News

Dr. Shaunak Sastry Named Director of The Pahl Center for the Study of Critical Social Issues

UC Santa Barbara has named global health scholar Dr. Shaunak Sastry as the inaugural Director of The Pahl Center for the Study of Critical Social Issues. Sastry, a renowned expert in health communication and community-engaged research, arrives from the University of Cincinnati to lead a center fueled by a $10.5 million gift from alumni Stephen and Louise Pahl.

Pahl Initiative symposium on affordable housing convenes scholarship, politics and journalism

Of the myriad issues on the minds of voters in California — the country’s most culturally diverse state and the world’s fifth-largest economy — affordable housing has long ranked among the most pressing, and the most contentious.

For the Common Good: With major gift for social science research, Louise and Stephen Pahl aim to foster interdisciplinary solutions to array of societal challenges

Mental health. School safety. Housing and homelessness. Immigration. There are no quick fixes or easy answers for such massive societal challenges, but surely research can help pave a path toward solutions. Believing deeply in that promise, UC Santa Barbara alumni Louise A. Pahl ’77 and Stephen D. Pahl ’77 have donated $1.1 million to their alma mater to deliver on it. Their gift establishes the Pahl Initiative on the Study of Critical Social Issues in UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Social Sciences to fund interdisciplinary research and teaching on major social issues.

This May Help: Maintaining agency and preserving mental well-being amidst political uncertainty,

In the transition period between the recent presidential election and upcoming inauguration, many Americans have cited the nation’s uncertain future as a significant source of stress. Feelings of depression, anxiety, anger and helplessness frequently arise in response to sociopolitical pressures and warrant being addressed with equal legitimacy and care. 

Building on their vision — and their legacy — alumni Louise and Stephen Pahl gift the campus $10.5 million for social sciences research in the interest of change

Driven to support scholarly research as a catalyst for solutions and change, Louise A. ’77 and Stephen D. ’77 Pahl in 2019, established UC Santa Barbara’s Pahl Initiative on the Study of Critical Social Issues, which funds important interdisciplinary research and teaching on major social issues. It’s been a remarkably successful endeavor that has grown into a showcase program for the Division of Social Sciences, for the campus and for higher education excellence across the nation.

The Pahls have just upped the ante. 

A ‘Somber Urgency’: Research on mass shootings, U.S. gun culture selected as first project of Pahl Initiative on the Study of Critical Social Issues

One of the greatest crises currently facing the United States — mass shootings — is the focus of new and potentially ground-breaking social science research to be conducted at UC Santa Barbara.