The Graduate Students Association represents all graduate students at UCSB. Read on for more about this year's Executive Committee. For more on what the GSA does, see We Love GSA.
Mario Galicia Jr.
President, gsapresident.ucsb@gmail.com
Research Focus: Youth gang and violence intervention, ethnography, critical pedagogy, research evaluations
Program: M.A./Ph.D. in Education
Bio
I was born in LA and lived in the Rampart district for the first seven years of my life. I moved to and lived in San Bernardino for over 20 years, prior to transferring from Moreno Valley College to UCSB as an undergraduate. I received my bachelor's degree in Sociology and Chicana/o Studies from UCSB in 2008 and later that fall began my graduate student career in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. By the end of this summer I will be finished with my M.A. requirements and looking forward to advancing to doctoral candidacy by mid-year. My research primarily focuses on a gang and violence intervention program implemented through the Santa Barbara Unified School District. As a graduate student in the GGSE I have been very fortunate to participate in research projects outside of my discipline. Obtaining an interdisciplinary research training from a top ranked research university, such as UCSB, has been an experience definitely worth enduring the grind of graduate school. I look forward to seeing how I can utilize my research tools to better understand our youth, and hopefully contribute to my fields of research at the same time.
On a personal side, I am a husband and father. I have been married for two years, with my wonderful partner of seven and a half years, Maria. We have a beautiful daughter named Michelle, and we are also expecting a baby brother for Michelle later on this fall quarter. I do have to say that my family is my anchor and motivation for completing my graduate program. I have been lucky enough to have had a supportive and understanding partner, in my wife, from the very beginning of my college education.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
I hope to establish a strong communication network between the GSA and their peers. We are looking forward to updating our website and also add new content on graduate student resources and services offered across UCSB. We are hoping to assist our fellow graduate student peers in understanding the full extent of coverage they receive with the student fees that they pay as well as inform our peers on additional services offered to them given individual circumstances.
We are having two huge campus events this year with the upcoming presidential election registration drive this fall and our Campus Climate Survey later in the winter quarter. We need to have as many graduate student participants as possible. These are two excellent opportunities to become involved and have yourself heard.
One issue I am definitely looking at tackling this year is graduate student summer transportation. As many of you know, unless you are registered in and pay for summer courses, you are not eligible to receive a summer bus pass to ride on the MTD for free. As such, we will be exploring some ideas to help subsidize summer transportation costs to graduate students. Please help us out by engaging with us at our regular general assembly meetings, the first Tuesday of every month at the GSA Lounge from 6 to 8 p.m. Aside from that, please feel free to contact me at anytime.
Ellie Sciaky
VP External Affairs, gsavpexternal@gmail.com
Program: Ph.D. in Education
Bio
I'm beginning my fourth year in GGSE's M.A./Ph.D. program. I'm also a UCSB alum, with a B.A. in Sociology. Go Gauchos!
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
Fight fee increases, help connect UCSB students to system-wide opportunities, support ed-friendly legislation, bring the needs of this campus to the awareness of system-wide bodies, and whatever else comes up.
Dusty Hoesly
VP Committees & Planning, gsavpcomplan.ucsb@gmail.com
Research Focus: Contemporary American Religions
Program: Ph.D. in Religious Studies
Bio
I am from Portland, Oregon. B.A. Lewis & Clark College 2002: English, Philosophy (double major), Religious Studies (minor); M.A.R. Yale Divinity School 2004: History of Christianity (concentration); M.A.T. Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education: English Language Arts, Middle Level/High School (emphasis).
I taught 7th grade English for four years, as well as religious studies classes at Mt. Hood Community College and adult community education classes at a local library. I research the world views of people in the Pacific Northwest who self-describe as "not religious" (what are their values, what experiences do they consider special, etc...).
What Do You Hope to Accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
I hope to ensure effective and diverse graduate student representation on campus committees and to plan exciting, well-attended events for graduate students throughout the year.
Caitlin Rathe
VP Budget & Finance, gsavpbudget@gmail.com
Research Focus: 20th Century U.S. history, economic roots of liberalism and its impact on US policy, 1920/30s forward
Program: M.A./Ph.D. in History
Bio
I received my B.A. from Willamette University, a small liberal arts college in Salem, Oregon, in Economics and French Literature. While spending a year in France teaching English at a public high school, I was in the process of applying to economics Ph.D. programs when I realized it just wasn't the right fit. My senior economics thesis looked at the growth of wage disparities between African American and white male workers in urban centers during the 1920s and 1930s, centering on the unequal impact of the Depression on wages. So.... I thought, why not try history? I'd only taken two history classes as an undergrad, the first one my freshman year which I did not enjoy at all. But then returned to take another one first semester senior year, which I loved. I've always had a passion for teaching and hope to use my degree to educate and empower others.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
I want ALL graduate students to be able to list at least three things the GSA does for them. Our executive team can help with this by continuing to make our activities more transparent, as well as carrying out more awareness raising and action campaigns on campus.
Gary Haddow
VP Academic Affairs, gsavpacademic@gmail.com
Research Focus: Liberian Refugee Education
Program: Ph.D. in Education
Bio
I received a Bachelor's of Sociology at UCSB which led me to working with issues of global inequality and racial theory, and thus leading me to volunteering in South Africa for a summer. After this, my research focus switched to refugee education within West Africa, specifically, Liberian refugees in the Buduburam Refugee Camp. Last summer, I spent two months in the camp setting up the Middle Grounds Primary School, a free school for 110 Liberian refugee children. When not focused on overseeing the operations of Middle Grounds or working on my master's research, I love to watch all movies, I am an avid Yahtzee player, and I love to spend time with my friends.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
I hope to make sure that the various campus committees that I will be a part of continue to consider and recognize the importance of graduate students to the UCSB campus and its community as a whole. In addition, our GSA Executive Committee is dedicated to making GSA open, available, and useful to the entire graduate student body.
Ester Trujillo
VP Communications and Records, gsavpcomm.ucsb@gmail.com
Research Focus: My research is qualitative work focusing on Latina/o entrepreneur resilience practices
Program: Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies
Bio
I grew up in East Los Angeles and my parents operate a small business in downtown Los Angeles. I received my Bachelor's degree in Chicana and Chicano Studies with a minor in Political Science from UCLA and my master's degree in Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCSB. I have worked at UCLA Admissions and at Women's Economic Ventures in Santa Barbara. I have also been a teaching assistant for various Chicana/o Studies courses. I am a graduate peer for the Salvadoran Student Union's research initiative. I believe that academic research is a privileged platform and so I try my best to use this platform to give visibility to social inequalities and exposing the material conditions that surround a diverse array of US communities. I hope to use my degree to teach at the university level.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
As VP of Communications and Records I hope to continue to provide transparency by keeping updated records of meetings and decisions made by GSA. I hope to see more GSA involvement from students in small departments and that more students will read the weekly announcements and eventually attend events designed for them.
Marcel Brousseau 
VP Internal Affairs, GSAVPInternal@gmail.com
Research Focus: Media; the U.S./Mexican/Indigenous American Borderlands/ Cartographic Texts/ Navigation/ Networks
Program: Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
Bio:
This is my fifth year at UCSB. As a comparative literature student, I have consistently studied across departments, in Art History, Chicana/o Studies, English, Environmental Science, History, Geography, and Religious Studies. Doing so has helped me to devise new methodologies in my study of the U.S./Mexican/Indigenous American borderlands, and it has also allowed me to engage with graduate students and faculty from many different disciplines. I am always interested in how communication occurs across supposed borders; likewise I am concerned with transcultural, transdisciplinary communities. In my role with the GSA, I can combine these scholarly and political interests.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
I see the GSA as performing a mediating function. On one side, we make ourselves available to our immediate community, to graduate students, in order to provide for their social and scholastic well-being. We stage events and organize causes in order to ease the pressure of graduate work and life, and to foster communication and community. On the other side, we represent our members to the larger intercollegiate community. We want to remind UCSB and the UCs that graduate students keep these colleges running. We teach, we research, we administrate. We keep the labs humming, we utilize the infrastructure, and we create and innovate. Many, perhaps most, graduate students attend UCSB twice as long as undergrads; sometimes grad students attend UCSB longer than some faculty members. At the same time, we link to both the undergraduate and faculty communities. We know this university in ways that nobody else on campus does, and we should be given an appropriately strong voice in infrastructural, budgetary, and academic concerns. I hope that this year we can make progress on year round bus passes for grads and arrange for more effective housing for grads. I also hope that we can continue conversations about graduate student instructor rights and salaries, and about graduate representation among the Regents. It is absurd that graduate students are so poorly represented among those who make the largest decisions for the UCs, when those decisions will naturally trickle down to affect us both as students and as instructors.
Gary Fox
VP Student Affairs, gsavpstudent@gmail.com
Research Focus: Solar Energy
Program: M.S. Electrical Engineering
Bio:
I grew up in Seattle, WA and attended the University of Washington. Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life as an undergraduate, I studied economics.
After working in the consulting and hedge fund industry through the 2007-2009 financial collapse, I decided I wanted to be a part of the innovation industry, specifically electronics. This came about through my exposure to venture and private equity capital firms. I sold all my belongings and moved to California with no firm plan, but I knew that I needed more education in a technical field.
Through two years of community college preparing for this new field, meeting with people in the technology sector, and some personality tests, I determined electrical engineering would be best for me. With some hard work and a lot of help, I positioned myself as a sort of alternative candidate, coming into engineering school from a business background. As luck would have it, I was accepted to several schools and chose UCSB.
Although very challenging (not having an engineering background), I couldn't be more happy with my life at UCSB. Currently I am researching solar energy and researching how to make it more viable as a real energy source. I am also studying CMOS and RF circuitry, and am very excited about the future of these and other technologies. My goal is to combine my business and investment experience with my engineering education to one day produce a useful product for our society.
What do you hope to accomplish as a GSA Executive Committee Member?
To continue serving the community of graduate students, assist them with their housing and health needs, and to promote camaraderie among all graduate students regardless of background.