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As the “UCLA in LA” program prepares to announce grant recipients for its third year of faculty-community partnership, its program leaders have begun to consider strategic changes in structure.

The Center for Communications and Community, which runs the program that funds UCLA faculty projects within the L.A. community, currently awards grants for one-year projects. But the projects have been taking from 15 to 18 months on average, said director of the “UCLA in LA” program and Associate Vice Chancellor Frank Gilliam.

The center is now rethinking the time limits.

“We’re looking at projects that have been really successful and asking what could have happened if we supported them longer,” Gilliam said.

“UCLA in LA” has funded 78 projects in the past three academic year cycles.

Faculty at UCLA can apply for funding if they plan to work on a project that creates a “bi-directional flow of knowledge” between the campus and community groups, Gilliam said. The program has received over 400 applications.

The funding, which can reach up to $50,000, is provided solely through private donations. This means that some money is restricted. For example, the center gives out the Ann C. Rosenfield Prize, which must be awarded only to faculty and staff who have already made contributions to the Southern California community.

The completion of the year ends the money flow, but the program continues to provide access to the campus, Gilliam said.

Initial review comes in-house to ensure that applicants meet the basic standards, after which external reviewers, including the center’s board of advisors, pick a group of finalists, Gilliam said.

Professor of clinical psychology Steven Lopez has made use of these funds to research the use of mental health services in the Latino community in Los Angeles.

Lopez partnered with the Latino Behavioral Health Institute and a variety of other community organizations in the city of San Fernando to evaluate available services and educate community members on mental health.

Thus far, his project has amassed information on the community that is 80 percent Latino and created an educational video for its public education campaign.

Lopez has spoken with health promotion groups, community health centers, pastors of major churches and numerous residents.

“The movie helps to identify the indicators of psychosis: hallucination, delusions and disorganized speech,” he said.

Lopez plans to put the education campaign into action this summer, and has asked “UCLA in LA” for an extension.

If he can prove that his project does improve the community’s understanding and treatment of mental health, Lopez hopes to get major funding from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Lopez found some of his inspiration for the project while working on the surgeon general’s first-ever report on mental health issues and its supplemental report on mental health, called “Culture, Race and Ethnicity.”

“It’s very clear that Latinos don’t make use of mental health services,” Lopez concluded from his work as one of the report’s science editors.

A sister site in Puebla, Mexico, was also established to help study the same issue.

“UCLA in LA” awards grants based not on “charity, volunteerism or even outreach ... but alignment of community and campus interest,” Gilliam said. This has allowed for unique projects such as gospel archiving, changing media perceptions of people with disabilities, and nutrition education through garden-based learning.

Professor David Myers, director of the Center for Jewish Studies, was awarded a grant for the 2003-2004 year to research “Jews in the Cultural Mosaic of Los Angeles.”

Myers has used funds to establish relationships with the Gene Autry National Center and the Skirball Cultural Center.

With these two centers, Myers and colleagues have researched two major questions – how the Jewish experience in Los Angeles is different than in New York, and how Jews interact with other groups in Los Angeles.

“The Jewish experience in New York has really dominated scholarship. ... We’ve found that the L.A. experience is indeed different, but most communities are similar to L.A., and New York City may be the atypical example,” Myers said.

The research group seeks to rethink the American Jewish experience from west to east, he added.

Myers has tracked the rise and fall of Jewish prominence in Los Angeles from the latter half of the 19th century to the first part of the 20th century, and its renewed ascent after World War II.

Myers attributes the original decline in Jewish prominence in Los Angeles to an “emergence of a large white Protestant majority that was less ethnically diverse” and to “a period of significant migration of a different stock of Jews,” with a decrease in secular education and desire to assimilate.

Myers has also researched the intra-Jewish relations within Los Angeles, especially with the “multi-ethnic character” that has developed with the more current migration of Iranians, Russians and Israelis.

Myers and his colleague, Professor Steve Aron, hope to turn their research into a museum exhibition at the Autry National Center. They are also planning a conference on the topic.

Through the funding from “UCLA in LA,” the groundwork laid has helped them find funding to continue the project.

“UCLA in LA” also places undergraduates in paid internships throughout the community.

The first round of interns were placed in 2005, and Gilliam expects to send a large number of undergraduates to intern at a satellite facility in South Los Angeles that the center hopes to build.

Nonprofit groups are also allowed to apply for funding as long as they have a UCLA partner, though their funding is capped at $25,000.