Outreach & Education

The Center offers educational workshops and training seminars for classes, campus agencies, and departments about LGBT lives and issues. We design programs specifically for target audiences and may include students who talk about their own experiences.

Advocacy

Our professional staff works throughout UCLA to ensure that LGBT voices are represented for sensitive and inclusive UC policies and practices. We provide confidential assistance and support to students, faculty, and staff who feel they have experienced harassment or discrimination, or who have questions round issues of health, housing, financial aid, classroom, and personnel. We are also available for consultation to the UCLA community regarding matters of policy pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Student Counseling

Our Counselor in Residence, Peter Carley, LHMC is available for individual counseling Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays on a drop in basis. If you would like to schedule an appointment to speak with Peter please call us at 310-206-3628

Discussion Groups

Transgender Social & Discussion Group
Tuesdays Evenings, 7:30 PM
LGBT Center Library, Student Activities Center
To join the TransBruins Listserv, visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transbruins/

LGBT Community Discussion Group
Wednesday evening, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
(Moderated by Peter Carley & Emily Rokosch)
LGBT Center Library, Student Activities Center

Ally Network

David Bohnett Cyber Center

The David Bohnett CyberCenter, the first of its kind at a college or university, was established in 2004 within the LGBT Center through a generous grant from the David Bohnett Foundation. It is designed as a safe space for students to use new computers, print papers, and scan articles and photos.

Rae Lee Siporin Library

The Rae Lee Siporin LGBT Center library is one of the largest library of its kind at a college or university with nearly 4000 books and periodicals written for and about LGBT people. Students, faculty, and staff may study here, research the holdings, or plug in their own laptop computers to write. Books may be read here or checked out with your UC identification. Through a generous grant from the Liberty Hill Foundation, the library has been fully catalogued and is easily searched. Candace Lewis was hired in 2004 as a graduate level librarian, to catalogue the library and prepare it for use. Since then, Candace has encouraged the UCLA School of Information Science to establish the LGBT Library as a training site for other graduate level Information Science students who have made the Library accessible via our website. We are deeply grateful to those very talented and dedicated students.» click here to visit the library

About Dr. Rae Lee Siporin
Director of the UCLA Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools for 22 years; co-founder of the LGBT Faculty Staff Network; donor for the Rae Lee Siporin Internship at the UCLA LGBT Center

The following article about Dr. Siporin appears in the 2001 UCLA Today:

To many prospective students, she is considered the single most important person at UCLA. During her 22-year tenure, Rae Lee Siporin, director of Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, admitted nearly 250,000 students to the campus and revolutionized the way many of the nation's top colleges select students for admission. Next month, Siporin will retire, but not before screening 40,600 applicants for the 2001 freshman class.

"UCLA has been my life," said Siporin, who will be moving to Corrales, N.M. "This has definitely been the most challenging and rewarding job that I've ever had. If you're going to be in admissions, UCLA is the place to be."

After earning her B.A. in English from Wayne State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. at UCLA, Siporin taught English at the University of Pittsburgh and served as academic dean at Stockton State College in New Jersey and Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire. She returned to UCLA in 1979 and began the longest tenure of any admissions director at a major research university.

"It's fair to say she runs the best-organized selection process in the UC system and perhaps the nation," said Professor Emeritus Philip Curtis, who has worked alongside her for 20 years as a member and past chair of the UCLA admissions committee.

Employing nearly 100 readers to thoroughly examine each application, Siporin's operation oversees an applicant pool that is the largest of any single campus in the nation. Under her direction, UCLA developed a selection process that has been emulated by universities nationwide. Prior to Proposition 209, Siporin devised a more holistic approach to admitting students in order to get a clearer picture of each applicant. She employed methods that looked at social and economic conditions, whether the applicant resided in a single-parent household or would be a first-generation college student.

Said friend Ramona Cortes Garza, executive director of State Government Relations: "Rae Lee is not afraid to take on challenges and positions that others may not agree with. She has my admiration for always striving to make a difference."

Siporin also was co-founder of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Faculty/Staff Net-work. In honor of her outstanding service to the university, the UCLA Alumni Association established the Rae Lee Siporin Scholarship Fund, a fitting tribute to someone who was a first-generation college student and alumni scholar at Wayne State.

"While I'll always regret having to turn down so many excellent students," Siporin said, "I take comfort in knowing that I've also given many students a chance."

BY DIANA DE CARDENAS
UCLA Today
Copyright 2001 UC Regents