara University School of Education and Counseling Psychology.

For Miles, those stories influence who students imagine belongs on a college campus long before they ever arrive. Community college students, transfer students and first-generation students are still largely absent from many of those narratives, she said, making representation - and the conversations surrounding it - especially meaningful.

That message resonated throughout Sunday's programming.

After Miles' first panel, where she served as moderator and explored first-generation experiences from now-professional educators, a local K-12 teacher approached her in tears to share that hearing fellow first-generation educators discuss their own experiences inspired her to become more intentional about supporting the students in her own classroom.

Outside the library and throughout San Diego, thousands of Comic-Con attendees spent the weekend celebrating beloved characters and fictional worlds. Inside the library's looming concrete domes and glass walls, Wong, Miles and fellow GeekEd presenters explored what those same stories can accomplish beyond entertainment.

"The cool thing is that our panels inspired Comic-Con," said UCLA's Brian MacDonald, a member of GeekEd's leadership collective who was part of its first set of panels at the main convention center over 15 years ago.

MacDonald, who is executive director of communications and organizational development for UCLA Student Affairs, has enjoyed seeing the conference grow from one day to four with its move to the library. He's also watched it coincide with SDCC's expansion of other offerings for the community, such as the opening of its Comic-Con Museum and its Education Center in Balboa Park. The center offers learning opportunities for visitors, including students from Title I schools throughout San Diego County.

"It's very important to those running Comic-Con to do things for public benefit and to lift higher education," MacDonald said. "We fit right in with their desire to continue to grow in those areas."