The Race, Empowerment, and Justice (REJ) Project at SF State supports faculty development in the College of Ethnic Studies in teaching, research, and creative projects. Within the College of Ethnic Studies, the Race, Empowerment, and Justice (REJ) Project supports faculty, units, departments and the college with projects that are extramurally funded.
If you have any questions please contact the REJ Project Director: Grace J. Yoo by email gracey@sfsu.edu.
Projects and Partnerships
Access, Retention and Community (ARC)
Access, Retention and Community (ARC) is a Department of Education AANAPISI cooperative grant initiative that seeks to expand SFSU and the San Mateo County Community Colleges' institutional capacity to address an equity gap in college access, persistence, transfer, and completion for transfer students. ARC is designed to increase the enrollment, graduation, and career-readiness of underserved Asian and Pacific Islander American (AANAPI) and low-income (LI) students. The supports include: peer mentoring, faculty workshops and learning communities (LCs), student support communities and LCs, transfer-related events, workshops, and visits to SFSU.
Responsive Education for Access, Community, and Hope (REACH)
The Responsive Education for Access, Community, and Hope (REACH) Program was created to improve and expand San Francisco State’s capacity to eliminate an equity gap in college access, persistence, and completion.
REACH offers a comprehensive set of culturally responsive and equity-minded access, awareness, and financial literacy strategies designed to improve college access, persistence, and completion of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AA&PI) and low-income (LI) students.
STOP AAPI Hate
As AAPI communities continue to wrestle with escalating xenophobia and bigotry, even as we near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stop AAPI Hate offers impacted community members multilingual resources, technical assistance for preventative measures and community-based safety measures. Through advocacy for local, state and national policies that reinforce human rights and civil rights protections, Stop AAPI Hate continues to raise national awareness about anti-Asian hate, striving toward actions that will coalesce into long-term change.
Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Institute
The Center for Equity & Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CEETL) invites faculty to join a semester of cohorts in this popular JEDI PIE institute, which builds a community of JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) protagonists through twenty-five hours of practice developing anti-racist Pedagogies for Inclusive Excellence (PIE) and dismantling white supremacy in online teaching. For more anti-racism resources visit these CEETL's webpages:
The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)
Strengthening the bonds of a global community through digital storytelling, Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), co-founded by Professor Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, fosters Vietnamese literary voices. Literary artists from all backgrounds and genres are empowered to share their stories, divergent from mainstream identities, ethnicities and representations. Brought together through DVAN, these diasporic writers are nurtured in the stages of literary production through mentorship and residencies, promoted through ongoing events and diverse communication channels, and provided valuable networking opportunities with the larger, international Vietnamese diasporic community and non-Vietnamese groups.
"Comfort Women" Research and Creative Scholarship Small Grants Program
The “Comfort Women” Research and Creative Scholarship Small Grants Program awards small grants of up to $6,000 to faculty and of up to $4,000 to graduate and undergraduate students who have expertise or completed course work in Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, or Sexuality Studies for conducting research or creative projects on “comfort women.” The projects could reflect on the experiences of “comfort women,” the role of activists in creating remembrances, address the intergenerational trauma and impact of “comfort women” among girls and women today, or comparative experiences of the “comfort women” experience with that of other state sanctioned sexual violence, sexual slavery and human trafficking occurring in the world. The Comfort Women” Research and Creative Scholarship Small Grants Program is made possible through an anonymous donation in partnership with CARE (Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education).
Asian American and Pacific Islander Retention and Education (ASPIRE) Program
Among the goals of an Ethnic Studies pedagogy is self-determination for black, Indigenous, and communities of color often invisible to and within the academy. Self-determination, or the ability for dispossessed people to center one’s experiences in shaping one’s material reality, was an impetus for the formation of the AA&PI Student Services with the Asian American & Pacific Islander Retention & Education (ASPIRE) Program.