UCI Giving Day 2021

UC Irvine is serving those who have served our country through the innovative Veterans Studies Certificate Program, and inspiring next-generation teaching, learning and research on the experiences and needs of veterans. 

The Veterans Studies Certificate at UCI is only one of three such programs in the US, and the only one in California. Important to UC Irvine's Veterans Studies certificate is securing current and former military personnel among those who teach the program. 

Your contributions are used to hire visiting instructors, making philanthropic support crucial to fund this program. This certificate program vitally expands awareness of veterans' affairs to students and helps break down stereotypes about veterans and their diverse experiences in uniform and afterwards. It fulfills a crucial workforce need: there are 18 million veterans living in the U.S. today, making up 7 percent of the population, yet the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports a scarcity of job applicants with broad knowledge of this demographic. 

By teaching students the unique potential and challenges facing veterans, this curriculum will help promote veterans' issues and improve their daily lives on campus and in the community at large.

Meet our Director:

Anita Casavantes Bradford is the founder and director of the UCI Veterans Studies Certificate Program and associate professor of Chicano Latino studies and history at UC Irvine. The daughter of a U.S. Army Korean War veteran and the spouse of a United States Marine Corps aviator who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, she earned her Ph.D. in U.S. and American history at the University of California San Diego (2011). In addition to serving as the program director, she is an active advocate for UCI veteran students and has also taught in the Warrior Scholars program.

 Meet our Lecturers:

Luisito Amador is a United States Marine Corps veteran and current dean of student equity and success at Cerritos College, where he oversees the Veterans Resources Center as one of his division units. He is the former director of the Veterans Resource Centers at California State University-Fullerton and CSU-Dominguez Hills. He earned his Ed.D. in educational leadership at California State University-Long Beach (2015).

Benjamin Schrader is a veteran of the United States Army and a researcher with the University of Dayton Legacies of War Project.  He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawa’i at Manoa (2015) and his M.A. in ethnic studies from Colorado State University (2011). He is the author of Fight to Live, Live to Fight: Veteran Activism After War (New York: SUNY Press, 2019), and has published articles in The Journal of Narrative Politics, Review of Human Rights, Theory & Event, and Critical Military Studies.  

Harwood Garland is a veteran of the United States Navy and a founding member of the School of Social Sciences’ Committee for Veterans Studies. Currently a Ph.D. student in epidemiology at UC Irvine, he also earned his M.A. in the anthropology of science, technology and medicine at UCI (2018). He has conducted extensive research on veterans, depression and suicide. He has volunteered extensively at the Veteran Services Center and is a member of several local and national veterans’ serving organizations.