They must have known they were on the cusp of something extraordinary. It was springtime in Los Angeles in 1925, and the young university on Vermont Avenue was brimming with possibility. By that summer, UCLA would shed the last vestiges of its former life as a teachers’ college and award bachelor of arts degrees to 100 women and 24 men. Westwood, a vision on the horizon, would be home to their alma mater in just a few short years.
Yet they set out to tell our story with the humblest of prologues. Late one afternoon, five Bruins found a moment of pause in an empty classroom within ivy-covered Millspaugh Hall. The day’s history lesson was still scrawled on the blackboard, but their eyes were on the future. Thelma Gibson 1925, an ambitious senior and student body vice president, offered these now famous words: “We’ll all be graduating soon; we need some kind of an organization to bind us together.” The UCLA Alumni Association was born.
Catalyst, community, conduit: The nonprofit, volunteer-driven association is all of these, and it belongs to all of us. If you graduated from UCLA, you are a member. True to Gibson’s wishes, the UCLA Alumni Association has formed the binding for the remarkable, ongoing story of us — a story inextricably intertwined with UCLA’s. And while every alum’s identity, journey and experience are unique, our shared story is rooted in some of the true-blue-and-gold principles that connect all of us — whether we graduated here, work here, donate here, or are simply part of the surrounding community.
We rise to any challenge. For early Bruins, the goal was writ large: UCLA needed to finance the coveted new campus, in Westwood. The class of 1925 stepped up, rallying Los Angeles voters to pass a city bond measure that would make such a vision a reality. Early alums were also crucial in the struggle to establish the UCLA graduate programs that would one day transform the university into a world-leading research institution. When the Great Depression hit, they organized career services and kept peers inspired by broadcasting a radio show (from the Royce Hall tower) that featured interviews with favorite professors. During World War II, they sent off alumni magazines — Iike letters from home — to Bruin service members across the globe. This generation would bestow the first of thousands of UCLA Alumni Association scholarships for students and awards for distinguished alumni. “UCLA is on the incline — students, faculty and alumni all,” one delighted graduate wrote to the association’s first news editor. “We can’t be stopped.”
We lift each other up. As the pages of our story have turned during the past hundred years, seeing one another — and feeling seen — has taken on new meaning. Sherrill Luke ’50, UCLA’s first Black student body president, would also become the first Black president of our alumni association and an early advocate for inclusivity. It was, he once told UCLA Magazine, a fundamental way to truly be “reflective of the world in which we live.” In 1968, the UCLA Black Alumni Association was founded; 11 more identity-based communities would follow in the decades to come. These networks serve Bruins whose connections ran deep on campus and continue to run deep today. Many members are proud to serve as resources for current students, sharing the wisdom of their lived experience with the next generation. Meanwhile, programs like the Changemakers Series unite Bruins dedicated to social justice and civic engagement by recognizing and amplifying shared progress.
We are writing the future. Over the years, our alumni association has gifted UCLA with beloved and long-standing traditions, from the Victory Bell to homecoming, from Dinners for 12 Strangers to The Bruin statue, our campus anchor cast in bronze. But more than a century after UCLA’s founding, tradition has taken on new meaning as well. As alumni, we are now more than 660,000 strong, and we are everywhere — creating positive change in the UCLA family and our broader society in ways that are as individual as we are. You can find us around the globe, leading the way in our communities. We are career coaches, mentors, volunteers, fundraisers and donors; we share our expertise on UCLA’s strategic committees and boards; we power the university as staff members; we lift our voices in town halls and panel discussions.
You’ll see us at a New Bruin Send-off Celebration, Latinx Welcome, Lavender Graduation or Disability Pride Week. You can read about us in award-winning UCLA media outlets. In so many ways, we continue to shape the future of the university and our world.
One last thing: We love to learn. For many of us, to be a student at UCLA was to stand before an open door to the world. Campus was a lively, vibrant place where there was always something new to discover. But our unquenchable thirst for personal and professional growth didn’t end when we graduated. In 2021, UCLA Alumni Affairs launched the Bruin Promise, conceived by then-Chancellor Gene Block as a way to keep UCLA educational resources and opportunities open to us all.
Like Thelma Gibson’s generation, we are once again on the cusp of something extraordinary. Chancellor Julio Frenk, UCLA’s first new leader in 17 years, is guiding our university into its second century. We have branched into new communities in L.A., redoubled efforts to come together across differences, and in 2024 welcomed one of our most diverse incoming classes in history.
Ahead of us are changes, challenges and possibilities — not only for UCLA, but for our communities and our world. The words of current association president Paco Retana ’87, M.S.W. ’90 are timeless: “I feel a sense of belonging, to give back and pay it forward,” he once said. “And with that, we’ll get through anything.”
A fresh, blank page is before us. What will our next chapter bring? You hold the pen; the story is yours for the telling.
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Spring 2025 issue.
