Alumna Jasmine (McBeath) Nation of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School has been hired as an assistant professor of Liberal Studies, Science Specialist at Cal Poly College of Science and Mathematics. Nation earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Education with an emphasis in Learning, Culture, and Technology in 2019. She studied with Dr. Richard Durán as her advisor. In 2019-20 she was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Irvine.
Nation was the winner of UC Santa Barbara’s 2019 Michael D. Young Engaged Scholar Award. The award recognizes the legacy of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Emeritus Michael D. Young, for his commitment to empowering students toward principled leadership. Each year’s award-winning student skillfully integrates scholarly knowledge and values into action.
The award largely was in response to the work that Nation has accomplished at the St. George Family Youth Center in Isla Vista. There she led a makerspace program integrating science, technology, and art into social action projects. She was also the coordinator of the Curie-osity Project, where 4-6th grade girls learned about science through researching, interviewing, and writing a book about female scientists at UCSB. From 2016-2019 Nation also was awarded a graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Before coming to UCSB, she majored in Spanish and Ecology as an undergrad at the University of Arizona. After college, she spent a year teaching English to indigenous leaders in Manaus, Brazil on a Fulbright Scholarship.