Lucie Wu

Lucie is a current graduate student in Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA, concentrating in Environmental Analysis and Policy. Her specific interests within the field include transportation, food systems, waste and water. For the past year, she has worked on sustainability initiatives at Metrolink and air quality projects at Environmental Science Associates.

Previously, Lucie worked in user experience design and research at IBM and Allbirds in San Francisco. Originally from Seattle, she holds a B.A. in Psychology and M.S. in Human Centered Design & Engineering from the University of Washington. After graduate school, she hopes to combine her background in design with her passion for urban planning.

Outside of the classroom, Lucie enjoys learning languages, hanging out with her gray tuxedo cats and exploring new places.

Project Overview

BruinHub provides a space and amenities for long distance and housing insecure students. Located in the John Wooden Center, the space opened in Fall 2021 and its purpose is to help alleviate and destigmatize the challenges that commuter students face by meeting basic needs and offering a sense of stability.

For this project, I’m conducting an evaluation upon the one-year opening of BruinHub to learn whether BruinHub is targeting the intended audience of super-commuting and/or housing insecure students. Additionally, I’m examining potential changes to the program that would increase outreach and impact for further benefit these students.

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

I found this project through cityLAB’s post on the capstone projects database. I was drawn to this project because I’m interested in the design intervention aspect and how it intersects with the transportation and housing challenges that students are currently facing. I chose this project because it is applicable and implementable with a direct impact on the individuals who it is trying to serve.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

Rayne and Gus are the main clients that I am working with from cityLAB. Their feedback has been invaluable and they are passionate about the capstone project and BruinHub overall! This project also involves partners from UCLA Recreation, Campus Life, Bruin Commuters, and First Year Experience.

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

I hope that this project sheds light on underserved student experiences at universities and colleges, and contributes to solutions that better meet their needs moving forward. I imagine that the findings from this project can go beyond UCLA to help other universities and colleges, inspiring them to find more radical and creative ways of meeting students’ basic needs.