Weekly Anteater

Dear Friends of UCI,
Welcome to the Weekly Anteater report for what’s new and trending at UCI!
We’ve curated a collection of top news items and trending social topics. If you’re active on social media, please share this news with your friends and colleagues. We’ve attached social links and summaries for easy sharing!
On to this week’s highlights…
Women’s History Month
Women at UCI are passionate about transforming the world around them. Learn more about UCI women who are agents of change.

Beverly Bautista, UCI MFA Graduate Student
Choreographer | Educator | Dancer

#UCISustainability: San Joaquin Marsh Reserve
Located just minutes from UCI, the marsh is an important ecological resource and outdoor lab for researchers. UCI is committed to its stewardship.

#UCIGradSlam
UCI Grad Slam winner Leslie Heid moves on to the systemwide finals in May. Leslie studies epigenetics and DNA methylation and her research is building toward discoveries that might allow scientists to grow a replacement liver or lung from just a few cells swabbed from a patient’s inner cheek.

#ThisIsOurShot to help stop the spread of COVID-19
UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D. is here to reassure you that the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective. Together we can protect each other and end this pandemic.
Who’s talking about UCI on social media?

UCI in the News
“The bulk of schools that have remained closed…have been schools that tend to serve low-income kids,” says Dr. Dan Cooper, a pediatrician at the University of California, Irvine. … The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also said that teacher vaccination isn’t necessary to reopen schools. And Cooper agrees. “I am totally in favor of ‘Let’s get the teachers vaccinated as soon as we possibly can.’ But I would not make that a condition for reopening schools at all.”
Roland Betancourt, UCI professor of art history writes, “Despite this modern disdain for Byzantium in the West, it has recently served as an inspiration to various factions of the far right. … No matter the provenance of the recent interest in Byzantium from America’s white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, one thing is clear: It is based on a very warped idea of the Byzantine Empire that has emerged out of the empire’s fraught place in our histories, caught between ancient and medieval, spirituality and bureaucracy.”
The UC system has the four highest-ranked public schools in the West in the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings. In all, it has six of the top 10 public schools in the region. … The University of California system’s schools in Santa Barbara and Irvine are ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, among public schools in the region. … Top Public Colleges in the West … 7. University of California, Irvine.