Winter Webinar Series: Unlocking the High Quality IEP Toolkit: Essential Resources for Special Educators
2026-02-26 15:30 - 16:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | California
Looking for a comprehensive resource to support the development of high‑quality Individualized Education Programs (IEPs)? The High Quality IEP Toolkit for Special Educators offers practical, free tools to strengthen every phase of the IEP process. In this session, participants will take a guided tour of the toolkit and learn how to apply its supports to key components of a strong IEP, including assessment, present levels, measurable goals, and aligned services. Educators will leave with actionable strategies to create meaningful, individualized, student‑centered IEPs—whether they are new to the process or looking to refine their practice.

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Kenneth Karmiole Lecture in Archival Studies with Dr. Amelia Acker
2026-03-03 16:30 - 18:00 | UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms

Our world is filled with data we create but cannot access. We generate massive digital archives with every click, swipe, and search—but corporations, not individuals or institutions, control where this data lives and who can use it. When did archiving become something that machines do automatically, rather than a deliberate act of preservation for the public good? And how did we arrive at this arrangement with platforms?

Archiving Machines chronicles the hidden history of how data came to be structured and stored, before it could be streamed and automatically saved to the cloud. This lecture will examine how data archiving, the computational processes of storage, exchange, and transmission, have transformed memory practices and created new regimes of asymmetric access. Drawing on archival fieldwork with historic computing machines, I trace how “archive” became a verb in computing cultures, and how this shift has enabled corporate platforms to assert functional sovereignty over access to collective memory. By examining moments of access in the history of data management, this work offers both a critical genealogy of our current condition and grounds for imagining alternative futures for digital cultural memory.

Amelia Acker is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research on data management and digital preservation has been supported with funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the ACM History and Archiving Fellowship. Acker’s projects address the representation and loss of digital traces, the history of data management, and the transmission of information through time. She investigates how infrastructure and organizational practices shape the preservation, accessibility, and governance of data, with a particular focus on the impact of platforms, software, and AI on archives and digital memory. Acker is the author of Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms (MIT, 2025).

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UCLA CART Distinguished Lecture Series-Early Communication In Autism: Moving the Needle on Data-Driven Decision Making in Practice
2026-03-06 09:00 - 10:00 | Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center, Room 1357, 695 Charles E Young Drive South, Los Angeles, California, 90095
The UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART) invites you to the next presentation in the CART Distinguished Lecture Series. All are welcome— faculty, clinicians, trainees, students, staff, and community members interested in the latest research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Overview:

Communication challenges remain one of the earliest concerns of parents whose children eventually receive an autism diagnosis. Many existing measures in autism only characterize communication differences but are not designed to monitor improvement over time or support clinical decision making. This presentation will describe a new tool, the Early Communication Indicator for Autism (ECI-A), which is based on an existing norm-referenced, validated measure, and can be easily used within clinical practice.

Speaker: Brian Boyd, Ph.D. (William C. Friday Distinguished Professor in Education; Director, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

This is a hybrid event, with options to join in-person and virtually.

In-Person Registration

Zoom Registration

Being in Community: A Personal and Professional Discussion
2026-03-12 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
In early 2025 the Special Issue Introduction article, “Community will always matter,” was released. The article also marked a turning point in mindset in the way Dr. Tony Dunbar approaches all aspects of his life. This interactive engagement will unfold in two parts. First, he will offer how over the past year he has made community organizing and building the focal point of his life and career. In the second half of the engagement, Dr. Dunbar will lead a what, why, and how interactive discussion. More specifically, what can community centered strategies offer to information professional, pedagogical, and scholarly discourses. Why in this current moment community as people and process matters more than ever. Then turning to how we all can lean into community centered approaches.

No RSVP Required.

Winter Webinar Series: Strengthening IEP Collaboration: Administrative Designee and General Educator Toolkits
2026-03-26 15:30 - 16:30 | California
This session introduces two free resources designed to support effective IEP teamwork: the Administrative Designee Toolkit and the General Educator Toolkit. Participants will explore key tools that enhance preparation, collaboration, and decision-making throughout the IEP process. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to support compliant, student‑centered meetings and meaningful general education input—empowering all team members to contribute confidently and effectively.

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Spring Quarter Instruction Begins
2026-03-30 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Disabled Desires for Reimagining Archives: Past Experiences toward Future Possibilities
2026-04-09 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Gracen Brilmyer, McGill University

Through historic records that document disabled people in ways that can reinforce ableist, sanist, or medicalized stereotypes to outright absence from other types of records, disabled people can feel erased in history through archives. Alternatively, community-based archives have been shown to offset historical imbalances through communities representing themselves on their own terms. This talk addresses preliminary findings from a new project by the Disability Archives Lab that focuses on the ways that disabled people imagine archives differently. This project— conducted by, with, and for disabled people—uses community-based methods to identify current issues in archives as well as alternative approaches to archiving. Centering the powerful words of disabled people, this research not only aims to understand the needs and desires of disabled people who have worked with archival materials but also demonstrates the critical role of disabled people in building and designing the scaffolding for a new disability digital community archive.

To attend, email striola@g.ucla.edu for the Zoom link.

AERA Reception in Los Angeles
2026-04-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Pez Cantina, 401 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, California, 90071
Join us for our 2026 UCLA Ed&IS AERA Reception in Los Angeles! Don’t miss the perfect opportunity to connect and network with fellow UCLA Alumni, Faculty, Students, and Staff.

Hosted by UCLA Dean Christina Christie and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Chair, UCLA Department of Education

For more information, please contact Amy Lassere at alassere@support.ucla.edu or 310.206.0375.

Please note, our reception is being hosted for AERA Conference attendees, Ed&IS Alumni, and Ed&IS Faculty & Staff. All guests must be 21 yrs and over.

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From Code Work to Place Work: Digital Nomads, Infrastructural Others, and the Grammar of Proximate Elsewheres
2026-04-16 14:00 - 15:50 | Zoom
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Héctor Beltrán, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City and San Juan, Dr. Héctor Beltrán will examine how U.S. tech workers construct proximate elsewheres, locations close enough for convenience, yet foreign enough to sustain the nomadic calculus. The talk engages anthropology of technology, platform studies, and relational racialization frameworks to ask: who counts as infrastructure, whose knowledge gets indexed, and what refusal looks like from inside a system that wasn’t built to accommodate it.

Zoom Link

California Early Wealth Account System (CEWAS) Summit: Building Economic Prosperity for Every Child
2026-04-17 08:00 - 17:00 | UCLA University Club, 480 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, California, 90095
Be part of a growing movement to close the wealth gap and expand economic mobility for California’s children and families.

The Second Annual California Early Wealth Account System (CEWAS) Summit brings together leaders from across California and the nation to explore how early wealth accounts are transforming opportunities for families and strengthening pathways to post-secondary education and long-term financial security.

At this year’s Summit, participants will examine the evolution of Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) and Child Development Accounts (CDAs), including the expansion of CalKIDS, HOPE Accounts, and other early wealth-building initiatives. Through new research, real-world case studies, and cross-sector dialogue, attendees will gain practical insights into how these programs can be strengthened, scaled, and sustained statewide.

The Summit convenes leaders from public agencies, education, philanthropy, elected officials, and community organizations to reflect on progress, share lessons from the field, and identify next steps for building a more equitable early wealth infrastructure in California.

Conference highlights include:

New research on the impact of early wealth-building initiatives

Perspectives from leaders implementing CSA and CDA programs

National developments in early wealth-building, including 530A Accounts, also known as Trump Accounts

Strategies to expand access, advance equity, and increase long-term economic mobility

Opportunities to connect with cross-sector partners committed to building prosperity for every child

All registrants are invited to showcase their work in the Summit’s poster gallery, creating space for peer learning and collaboration across programs and regions.

The full Summit agenda, including detailed session descriptions and featured discussions, is now live on Eventbrite.

Early bird registration is encouraged by February 28. Final registration closes March 31.

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Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies
2026-04-17 09:00 - 18:00 | James West Alumni Center, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095
The UCLA Department of Information Studies is proud to be co-sponsoring Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies

“Feminist and Queer Ecologies,” explores how environments and ecologies are shaped, understood, and contested through relations of sex, gender, and sexuality. The theme also considers how feminist and queer theorists, artists, and organizers have drawn on ecological processes and environmental knowledge to build new insights, movements, and practices.

Join us for graduate student presentations highlighting innovative research at the intersections of gender, sexuality, environment, and justice. The conference will feature keynote speaker Cutcha Risling Baldy (Cal Poly Humboldt; NAS Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute), whose work centers Indigenous feminisms, land relations, and food sovereignty.

Gendered and colonial ideas of wilderness, domesticity, and reproduction have historically shaped landscapes and environmental policy. At the same time, feminist and queer methodologies—from place-based storytelling to multimodal practice—offer critical tools for climate resilience, environmental justice, and community well-being. Around the world, social movements resisting environmental injustice—from Standing Rock to Flint, from the Everglades to rural India—have been led by women and gender-expansive people. Climate change and climate justice continue to affect communities differentially along lines of gender, sexuality, race, and class, revealing how struggles for ecological flourishing are inseparable from feminist and queer justice.

Feminist and queer ecologies demand multidisciplinary collaboration. This year’s theme invites environmental scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, organizers, and practitioners to come together across methods, disciplines, temporalities, species, and geographies. It encourages experimentation with scientific inquiry, ethnography, storytelling, political theory, environmental history, modeling, and other forms of knowledge-making and truth-telling.

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Fighting Flames: Information Infrastructures in Trying Times
2026-04-30 14:00 - 15:50 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Emily Drabinski, Queens College, City University of New York

Since 2021, efforts to censor materials and programming have compounded ongoing disinvestment in public institutions, leaving libraries struggling to fulfill their missions. As protesters disrupted storytimes and library board meetings, library workers, patrons, supporters, and advocates have organized to fight these assaults on the right to read. This talk asks what gets lost when resources are wholly directed at the fire in front of us, and what our responsibilities are to build boring things at the end of the world.

No RSVP is needed to attend.

Knowing as Moving vs. Moving as Knowing
2026-06-04 14:00 - 15:50 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Susan Leigh Foster, UCLA

This presentation builds off Dr. Susan Leigh Foster’s recent book, Knowing as Moving, by assessing the difference between claims that moving is a form of knowing as distinct from the hypothesis articulated in my book that it is necessary to move in order to know. She will endeavor to review some of the literatures she used to build this theory as well as consider how such a thesis upends the colonial duality of “mind” and “body.”

No RSVP is needed to attend.
