The Bettina Aptheker Award for Research on Sexual, Gendered, and Racial Violence

The Bettina Aptheker Award supports either an undergraduate or graduate student whose work relates to sexual, gendered, and/or racial violence to further their research, or to do community service.

The award was established in honor of Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, Bettina Aptheker, at the time of her retirement in Spring 2018.

A radical feminist, political activist, UCSC alumna, and history scholar with a national reputation, Bettina Aptheker is one of UC Santa Cruz’s legendary professors. Having taught one of the country’s largest and most influential introductory feminist studies courses for more than three decades at UC Santa Cruz, she has exposed her deeply compelling ideas to more than 16,000 students.

Millie Montoya

Feminist Studies and Sociology

2022-23 Aptheker Scholar

Since the fall of 2022, Millie has worked for CARE, a campus resource center, focusing on supporting survivors of violence. Through her work at CARE, Millie was able to amplify and give material form to the concepts, theories and histories that she was engaged with in the classroom. After graduating, Millie hopes to work at a community college office that works with students from marginalized backgrounds and eventually apply to sociology graduate programs.