Cheryl Grills, professor in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, was appointed to the California state task force tasked with proposing reparations to the state’s Black descendants of enslaved people. She talks about the long-term harms of slavery and possible steps to repair the wrongs.

Donegal Fergus, LMU baseball head coach, talks about the impact on NCAA baseball of the transfer portal and NIL issues, as well as how he hopes to develop players for a major league future.

Homelessness has many causes, and Mary Agnes Erlandson ’82 directs a social services center in Lennox, near LMU and LAX, that offers programs addressing many of them. Erlandson describes how focusing on people’s needs, especially housing, can change people’s lives for the better. She has seen it happen.

Eileen Schoetzow ’98, MBA ’07, an urban and environmental planner for the City of Los Angeles, is part of a team that constructs homeless shelters for unhoused people in Los Angeles. She talks about helping people get off the streets and into homes and why making a difference matters to her.

School was one of the safest places he knew growing up, Kenneth Chancey says. For one thing, he knew he’d get a meal there. Today, he’s left life in a van and a homeless shelter behind, and he’s helping others do the same as a senior manger for special youth initiatives with the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority. 

Name, image and likeness (NIL) payments represent a new, large infusion of money into college athletics. Much will stream toward athletes through sponsorships and endorsements. But some scenarios are deeply troubling. Ben Bolch, staff writer on sports at the Los Angeles Times, describes a new era that is changing college athletics.

Oil drills and storage facilities are scattered across the Los Angeles region, many located in the heart of residential communities. Tara Pixley, who teaches photojournalism in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, has produced photo essays of some of those communities. She describes the dangers experienced by people who live and work in proximity to L.A.’s oil industry.

Aarika Hughes, in her second season as head coach of LMU women’s basketball, describes the strengths of the West Coast Conference competition and the discipline, defense and fast-paced play she intends to confront her opponents with.

The opioid crisis, which has killed as many as 700,000 Americans in the past 20 years, has fallen off the nation’s radar. Rebecca Delfino, clinical law professor at the LMU Loyola Law School, describes an epidemic that continues to destroy communities and the overprescription practices and misleading marketing that fuels it.

Kara Allen Ed.D. ’14, chief impact officer, is the San Antonio Spurs’ face in their community. Putting seats at the table where decisions are made — that’s how Allen describes her job. But it goes both ways, she says: not only putting a Spurs voice at community tables but adding community voices at the Spurs’ table.

The impact of climate change on Southern California — in heat, ocean temperatures and coastal damage — is being felt now and will be significant, says Eric Strauss, executive director of the LMU Center for Urban Resilience. And the worst effects will likely be distributed unequally. The challenge is not to reverse climate change but to adapt and ameliorate its impact.