Mission Statement

Centering the needs and experiences of Asian Pacific Islander Middle Eastern Desi American (APIMEDA) students, we educate, advocate, and build coalitions to create a safe environment where the UC San Diego community can learn, grow, and succeed.

About APIMEDA Programs and Services

Asian Pacific Islander Middle Eastern Desi American (APIMEDA) Programs and Service is an initiative within the Office of the Vice Chancellor –Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion. Developed after strong student advocacy, APIMEDA Programs and Services provides outreach, programs, and other support for our diverse APIMEDA student population. APIMEDA people are diverse, and we come to campus with different experiences and identities that make up who we are. Our office seeks to help folks find connections with one another while supporting the whole population.

Who Are APIMEDA People?

APIMEDA describes domestic students who are of Asian (including East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian), Pacific Islander, and/or Southwest Asian North African descent. APIMEDA people come from a large diversity of ethnic identities, whose population size varies widely in the US, in California, and on our campus.

For more information about how the University of California system collects ethnicity data for undergraduate students and the ethnic diversity of UC San Diego, please visit the Undergraduate Diversity Dashboards.

The students from the Coalition for Critical Asian American Studies (CCAAS) who advocated for this office used APIMEDA to describe the population. They sought to have an office that provided specific and targeted services for students who come from marginalized ethnic populations who were not being served directly by other campus offices. CCAAS believed that APIMEDA students were often spoken of as being part of a majority group despite having a wide disparity of access and retention numbers within the population and experiencing discrimination. While this is not currently a common grouping used by institutions in higher education, APIMEDA students at UC San Diego are finding that they share many common experiences in the way that they navigate our campus and in the histories of their families and ancestors.