Is Now a Good Time? Inside Graduate School

Emma Zawacki

Tulane Masters in Public Health |
Graduate Student 

Emma Zawacki (BS ’18) is a current Masters in Public Health student at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropic Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana where she is focusing in Community Health Sciences. Her interests of study revolve around issues of access, gender, and social determinants of health, specific to youth and teen populations. She previously worked as an Admission Officer at UCLA where she was one of the supervisors for the Bruin Ambassador Program (a program centering around access to higher education and partners with LAUSD high schools) and acted as the territory manager for the Midwest, CA Central Coast, and San Fernando Valley. As a UCLA undergraduate student, Emma studied Anthropology as she focused on Biological components of the field and worked within an immunology research lab. She was involved in student advocacy efforts, New Student and Transition Programs, and club lacrosse.

Matthew Swanson 

UCLA Ph.D in English |

Graduate Student 

Matthew Swanson is a current PhD student in the UCLA English Department, where he studies 20th- and 21st-century American fiction and ecocriticism. His research is concerned with narrative representation of environmental degradation resulting from the extraction and consumption of natural resources as well as the development of the logic of plenitude and material excess in American culture. Prior to his PhD studies, Matthew completed his M.A. in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory at King’s College London and his B.A. in English with a focus in Creative Writing at UCLA. In between his three tenures as a student, Matthew worked full-time in higher education as a student affairs officer at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and the UCLA Rolfe-Campbell Humanities Group, serving as a graduate advisor and an undergraduate advisor, respectively

Ryann Garcia

UCLA Law Student |

Critical Race Studies and International and Comparative Law 

Ryann Garcia is specializing in Critical Race Studies and International and Comparative Law at the UCLA School of Law. She holds B.A.s in Religious Studies and Classical Civilizations from UCLA, as well as an M.A. in Asian Religions from Yale University. Ryann is the Symposium Editor for the UCLA Law Review, a Co-Editor on Race, Indigeneity, & Human Rights for the Promise Human Rights Blog, a UCLA Law Fellows Mentor, Co-President of the Native American Law Student Association, and a 3L Representative for the Latinx Law Student Association. She has worked for the UCLA Law Human Rights in Action Clinic, the UCLA Tribal Legal Development Clinic, and Bet Tzedek Legal Services. She also competed in the 28th Annual National NALSA Moot Court Competition and received the National Native American Law Students Association award for 2L of the Year. Ryann’s areas of interest are federal and tribal Indian law, cultural rights protections and repatriation, international human rights law, and critical race theory

Cherie Francis

Fellowships Services Coordinator|

UCLA Graduate Division

Chérie Francis works in the Fellowships & Financial Services unit of UCLA’s Graduate Division.  Other work experience at UCLA includes serving as assistant to the director of the Center for African American Studies and as chief administrative officer of the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies’ Center X: Transforming Public Schools.

Dr. Francis sees her 33-year career in higher education as having offered a series of opportunities to inform others about the benefits of an undergraduate and/or graduate education and about the added value brought to that education by the existence and nurturing of a diverse body of students, faculty, and staff.  She believes that the future leaders of the country—and of what really has become the global village—are developed not only in postsecondary institutions, but also in children’s homes and in their elementary and secondary educational experiences.  Thus, the nurturing of professional relationships along the pipeline of home to elementary through postsecondary and graduate education is extremely important to provide the foundation of that development.

Dr. Francis earned her bachelor’s degree in French at Middlebury College (VT), her master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the University of Pennsylvania, and her doctorate in Educational Leadership at UCLA.

Sarah Beckman

Assistant Professor |
UCLA Department of Classics

Sarah Beckmann is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics as well as the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. She is a Roman archaeologist specializing in domestic art and archaeology of the Western Roman provinces. Her current research focuses on late Roman villas and investigates how differences across the material culture packages of extant villas can be used to highlight the regionally distinct character(s) of the late Roman elite. Broader interests include the Roman statuary habit, late antique art and antiquarianism, provincial material culture, and collection in antiquity and in the early modern era.

Sarah joined UCLA’s Classics Department in 2018 after a year of adjunct teaching in both Philadelphia and Los Angeles. She received her BA in Classical Languages from Carleton College in 2007 and her Ph.D. in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. At UCLA, Sarah teaches courses in Roman visual and material culture at both the undergraduate and graduate level