Katherine Nasol, PhD student in Cultural Studies and 2019 Mellon Public Scholar, is a community organizer at heart. As an undergraduate at Stanford, she says, 'I didn’t think I would touch research, because I was interested in social justice issues and supporting queer and trans communities of color.' But then, in the process of developing an honors thesis about trafficked Filipinx migrants in the US and Hong Kong, she was introduced to community-based research.

Prized Writing provides a representative, wide-ranging and engaging experience of what UC Davis students are learning, thinking and writing about in classrooms throughout the campus. in addition to providing deeply satisfying reading experiences, many of these essays will, like those before them, find their way back into classrooms — at UC Davis and beyond — as writing models.