By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

The annual International Development Studies Academic Award commemorates graduating seniors for exceptional academic achievement in the IDS major, particularly in upper-division coursework.

UCLA International Institute, June 12, 2025 — Bruins who major in international development studies, or IDS, tend to be actively engaged in local community organizations and/or local chapters of international nongovernmental organizations. Many are also stellar academic students, some of whom choose to write senior theses.

This year, two such graduating seniors were awarded the annual IDS Academic Award: Oluwadamilare Oyebobola and Teagan Galloway. Both students start graduate school this fall on their way toward international careers.

“What I liked most about the IDS major was how interdisciplinary and globally relevant it was. Coming out of high school, I knew I didn’t want to study just one thing — I was interested in economics, politics, geography, math, tech and journalism. I also knew I wanted to do something impactful on a large scale. IDS allowed me to explore all of these while staying focused on real-world global issues,” said Oluwadamilare (“Damilare”) Oyebobola, who also won an Ebell-Flint Scholarship in September 2024 for her superior academic achievement.

“One of the most impactful moments for me was in IDS 110 [Culture, Power and Development], taught by Professor Jennifer Chun” she continued. (Chun is the chair of the IDS program.) “In that course, we watched ‘Life and Debt,’ a documentary that exposed the IMF’s disregard for Jamaica’s socioeconomic needs.

“As the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant, I was already aware of the systemic forces perpetuating underdevelopment in the Global South, but this course helped me analyze them through a critical lens.”

Over the course of her time at UCLA, the Bruin senior did internships with Strong Starts for Success (a nonprofit supporting holistic education in Liberia), Entrepreneurs Futures Network (a San Francisco–based nonprofit that works throughout the U.S. and the world) and Northwestern Mutual (a financial planning and insurance firm).

Her work as a research assistant for the department of African American studies and the UCLA Center for Middle East Development, as well as a member of the UCLA United Nations Association, also gave Oyebobola broad exposure to issues of decolonization and international politics worldwide, including in Sudan and the Middle East.

A member of the Bruin Belles student service association for four years, the IDS student also served as its fundraising director. In that role, she helped overhaul the organization’s fundraising and reimbursement systems and procedures, instituted quarterly fundraising events and helped the club establish dual directors responsible for financial management and events, respectively.

The IDS major, said Oyebobola, “gave structure to my values, clarity to my interests and a pathway to the kind of global impact I want to make.” Using her curricular studies as a foundation, she opted to write a senior thesis that examined “how IMF austerity measures exacerbated inequality in Nigeria [and explored] the role of elite decision making, colonial legacies and political dynamics in shaping the country’s experience with Structural Adjustment Programs.”

Her immediate future plans are to pursue a master’s degree in international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, starting this fall. “I aspire to become a regional economic specialist focused on dismantling systemic barriers and designing context-specific growth models for Sub-Saharan Africa,” she said.

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Teagan Galloway, an international development studies major with a food studies minor, is the second winner of the IDS Academic Award this year. In addition to this award, she has been named to the Dean’s Honor List five times during her undergraduate years at UCLA.

“The most inspiring part of the IDS major for me has been the professors,” shared Galloway. “Every class I’ve taken has been led by such impressive and passionate professors that they really encouraged me to expand my global perspective and provide critical insights into real-world issues.

“In particular I loved my senior capstone class with Professor Chun: Protest, Social Movements and Development [IDS 191]. This [course] showed us the power of activism in issues of development. I particularly enjoyed this class because it involved a lot of student participation, and therefore I was able to engage and hear different perspectives from my peers.”

The Bruin senior enjoyed the research projects that she did for both the IDS and food studies programs, whose themes often intersected. “As a food studies minor, I tried to incorporate issues of food insecurity, agriculture and development as much as I could in the research I completed,” she explained.

Her final project for IDS 110 (Culture, Power and Development), one of three required core courses in the major, was a cookbook “that followed colonialism through the lens of food, revealing the impacts of colonialism on food systems across the world and history.”

Galloway has also pursued a wide array of internships and volunteer work in organizations focused on social justice, education and development. She has been a member of the boards of trustees for a kindergarten in Sri Lanka since 2022, a media intern for Nutrition Educational International (NEI), a participant in the UCLA Prison Education Project and a volunteer for the APALA labor alliance in Los Angeles. She also did internships at a law firm and a primary school (just prior to its opening).

It was as a member of the Global Development Lab at UCLA, a student association devoted to the learning and practice of international economic development, that Galloway came to intern for NEI. “It was a great club to be a part of and to learn from other people in my major,” she said about GDL.

“Nutrition Education International [is] a nonprofit that brought soybean seeds to Afghanistan to promote soybean value chains and eradicate malnourishment,” she explained.

Her work with NEI directly impacted her academic research. “For my food studies capstone project,” explained Galloway, “I wanted to focus on this idea of colonial crops, but dig deeper into [to see] if there was a way for them to be used for positive socioeconomic development, as shown by Nutrition Education International. My final paper was titled ‘The Potato: The Key for Sustainable Development in Sri Lanka?’” She presented the paper at Undergraduate Research Week in May.

“I chose Sri Lanka because of my work for Kindergarten for Akurala (KFA), a nonprofit dedicated to providing educational opportunities to rural parts of Sri Lanka. My IDS experience helped me in this work throughout my college career, and the concepts I’ve learned will continue to guide the work I do with KFA,” she reflected.

Galloway’s experience at UCLA also included a big dose of creative fun as co-director of Coastalong, a sustainable musical festival on campus for which she has volunteered since January 2024. “This organization showed me the power of community building at UCLA, and with surrounding organizations that share a passion for leading more sustainable lives,” she said.

Looking ahead, the IDS major moves to London in September to begin a post-graduate diploma in law. “I’m hoping to become a human rights lawyer and continue working in the nonprofit sector,” she said.

Published: Thursday, June 12, 2025