Women making history

When President Donald Trump announced last September that he planned to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Viridiana Chabolla Mendoza, a DACA recipient and first-year UCI law student, felt the same way as thousands of other so-called “Dreamers”: anxious, scared, stressed, uncertain. But just two weeks later, when she became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the president of the United States, another emotion joined the mix: determination.

Chabolla was born in Mexico but raised in East Los Angeles, which she has called home since she was 2. Because her favorite childhood hobbies were reading and writing, her grandparents suggested that she become a lawyer. Her undocumented status, though, made it difficult for her to attend college (she went to Pomona College) or find employment.

First introduced in 2001, the DREAM Act – Development, Relief & Education for Alien Minors – proposed a route to legal residency for individuals like Chabolla but was never approved by Congress. The DACA program, however, established in 2012 by the Obama administration, afforded many of the same protections to undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children. This eased Chabolla’s path to UCI’s law school, which she began last August.

Just weeks into her first year, after President Trump’s announcement, she was approached by Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the pro bono law firm Public Counsel and adjunct professor of law at UCI. He had a case pending against the U.S. on behalf of DACA recipients who had identified themselves to the government in exchange for legal permission to live and work in America. The current president’s intent to rescind this deal could constitute a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection component.

Rosenbaum had a question for Chabolla: Would she be a plaintiff?

Having worked as a Public Counsel organizer, she was used to recruiting plaintiffs for cases. Now, for the first time, she was “on the other side – and it was daunting.”

Hesitant to accept, Chabolla remembered how Rosenbaum had always been interested in her well-being as a DACA student, checking in on her often during her transition to law school. And knowing the other lawyers on the case – “an incredibly compassionate and dedicated group” – helped ease her mind. After conferring with family and friends, Chabolla became one of six plaintiffs in Garcia v. United States of America, filed Sept. 18 in the Northern District of California.

“I’m generally a private person, so the national attention was a little uncomfortable at first,” she says. “Not to mention that at the same time the case was beginning, I was adjusting to law school, which is wildly fast-paced as it is. Luckily, I have a wonderful support system, so that’s made it easier to juggle everything.”

Chabolla, who aspires to a career in litigation, knows how long the hearing process can take. It could be several months, and possibly years, before Garcia v. U.S.A. reaches the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, she’s glad to be part of a case “that furthers court delays of DACA’s end, so lawmakers are under less pressure to pass just anything and can take more time to lobby for a ‘clean’ DREAM Act,” one that doesn’t include funding for a border wall or detention centers.

Most of Chabolla’s work as a plaintiff involves sharing her story with lawyers and clearing up the public’s misconceptions about the DACA program, which she says gives her purpose as she both pursues her law degree and represents “Dreamers” nationwide in court.

“I hope that at the end of all this there are some legal protections in place for me, so I can continue practicing law, and for thousands of other immigrant youth whose futures are up in the air right now,” Chabolla says. “Working toward that end makes everything worth it.”

- Megan Cole

It’s the little things that foil Anne Krieghoff’s quest to have zero garbage trucked from UCI to landfills: specifically, the tiny condiment packets.

“Those individual servings of ketchup won’t ever be reusable,” says Krieghoff, campus recycling and sustainability program manager. Under her watch, UCI now diverts a whopping 21 tons of waste a day, on average, from landfills. That’s 83 percent of its output, including torn-up concrete, fallen trees, mounds of fruit rinds and several types of metal, paper and textiles. But not those condiment packets. “They’re too contaminated,” she says.

Krieghoff, however, is not giving up. As with other obstacles she’s encountered, she stays positive, pointing out the pluses of using large dispensers of spreads at ballparks and in big-box stores and college cafeterias.

“Serving in bulk is so environmentally beneficial, and in a way, it creates a community. You go over to the vat at Costco to put relish on your hot dog, and you’ve got a chance to say hello to someone,” she says, chuckling. “But when all you’ve got is the end of your little package to tear off, you know no one’s coming over to chat with you.”

Her can-do attitude in the face of any hurdle, no matter the size, has literally kept Krieghoff alive. Last October, she was at the Route 91 Harvest country music concert with two close friends for their annual “girls’ weekend” in Las Vegas. They heard popping sounds that they thought were fireworks. Within seconds, though, they realized that they were gunshots. The trio locked hands and fled, crawling over asphalt, vendors’ refrigerators, concrete barricades and, finally, fences that were padlocked shut.

Kind strangers hoisted them over the chain-link barrier. One man dropped on all fours and told Krieghoff’s terrified friend Lori, “Step on me.” Krieghoff says, “They risked their lives for us. I could hear the bullets pinging off the metal next to me.”

Once over, they grasped hands again and sprinted to the Tropicana hotel across the street. They sat quietly in the lobby and then in a concrete basement as critically injured fellow concertgoers were wrapped in tablecloths and triaged, grateful beyond words to be alive.

That was Sunday. By Tuesday, Krieghoff was back at work.

“I wrote a Facebook post to my friends,” she says. “We let everybody know we had survived, and I just expressed my gratitude for everything wonderful: my friends and the fact that I have more time to hug my family. I was even thankful for that cup of coffee and to sit at my own desk – to create that normal. I was back home, where I’m meant to be, and being at work is home to me.”

She says she thinks about that day “all the time,” then quickly moves on to discussing how each of us can take steps to conserve the planet – her coffee cups, for instance, are sturdy ceramic, washable and reusable.

A UCI social ecology major who graduated in 1978, Krieghoff, 61, wanted an environmental job right away but was ahead of her time. She and the modern waste industry have grown up together, she says. She did accounting at a regional business, where she also started recycling and ride-sharing programs. “At 22, you don’t know you can’t save the world, so you just go do it,” Krieghoff says.

Later she worked for an art dealer, setting up contracts and art appraisals. But she never lost sight of her desire for a sustainability job, and when she saw an opening for a custodial contract manager at UCI in 2007, she applied. It required experience with accounting and contract management. She had both.

During the interview, Krieghoff asked if she could collaborate with the campus recycling program too. She learned after being hired that it consisted of a student working part time. The UCI diversion rate was in the low 20th percentile. Eleven years later, with help from others, the campus tops the UC system in recycling and waste diversion, sending an average of just half a pound of waste a day per person to the landfill. The rest is recycled, reused or donated.

Now Krieghoff’s primary focus is education – helping people understand that methane released by landfills is a dangerous pollutant contributing to global warming and that there are finite resources on the planet. “There is no ‘away’ when you throw something away,” she says. “It stays right here on Earth.”

More than 100 schools across the U.S. have sought her help with recycling. She’s a key expert in a popular UC-Vox video on reducing takeout trash. Krieghoff, her staff and students from public health, engineering, social ecology and even the arts audit campus buildings and labs in an effort to figure out how to squeeze the last 17 percent out of UCI’s garbage stream. Styrofoam, plastics, lab gloves and more are all in their sights.

Asked if she sees herself as a fierce female, Krieghoff laughs, then says, “Yes, I am. I think the tenacity to stick with your goal – whether it be survival of yourself or survival of the planet – makes you fierce. … You can’t just be average. You need to go to those outer edges.”

- Janet Wilson

A respected pioneer in “gamification,” UCI informatics professor Katie Salen excels at making learning fun – or at least more engaging. She describes herself as “a designer, educator and gamer interested in the aesthetics of interactivity and the transformative potential of play.”

Originally focused on the visual aspects of game design, Salen holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts and is co-author of the widely influential Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. After tenured positions at the University of Texas at Austin, Parsons the New School for Design and, most recently, DePaul University, she joined the faculty of the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences last September.

At UCI, Salen is breaking new ground as part of the Connected Learning Lab’s dynamic research team, which strives to create educational technologies in equitable, innovative and student-centered ways. Here, she discusses her career evolution and passion for “infusing learning with principles of game design and play.”

Q: You’ve been touted as one of the “top five women in gamification.” How does it feel to be a role model to a new generation of female game designers?
A: I’ve always taken my role as a woman in a male-dominated industry seriously and have worked over the years to help create opportunities for young women interested in the field. I have been lucky enough to carve my own path, and I want to help support others in finding their own way, whatever that might look like.

Q: Your educational background is in graphic design. How did you get into gaming?
A: Games are incredibly beautiful, self-descriptive systems; they have to be engaging because a player can just walk away at any point. I fell into games when I started bringing nondigital games into my interactive design classrooms to teach students how to design a really engaging system. I actually became a practicing game designer for a while, working with gameLab and Microsoft Research in the Xbox division, but I always kept one foot in academia.

Then, about 10 years ago, I started exploring the relationship between games and learning and launched Institute of Play, a nonprofit design studio focused on pioneering new models of learning and engagement. This became my lab, where I collaborated with others to develop and implement a research-based approach to infusing learning with principles of game design and play. Quest to Learn, a New York City public school organized around these ideas, was developed through the institute, and we created a rich array of youth- and educator-facing programs, tools and resources. After that, I launched a games and assessment lab in California and started Connected Camps – an online learning platform powered by youth Minecraft experts – with UCI informatics professor Mimi Ito and designer Tara Tiger Brown.

Q: Is that what brought you to UCI?
A: As a member of the Connected Learning Research Network, I had been collaborating for a long time with Mimi and with UCI School of Education Dean Richard Arum, and I was interested in being part of the Connected Learning Lab, which Mimi leads. I’ve been involved in the connected-learning community for more than a decade, and I wanted to continue what I had begun at Institute of Play: doing transformative, design-based work with young people and educators.

Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m trying to figure out how you develop really engaging experiences for young people that are centered on their interests. We can learn a lot from what games do – how they organize experiences for players and how they deal with feedback, challenges and problem-solving.

With Connected Camps, my focus has been on understanding the design dimensions of the products we offer – from how programs are structured to support the culture we’re cultivating online with youth to structures facilitating informal mentoring between our college counselors and the kids we serve. We run a blog that explores ways of making games and the internet a force for good in the lives of kids, and we’re working really hard to understand – from a business perspective – how to scale the platform in ways that make it accessible to all youth. We’re working at the intersection of industry, philanthropy and academia to find solutions.

Q: UCI has earned a reputation as a top “gaming” campus, in both academia and esports. How does this environment encourage innovation?
A: We have top-notch faculty who care about education and innovation and amazing students who are passionate about gaming and game development – and are located near some of the best game companies in the industry. It’s an environment absolutely supportive of new forms of games, design and play.

- Shani Murray and Tom Vasich

Not a moment in the life of Lydia Natoolo, a fourth-year biological sciences major at UCI and humanitarian extraordinaire, has been meaningless. The 34-year-old is an aspiring doctor, president of the Associated Students of UCI, a Dalai Lama Scholar, a student ambassador for the Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation, and the founder of Love a Community, a nonprofit that directs resources to hospitals in her home country, Uganda. But neither her extraordinary journey from poverty to higher education nor her role as a community leader has left her exhausted, though she admits: “I would be the happiest woman in the world if God could only grant me five more hours in my day.”

Natoolo was born in rural Uganda, the youngest of 28 siblings. Her Rwandan mother witnessed the beginnings of genocide in her homeland and escaped in the 1950s to Uganda, where she started a family. Natoolo’s father, a lawyer trained at Oxford University, instilled a fierce love of education in his children; he saw it as “the only way out of poverty.” Natoolo’s family, whom she calls “the village that supports me,” often went without electricity, food or any means of transportation, but this never stopped Natoolo from walking two hours to school.

“Growing up in a big family was a blessing,” she says. “No matter what we have gone through – and we did lack many necessities – we have always stayed close and encouraged each other.”

As a young woman, however, Natoolo saw her “village” struck by tragedy. She lost many siblings and other relatives to disease, and when she asked her parents why, they told her that they had no access to medicine or doctors. She resolved then to become a physician herself, to get the necessary medical training and, eventually, bring it back home.

Her family was behind her when Natoolo decided to move to America in 1999, first landing in Massachusetts, where she struggled as a new immigrant working toward an education. Seeking more opportunities, she relocated to California, where she attended two community colleges, suffered homelessness and became class valedictorian before transferring to UCI.

It was here that Natoolo launched her nonprofit, Love a Community, which has – among other successes – brought clean water, solar panels and a farming project to Atutur Hospital in Uganda, slashing its mortality rate by nearly 90 percent. Also under Love a Community, Natoolo started a business to teach textile production skills and give financial independence to single mothers battling HIV/AIDS, an enterprise she’s working on as one of UCI’s Dalai Lama Scholars this year.

After graduating this June, Natoolo hopes to begin medical school while continuing to “advocate for humanity.” Over the past 15 years, in addition to focusing on her education, she has lobbied Congress, spoken to the United Nations, and briefed senators in California and Massachusetts on local and global issues. In fact, Natoolo is minoring in political science to enable her to better help impoverished communities throughout her career.

“It is extremely challenging to balance my responsibilities, but by the end of the day, I am always glad to hear that someone’s life has been changed or saved in a hospital due to my nonprofit,” she says.

Each night before bed, Natoolo follows a tradition she started a decade ago to give her strength: She calls her No. 1 supporter, her mother.

“Even though most of my family is back in Africa, they understand my insane life and are always there for me,” Natoolo says. “Calling my mama reminds me that my commitments may be heavy, but the work I do to serve others – in Uganda and throughout the world – can give me the energy to continue this amazing journey.”

- Megan Cole