The Brief

Update, Friday: LA City Council approves $1 million in new spending for LAPD

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has asked the City Council to increase the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget by $4.4 million to hire 410 more officers before July.

In a letter to council members yesterday, Bass wrote that the city needs to have enough officers to keep Angelenos safe in coming years, including during major events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell made a similar argument at a Budget and Finance Commission meeting Tuesday, where he said that despite the city’s budget problems, he worries about whether L.A. will be prepared for the Olympics in 2028 under currently approved staffing.

Several City Council members have already been pushing back against the proposal, arguing that the budget for those positions was negotiated and signed by Bass in June.

“The council and the mayor signed a budget that included 240 new hires,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said at the Budget and Finance Commission meeting on Tuesday. “The department chose to hire that full 240 in the first six months of this year.”

“Our job is to keep the city safe. We also have a responsibility to keep it solvent,” Yaroslavsky told LAist in an emailed statement. “I want to grow the police department, but I have yet to see a proposal that identifies an ongoing funding source to pay for more officers.”

LAPD Officers line up in preparation to form a skirmish line in front of protesters near the federal detention facility in downtown L.A. on June 7, 2025.

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LAPD hiring goals twice as high as current budget

Mayor Bass initially proposed a budget back in April recommending funding to support 480 new LAPD officers.

The final budget was a compromise reached by the City Council that approved hiring 240 new recruits in the midst of a budget crisis and attempts to reduce layoffs across the city. According to a press release on June 7, the day after she signed the final budget, Bass announced a plan to find additional funding within 90 days to bring the total LAPD hires to 480.

The funding never materialized and no additional positions have yet been approved.

LAPD has already hit its hiring cap of 240 new officers, according to a letter from the city personnel department.

The city’s most recent financial status report filed on Dec. 5 by City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo says if LAPD continues hiring at its current pace, the department would add 410 new sworn officers and exceed the plan previously budgeted.

The report shows that costs of the additional 410 officers would be expected to exceed $4.4 million through June, then about $23.7 million in the next fiscal year.

Chief McDonnell spoke to council members at the Budget and Finance Committee about the pace of hiring, and said that the department did what it was “told to do.”

“Our understanding was . . . that we would be able to hire an additional 240 if we hired 240 in the first six months,” McDonnell said, “we did that.”

The department cannot continue hiring without the additional positions requested by Bass.

Show me the money

At Tuesday’s Budget and Finance meeting, Councilmember Tim McOsker asked Szabo whether any funds had ever been identified to fill those positions.

“There has not been a formal report issued to this body identifying funds for additional hiring above what is in the budget,” Szabo replied.

“Is there any proposal — any sort of competent, grown up, adult proposal — for how we pay for this?” McOsker, who also chairs the Personnel and Hiring Committee, asked in a follow up question to Szabo.

“Not that I'm aware of,” Szabo replied. He said his office would be happy to identify reductions to fund additional hiring, but had not been instructed to do so.

That means the proposed hires would need to come from the city’s reserve funds, which Szabo’s office cautioned against.

“The impact of this overspending in 2025-26 and 2026-27 cannot be overlooked,” his office’s financial status report states, “as it represents a departure from the approved plan with likely repercussions to the City’s Reserve Fund.”

The reserve fund currently sits at 5.06 percent of the total general fund budget, according to the report, but overspending — primarily driven by LAPD and liability payments — could bring the reserve fund below emergency levels of 5 percent.

“We should never, as a practice, assume the use of the reserve fund for hiring police officers,” Szabo told the Budget and Finance Committee. “The reserve fund is there for unexpected circumstances.”

In an emailed statement provided to LAist, McOsker said he agrees with the mayor that public safety is the highest priority.

“I agreed with the Mayor six months ago when she originally proposed this saying she would work with Council Leadership to find the money to fund more officers.” McOsker said, “But six months later, this remains a proposal with no funding identification.”

Bass told Larry Mantle on AirTalk that the city is looking at “every account possible” to find money for more officers, and that not approving more hiring will also have a financial cost.

“ Either we hire new officers or we continue to spend millions and millions of dollars in overtime,” she said.

Listen to the interview

A scorching Alabama day isn't so bad — if there's a pool party. Meghan Clopton invited dozens of guests to a summer birthday celebration for one of her kids last year, complete with water guns, a twisting slide and plenty of inflatables.

The guests had just one shared question: Whose pool was this?

Her answer? She rented it.

"It's part of the culture now, right? Just, like, take over someone else's house or pool for the day or the weekend," Clopton said.

"For a fee," her husband, Taylor Clopton, added.

They rented the backyard pool through Swimply, one of a small but growing number of Airbnb-style companies that lets you rent pools, along with other private spaces, including tennis and basketball courts. These listings are a growing side of the sharing economy that have made it common, and often near-frictionless, to rent someone else's property, from cars to guest bedrooms.

Clopton paid $381 for that birthday party, which allowed her to invite up to 30 guests for three hours of pool time.

The pool's owner, Jasmine Lawson, said she's had bookings for graduation parties, book clubs and photo shoots. Overall, she's hosted over 1,000 guests a year at her Birmingham property. "And it grows every single year," Lawson added.

Along with a hot tub and an 8-foot-deep pool, Lawson's guests get access to an air-conditioned room in her home with a table for laying out a party spread, plus a private bathroom. They also get to choose from a catalog of 50 different pool floats. (The white, human-sized inflatable unicorn that sprays water from its horn is a favorite.)

A unicorn inflatable sprinkler sprays water across Jasmine Lawson's pool in Birmingham, Ala., on June 24.

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Lawson gives all her guests a walk-through when they arrive, before going upstairs to work. "But if they ever need anything, I'm right down here helping them as soon as I can," she said. Swimply users can use a filter on the platform for more privacy — that can include factors like whether or not the pool is within view of the home or if the owners will be around.

Lawson originally started renting out her pool to help cover the end-of-life veterinary costs for one of her dogs, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Now, Lawson uses the bookings to boost her income and cover the pool's maintenance.

"When you own a pool, every time you turn around something happens and it's $1,000," Lawson said.

Swimply founder and CEO Bunim Laskin said covering those expenses was the original idea for the company. He started Swimply in 2019, inspired by his experience of offering to pay a pool-owning neighbor to borrow it for a party with his 11 siblings.

Today, according to a company spokesperson, Swimply has listings in 150 cities, and so far has had more than 275,000 reservations this year, about 50% more than last year.

While homes listed on Airbnb, the best-known sharing platform, are often used by out-of-towners, such as for business trips or vacations, Swimply's rental pools are more often used locally. Guests book pools near home, often for staycations.

Laskin said the company has done well during tough economic times. "We really became big for the first time during the pandemic," Laskin said. "Travel was impossible, and people more than ever needed a way to supplement their income."

Jasmine Lawson skims her pool in Birmingham, Ala., on June 24.

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Renting out a swimming pool comes with an important, and possibly expensive, question: Who's responsible if someone gets hurt? After all, pools can be dangerous, especially for young swimmers.

Swimply covers up to $1 million in liability for hosts, similar to Airbnb's policy for home rentals.

Courts have been wrestling with this kind of question when it comes to gig and sharing economy companies, according to Lindsey Cameron, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. For example: Who's liable if a rideshare driver harms a passenger — the driver or the company? "Because there is not an employer, as one typically thinks of, that you can say, 'You have responsibility for the products that you are putting out into the world,'" she said.

Some state governments are trying to hash out these kinds of issues, too. This week, Minnesota's Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about whether pools on the Swimply app should be considered public facilities — and therefore subject to government licensing regulations, possibly including state inspections. (A lower court ruled in favor of the regulations earlier this year.)

Saša Pekeč, a professor of business administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, compares it to the early days of ridesharing apps, which were banned in some cities while regulations were still being worked out.

"Some local communities might just say that 'No, you cannot rent your pool because there's too much liability,'" said Pekeč.

The prospect of a pool being used as a rental has even given at least one private company pause. Lawson said her pool maintenance company dropped her as a client, citing worries that they'd be held responsible if a guest had a bad reaction to pool chemicals. Now she maintains the pool on her own. ("It's been crystal clear," she said.)

But other than having to offer the occasional Band-Aid, Lawson said, she's never had an incident. And that's with weekends with three or four bookings back-to-back. This weekend she's got an all-day Fourth of July birthday party booked.

After renting Lawson's pool, Meghan Clopton got quotes for building one in her own backyard. She was shocked when they came back ranging from $60,000 to $110,000. While Clopton works out the budget and savings, she plans on sticking with renting. She's also dreamed about paying down that future pool by listing it on Swimply.

"It's absolutely a great business plan and I would not say no," Clopton said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Wearing gloves and a KN95 mask, Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas hunkered down near a storm drain, just steps away from the smoldering Lineage warehouse fire, as he filmed himself pointing to what he described as insulation and foam flowing into the drain.

“The thing about this water is that it all gets dumped straight into the L.A. River,” Carrera Ruedas, of Cudahy, told his Instagram followers in a June 22 reel.

In the past two weeks, Carrera Ruedas has spent evenings gathering water samples outside Lineage and from the L.A. River as he and other community scientists are partnering with experts from UCLA and Columbia University to learn what’s in the runoff. Samples will soon be sent to a lab in New York.

“For far too long, the river has just been a drainage, a dumping site for companies,” said Carrera Ruedas, 27, who often encounters toads, birds and fish inhabiting its ecosystem.

“There is life in there,” he told Boyle Heights Beat. “We’re all in proximity to the river, and that’s kind of the vein that runs through the city that really connects us all.”

Community-led testing

Since the Lineage fire ignited June 17 in Boyle Heights, residents, environmental advocates and researchers have taken it upon themselves to find out what’s in the air and water. They’ve launched their own sampling efforts, seeking answers about what people have been breathing and contaminants that may have entered the L.A. River.

The community-led testing comes as residents have reported eye irritation, nausea and headaches while questioning whether the government has done enough to capture the fire’s environmental and public health impacts.

Those concerns are especially alarming in Boyle Heights, East L.A. and neighboring Southeast L.A. communities, where neighbors have long faced disproportionate pollution burdens.

Crews navigate around piles of debris and puddles of water on the eastern edge of the Lineage warehouse as they begin cleanup efforts on June 25, 2026.

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An estimated 31,700 workers, about 81% of whom are Latino, live in the county and city zones where a smoke advisory was issued, according to new data from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. They work in health care, manufacturing and food service industries. About half of the workers earn $3,333 or less a month, below L.A. County’s “very low income” threshold.

The area also experiences diesel pollution levels three times the county average, as well as higher rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease-related emergency department visits, according to UCLA. Nearly 10,000 households in the area lack air conditioning.

“This is not only an air quality emergency but also a worker and environmental justice issue,” UCLA said.

Behind the push for environmental justice

For years, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice has shed light on how Latinos on the Eastside often bear the brunt of the region’s pollution and climate disasters, such as the East L.A. oil spill in late May that dumped nearly 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto streets and into the L.A. River. For the organization, “We are just trying to breathe” is a common phrase.

“Something I’ve told many people over a long period of time is, ‘We’re not polar bears. We’re not whales.’ Nobody is coming to save us. We have to step up and defend ourselves,” said mark! Lopez with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

Antonia Castillo, 73, helps her grandson Aiden Velez put on a mask near their Boyle Heights home.

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East Yard members opted to take air samples themselves, dissatisfied with the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s assessment of the fire’s air-quality impacts. They placed sorbent tubes, which Lopez described as passive air monitors, outside nearby homes for about seven days. Soon, they’ll send the findings to a Columbia University lab with the help of UC Irvine.

What officials have done so far

South Coast AQMD said it conducted “mobile monitoring” during the first two days of the fire that found “significantly elevated concentrations” of particulate matter. The agency then deployed particulate matter monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School that provide “near-real time exposure information.” AQMD noted that the L.A. Fire Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted their own monitoring, while third-party contractor Onterris has continued monitoring during the cleanup phase.

AQMD also observed smoke impacts throughout the region, issuing a particle pollution advisory in English and Spanish that remained in effect through June 24.

What's next and lingering questions

Meanwhile, Lopez said more sampling is necessary, and he questioned the effectiveness of efforts by Lineage, AQMD and LAFD. He and other advocates criticized public statements from officials, including Mayor Karen Bass’ assurances that “the air is not dangerous,” even as residents were reporting feeling sick. He also took aim at LAFD Chief Jaime Moore’s statements that ammonia was not toxic to individuals unless they had respiratory issues or came in direct contact with it. East Yard also called for evacuations in the area.

“It feels like at the city and county level they don’t currently have the capacity to really handle this situation,” Lopez added. “I think it really requires state and federal intervention to make sure that the cleanup and restoration isn’t mismanaged.”

Yoshira “Yoshi” Ornelas Van Horne, an exposure scientist and assistant professor with the UCLA Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, said the Lineage fire is exposing how little is done to “respond to public health emergencies and disasters” in communities like Boyle Heights and East L.A., areas “that have so often been referred to as environmental injustice communities.”

Residents and community organizations like East Yard, Ornelas Van Horne said, “are always the ones having to respond.”

“They’re relying on each other. They’re relying on their networks and their organizing power to be able to do that on the ground sampling.”

Ornelas Van Horne reached out to colleagues at Columbia’s Multi-Element Trace Analysis Laboratory in New York after she learned of the sampling taking place and of community concerns about the runoff making its way down to the L.A. River.

Those samples will be analyzed for heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, she said.

The L.A. County Public Works Department, according to the Los Angeles Times, deployed three containment booms on the L.A. River and continued to monitor the water as it made its way to the ocean.

Carrera Ruedas began collecting water samples on the third day of the fire. He said he took the first sample from the L.A. River, about 100 meters from the spout where it spilled out. The second was taken from outside Lineage. He has amassed dozens of samples since then.

Cudahy sits alongside the lower L.A. River, and after the fire, Carrera Ruedas recalled a “heavy stench that affected people in our community.” The trash he saw in the river was the foam and insulation that came from Lineage, he said.

“It really pissed me off, just to see all this trash go in there and nobody doing anything about it,” said Carrera Ruedas, who also serves as the parks and environmental justice commissioner for Cudahy.

The L.A. River, Carrera Ruedas said, is “part of our ecosystem.”

“This is not just affecting me. This affects everybody else around me. This affects people who love the beach, people who just want our water systems clean,” he said.

Mahjong — the beloved tile strategy game that crosses both cultural and age barriers — is coming to a park near you thanks to a partnership between L.A. County Parks and Recreation and a local club, Common Ground Mahjong.

‘Another language we speak’

Rowland Heights resident and mahjong enthusiast Jay Zhao started Common Ground Mahjong about a year ago after finding they had to wait too long between game meetups.

“It brings people from all different backgrounds together. I’ve met folks that I would not have encountered outside of those mahjong clubs. ... In a way it’s another language that we speak,” Zhao said.

The details 

Zhao’s new Mahjong in the Parks series will take place at open spaces from Arcadia to Culver City, with 15 tables and enough room for 60 people to play together. And one thing to note: the Mahjong in the Parks events will be for 13-tile Hong Kong style.

The series is a collaboration between Common Ground, the Matilija Collective and L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation.

New players welcome

Zhao says everyone will be welcome at the park meetups, and there will be space for about 20 people to learn the game at the events, too. Just don’t be surprised if you come away from an event with a new friend.

“It’s always nice to see people move their connections from just like ‘Oh you’re just someone I play Mahjong with,’ to ‘Hey you’re someone I’m going to see outside of these events. Let's go hiking, let's go to a museum,’” Zhao told LAist.

For Tré Willingham, pursuing a doctorate degree at UC Irvine has felt isolating at times. Often the only Black student in his science classes, he recalls being the last one to be chosen when activities required a lab partner. He also has never had a Black professor.

“It’s very disheartening to never see anyone that looks like you,” said Willingham, who studies applied physics. “It makes it hard to believe that you can get there, and especially get there and actually be yourself.”

For Willingham and students like him, the state-funded Cal-Bridge program is helping them pursue their dreams of landing a doctorate in the sciences and joining the next generation of STEM professors. The program provides financial support, research opportunities and diverse mentors of similar backgrounds.

Such mentors make “it much easier to start to navigate these spaces and also believe that you can get to the other end,” Willingham said.

Cal-Bridge was founded in 2014 to help undergraduates at Cal State campuses pursue a doctorate in STEM in partnership with the University of California, helping to close the diversity gap in science fields. About 70% of the program’s 406 students have been admitted to doctorate programs. Three quarters of the program’s students are of color, almost half are women, and nearly two-thirds are first generation.

Studies have noted that the climate of STEM higher education programs is often unwelcoming for some minority populations. Women make up over half of the undergraduate student population at Cal State campuses, yet account for only 36% of the system’s STEM students. At UC campuses, only 24% of STEM undergraduates are Latino or Hispanic, 4% are African American and 1% are American Indian.

From Cal-Bridge’s first cohort of five undergraduate students, the program has grown to support about 60 each year. It has expanded from astronomy and physics to now include computer science and math. Students in the program can receive stipends, tuition assistance, mentorship and professional development.

But the journey to diversifying the STEM teaching field is very long.

So far, 15 Cal-Bridge participants have earned a doctorate. It takes students about eight years after joining Cal-Bridge, usually done during their junior year, to complete a doctorate — two years as an undergraduate and six years to complete their doctorate education.

“It’s only been 12 years since we started, so only this small group is getting their Ph.D. right now,” said Dr. Alexander Rudolph, Cal-Bridge’s executive director and founder. “But eventually we expect there to be more like 30 to 40 to 50 a year getting their Ph.Ds.”

The state Legislature has given $14 million over recent years to the program, which also has a sliver left over from an older National Science Foundation grant.

The program might also get a helpful boost in the Legislature as California pushes back against federal efforts targeting university equity initiatives.

Democratic Assemblymember David Alvarez of Chula Vista introduced Assembly Bill 2660 in April to codify Cal-Bridge as a coordinated partnership between community colleges, Cal State universities and University of California campuses. Rudolph hopes that will help secure annual or multi-year funding for Cal-Bridge in lieu of making requests each year.

Alvarez told CalMatters that as the federal administration cut back on student loans and grants for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, California should do more to support its students.

“The lack of representation from first-generation students in the Ph.D. level of education speaks for itself,” said Alvarez. “We need to do something in California to demonstrate that we still believe that we have strength in diversity of our Ph.Ds, of our academia, and this (Assembly bill) is one way to try.”

Financial assistance allows students to prioritize academics 

Willingham, the UC Irvine student, hadn’t considered pursuing a doctorate earlier in his life. Now 31, the first-generation scholar is pursuing his doctorate with the goal of one day becoming a professor.

“No one around me was a doctor of anything,” said Willingham about his family and friends growing up.

Willingham grew up in Littleton, Colorado where he attended Columbine High School. After high school, his father, who had served in the Air Force, and Willingham moved to Atlanta. In 2017, he moved to California where he began his higher education journey. He is now the father of two children, ages 12 and two, balancing family time with his studies.

Today, Willingham’s research focuses on creating new quantum materials and exploring how they could be used in future sensors and electronic devices.

Cal-Bridge has four programs: undergraduate, summer research, doctoral and postdoctoral. The undergraduate program is open to STEM students at Cal State campuses and community college students who plan to transfer to a Cal State. It receives up to 100 applications per year; about 60 students were accepted this past year.

Willingham attended El Camino College and Compton College simultaneously to finish his associate degree quickly, then joined Cal-Bridge’s undergraduate program after transferring to Cal Poly Pomona. There, the program gave him $10,000 during each of his junior and senior years, which helped him get a car to commute to school from Los Angeles and stay focused by working fewer hours as a tutor.

“I was able to just sort of focus my attention a little better, not having to always think about how I’m going to pay the next bill,” said Willingham.

Later in Cal-Bridge’s doctoral program, Willingham received $40,000 in financial support for his first year of graduate school at UC Irvine. He used $16,000 to pay his tuition and the rest for living expenses.

Mentorship helps students find their place in STEM 

It took Dr. Katy Rodriguez Wimberly, a Cal-Bridge alum, 13 years to become a research faculty member. She is now an astrophysics assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino.

Wimberly researches near-field cosmology, studying neighboring galaxies that may be some of the first ever formed.

“It’s almost like galactic archaeology, like I’m looking at these little almost-fossil galaxies to learn more about the early universe and where everything came from,” said Wimberly.

She is also now the director of mentorship for Cal-Bridge. During her junior year as an undergraduate, she joined Cal-Bridge’s first cohort, helping her imagine what being an astronomer would be like.

The mentors and the program’s monthly workshops showed her that while she didn’t see many Latina women like her teaching STEM on her campus, she could do it. When she was an undergraduate at Cal State Long Beach, she said, there were only two women professors from about 20 faculty in her department, and none of them Black or Latino.

Cal-Bridge provided Latino mentors she wasn’t finding anywhere else.

“It wasn’t like they were teaching me in a classroom, but they did kind of provide that cultural and kind of identity support,” said Wimberly.

Wimberly had applied to 11 doctorate programs as a senior undergraduate and was denied by all of them. Next, she applied and was accepted to Cal State Long Beach to pursue a master’s in physics. There, she raised her GPA, reapplied to doctorate programs and was accepted to UC Irvine. She graduated in 2021 with her doctorate in physics.

At UC Irvine, Wimberly created a peer mentorship program for Cal-Bridge students as a way for alumni and graduate students of the program to support the undergraduate students. Mentors and mentees meet in small groups once a month, as well as have one-on-one meetings.

“I structured it in a way to be more like, this is just your older cousin that’s telling you how to get through things,” Wimberly said.

After she finished her doctorate, she had a three-year, full-time fellowship with the National Science Foundation. She served at UC Riverside with her former mentor, Laura Sales, an astronomer from Argentina and associate professor at the university.

Learning from Sales made her feel more comfortable embracing her identity as a Latina. Sales taught her that she didn’t have to be an expert in all areas of astronomy, but that she would work alongside experts in different areas.

Now as a professor herself for the last three years at Cal State San Bernardino, Wimberly offers the same mentorship to her students. Anytime she sees a Latina student who doesn’t have support from someone with a similar background, she tries to provide that support.

“Just because I know it can be so difficult,” said Wimberly.

Claire Rogers, a student at UC Irvine pursuing a doctorate in physics, knew she wanted to attend graduate school, but she didn’t realize how isolating the experience would be as the only woman in the room. She is a Cal-Bridge doctorate scholar researching observational astrophysics, looking for planets outside of the solar system to determine if there is life on those planets. She also focuses on how stellar astrophysics affects measurements when looking for planets.

Rogers was an undergraduate at Cal Poly Humboldt and joined Cal-Bridge during the first year the program expanded to her campus.

“Cal-Bridge was really helpful for providing a network of students at the same phase of their career at different CSU campuses but still working towards similar goals,” said Rogers.

She said that since the department on her campus was small, Cal-Bridge allowed her to connect with students at other campuses who were in similar positions.

The program provided her two mentors, a professor at her campus and a professor at UC Berkeley. The program also offered her guidance in applying for graduate school.

“I’m sure it made a huge difference in my grad school essays, getting that feedback,” Rogers said.

Rogers participated in an undergraduate summer research program at the University of Wyoming through Cal-Bridge, where she dabbled in astrophysics research for the first time. Cal-Bridge’s summer program is open to community college and Cal State undergraduate students and allows students to participate in research projects at partner institutions. Out of around 200 applications, only 50 to 60 students get accepted to the summer program.

“I really like spending time at a telescope … and dealing with all of the problems that come up when you are running a telescope overnight,” she said.

She was usually the only woman in her undergraduate classes, and in graduate school there were only three women in her cohort of 22 students.

“I got very accustomed to being the only woman in a room,” said Rogers.

She mentioned feeling isolated during her first year at UC Irvine, noticing that her classmates rarely showed up when she organized study groups and that the men in her lab would change the conversation when she entered the room.

“I had a really hard time my first year with reconciling that I felt very unwelcome,” said Rogers.

She eventually found a support network outside of her original cohort, getting closer to other doctoral scholars in Cal-Bridge and having monthly movie nights together.

“Cal-Bridge has made a huge difference to my career and my, sort of, finding my space in this field,” said Rogers.

Rogers hopes to one day become a professor and be able to teach while continuing her research in observational astrophysics.

“When I was new to physics it made a big difference for me to have women professors,” said Rogers. “I think it’s important for future students to also have that resource and that support, and I would like to be able to provide that.”

Brittany Oceguera is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.