2025-26 Chancellor’s Award for International Engagement Recipients
The Chancellor’s Award for International Engagement recognizes faculty and staff members for outstanding global engagement that advances the university’s teaching, research and service missions. This year’s recipients are faculty member Luis Carvajal-Carmona and staff member Sarah Meredith.
Luis G. Carvajal-Carmona
Luis G. Carvajal-Carmona is an associate vice chancellor for Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate in Inclusive Excellence and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine. Through his leadership of the UC Davis Multi-Disciplinary Cancer Research Training Program to Advance Precision Cancer Prevention and Care in Latin America, he has helped position UC Davis as a global leader in equitable cancer research and training partnerships, in close collaboration with Laura Fejerman, Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences.
Carvajal-Carmona's long-standing collaborations in Colombia and across Latin America have strengthened institutional capacity, supporting more than 50 research projects and helping establish doctoral programs and sustainable research infrastructure.
His work has had a tangible impact on patient care and public health, including contributing to the establishment of Colombia’s national hereditary cancer program, helping save lives through early detection and prevention strategies.
Through initiatives such as Latinos United for Cancer Health Advancement (LUCHA) and his mentorship of Latin American trainees and UC Davis students, many of whom are from historically underrepresented backgrounds, he has advanced cancer prevention, precision medicine and global learning in ways that strengthen both our campus and communities abroad.
His nominators said that his success as a global collaborator reflects “not only his intellectual rigor but also his integrity, generosity and deep sense of responsibility as a scholar.”
Sarah Meredith
Sarah Meredith is the director of the Center for Advocacy, Resources & Education (CARE) in the Office of the Provost. She has been an unwavering partner to UC Davis’s globally engaged campus community, ensuring that students studying abroad, international students and faculty leading programs overseas have access to trauma-informed guidance and crisis support whenever and wherever needed.
Meredith has worked in the field of sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy for 23 years, including 16 years at UC Davis, consistently advancing culturally responsive care for a diverse and international community.
A trusted collaborator across campus, she partners with the Global Learning Hub to prepare faculty to respond to disclosures abroad, provide confidential support across time zones and strengthen emergency response capacity so students can pursue international learning with confidence. One nominator reflected that the ability to call her “at 3:00 AM on a weekend” and reach “a sensitive and caring person” ready to step in exemplifies an extraordinary level of commitment to our globally engaged community.
Her advocacy for interpretation services, along with data-informed prevention efforts, has also strengthened structural supports that help ensure students are heard, respected and treated with dignity, whether on campus or abroad.
Her nominators emphasized her leadership in fostering cultural humility and global awareness, writing that she is “keenly aware of cross-cultural and intercultural communication dynamics” and a “champion for the international students and community in the SCRT [Students of Concern Response Team] meetings and every space that she enters.”
