Melany Dela Cruz selected as the new Assistant Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center

For immediate release
November 29, 2005

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center announced today that Melany Dela Cruz has been selected as its new Assistant Director after an extensive national search. A graduate of UC San Diego and UCLA, she has been since 2002 the coordinator and researcher of the Center's highly acclaimed Census information Center, a joint partnership with the National Coalition of Asian Pacific American Community Development (CAPACD) and the U.S. Census Bureau. She also serves as managing editor of one of the Center's two national journals, AAPI Nexus: Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy, Practice, and Community.

Melany dela Cruz, upon acceptance of her new national post, stated: " I am excited and grateful to be named Assistant Director for an institution that has provided me with so much inspiration as a Pinay (Filipina) and a sense of being part of a broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community. As Assistant Director, I will bring my academic training, professional skills in combination with my community experience to ensure that the Center continues to grow successfully while meeting the needs of students, staff, faculty and the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in Los Angeles and throughout the nation."

Research and Teaching Background
In 2002, dela Cruz joined the Asian American Studies Center as the Coordinator and Researcher of its Census Information Center, a joint partnership with the National Coalition of Asian Pacific American Community Development (CAPACD) and the U.S. Census Bureau Census Information Center Program.  She helps to produce socioeconomic studies directed by community-based organizations, teaching, and policy.

Melany dela Cruz  is the Managing Editor of the Center's new journal, AAPI Nexus: Asian American Pacific Islander Policy, Practice, and Community and has authored numerous articles on Asian Pacific American demographics, community and economic development, and educational issues, including, "Opportunities for Community-University Partnerships: Implementing a Service-Learning Research Model in Asian American Studies", co-authored with Loh-Sze Leung for AAPI Nexus (Volume 1, No. 1, Summer/Fall 2003) and "Swimming with and Against the Tide: Filipino American Demographic Changes," in The New Face of Asian Pacific America:  Numbers, Diversity and Change in the 21st Century (2003), co-authored with Pauline Agbayani-Siewert. She in fact provided major technical assistance for The New Face of Asian Pacific America, which was co-published by the Asian American Studies Center.

She regularly shares her valuable census research and data findings to a number of public and private institutions throughout the United States, including: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Committee on Vital & Health Statistics, Subcommittee on Populations, which focused on the role of race and ethnic data in health research in Asian Pacific Islander American communities, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Center for Housing Policy/National Housing Conference in Washington D.C.  She presented an analysis of Asian and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander small business trends and needs for the U.S. Census Bureau's National Press Conference release of the 2002 Small Business Owner Survey Data. She also appeared on Los Angeles community-based talk show "Pacesetters", KTLA-TV, Channel 5, to talk about Asian American educational, housing, and immigration trends.

In addition, dela Cruz served as an instructor of a field-studies and research methods course for the UCLA Asian American Studies Department. This course gave students the opportunity to develop "real world" research and learn community needs assessment methods that addressed the urban challenges facing Asian American and Pacific Islander community development organizations in Los Angeles.

Asian American Studies Background
Melany dela Cruz, as an undergraduate student of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, remembers reading publications by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press.

She comments: "Books such as the Roots Reader, Moving the Image, and Amerasia Journal were critical to my "coming into consciousness". Unlike my mainstream history and literature textbooks, these books documented how Asian and Pacific Islanders were part of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s--providing accounts of Asian American activists protesting imperialism, giving voice to Asian perspectives against the war in Vietnam, and participating in the struggles over the I-Hotel and Third World Studies in the Bay Area. These Center publications and others such as Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farm workers Movement, which noted the contributions of Filipino farm workers to the United Farm Workers Movement, inspired and taught me the possibilities of how workers, students, and everyday people can unite across racial lines for a more equitable and socially just life."

Melany Dela Cruz was born in San Francisco, and raised in Hollister, California. She received her B.A. degrees in Ethnic Studies and Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California, San Diego, where she was actively involved in the student and community social movements to preserve affirmative action programs, the fight for immigrant rights/workers rights, and the struggles to resist anti-youth initiatives. She later went on to get her M.A. degree in Urban Planning, with a specialization in community and economic development from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Urban Planning allowed her to put her ideas into practice through training in the gathering and analysis of data concerning underserved urban communities. For example, she developed a community needs survey on "Job Training and the Health Care Industry", training materials on how to conduct the survey with community organizers, and database of the results for the Community Institute for Policy, Heuristics, Education, and Research (CIPHER) to allow underserved Latino, Black, and Asian workers to advocate for creating job opportunities in the health industry as well as quality health care in their neighborhoods.

Her graduate urban planning training gave her the analytical, technical, and practical research skills to be an effective strategist and advocate for marginalized Asian Pacific Islander communities.

Working with Communities
Melany dela Cruz also has worked with several community-based organizations that serve the Asian Pacific Islander community in Los Angeles, including the Little Tokyo Service Center, Search to Involve Pilipino Americans, Guam Communications Network, Thai Community Development Center, Chinatown Service Center, and South Asian Network. She is currently involved with the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON) Housing and Economic Development Committee and the Asian Pacific American Community Research Roundtable.

In addition, Melany dela Cruz is a member of the Balagtasan Collective, a group of young Filipino activists, artists, and community organizers who use spoken word, hip hop, and visual art to raise awareness about the issues facing Filipinos in the U.S. and the Philippines. Melany has performed with the Balagtasan Collective at several cultural events and community workshops in the Los Angeles area. She has also served as one of the curators for the Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture (FPAC) Balagtasan Poetry Slam for the past three years.

As the Assistant Director, Dela Cruz will be responsible for, among other duties, the internal management of the Center, extramural grants administration, and the coordination of the Center's fellowships and research grants of the Institute of American Cultures. She also will continue to be actively involved in the Center's Census information Center and other research and public projects.