Karen Harding, often the first welcoming face international students and scholars meet at UC Davis, brings warmth and understanding to her role at the Global Affairs front desk. Shaped by her own journeys abroad, her story reveals how personal experience can inspire a lifelong commitment to connection, community and global curiosity.
Professor Jiayi Young, a UC Davis design faculty member, uses data-driven art and international collaboration to explore how technology shapes society and culture. From France’s Useful Fictions to Taiwan’s AI for ALL, her projects—supported by Global Affairs grants—foster cross-disciplinary partnerships that connect art, science, and global education to reimagine technology’s role in our shared future.
The UC Davis Global Community Emergency Fund provides vital support to UC Davis’s international community members facing urgent financial needs due to humanitarian crises.
UC Davis students turned their classroom into a hub for real-world impact, partnering with the City of Davis to shape its updated General Plan. By listening to farmworkers, immigrants, and other often-overlooked voices, they uncovered critical insights on housing, transportation, and environmental justice.
Kate is a fifth-year double-major in human development and communications. During her second year at UC Davis, she took part in a study abroad program, and her place of choice was none other than the magnificent destination of Madrid, Spain.
UC Davis alumna Priya Talreja has been named the first Aggie to receive the prestigious Fulbright–National Geographic Award, one of only five recipients nationwide. She will travel to Portugal’s Azores to advance electric vehicle infrastructure using geospatial planning tools, while also producing a storytelling component to share her findings.
Global Affairs is pleased to share the recipients of the 2025 Peter and Marion London Global Learning Expansion Grant Program. In its inaugural year, the grant supports faculty in developing or enhancing global learning components in their courses.
Whether they lead English language clubs at Colombian universities or research electric vehicle, or EV, policy in the Azores, eight UC Davis graduates take to the global stage to represent the United States as 2025-26 Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients.
Growing up in a remote area of rural Zimbabwe, Shingirai Taodzera witnessed firsthand the importance of education as he observed his parents embody the value of education in their work as schoolteachers. “Through my parents, I learned the value of education as a tool for unlocking potential,” he said.
This piece explores how empathy, when practiced consistently and deeply, can serve as a powerful motivator in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. By countering desensitization and embracing empathy starting from within, individuals can take meaningful action toward a more equitable, compassionate, and sustainable world.
