Two candidates, second-year political science major Alexa Allaham and second-year biological sciences and chemistry major Denise Rojas, are running for the 2026-2027 Associated Students of UCI’s (ASUCI) Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs (AVPAA) position — formerly known as the Academic Affairs Vice President (AAVP).
The AVPAA is meant to provide “academic support” to the UCI student body and operates under the Executive Cabinet, according to the AVPAA website. They are responsible for creating a commission within the Academic Senate, and working with them on issues related to academic opportunities, educational quality and more at UCI. The current AAVP is Summer Phan, a third-year microbiology and immunology major who is currently running for 2026-2027 ASUCI President.
Voting for the position of AVPAA is open from Monday, April 13, 2026 at 9 a.m. until Friday, April 17, 2026 at 5 p.m.
Alexa Allaham
Allaham previously served as a 2024-2025 AAVP intern under the Academic Engagement Commission and is currently a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha Honor Society. She is also editor in chief of the HER Campus UCI chapter and vice president of UCI Rotoract, an on-campus community service with Rotary International. During her time as vice president of UCI Rotaract, Allaham created, designed and executed community service missions, partnering with other universities, such as Soka University of America, to further their goal of “providing aid and services to different people all over the globe.”
Allaham said that open discussion between the student body and ASUCI would be one of her main goals if elected.
“We need everyone’s perspective,” Allaham said in an interview with New University. “And the way that we get that is we hear the talk of those who are among us that are not affiliated in the tiny cocoon of ASUCI.”
Allaham further explains her proposed connection between students and ASUCI in her ASUCI candidate profile, writing, “In my meetings with the Academic Senate, I’ll be there to relay the questions students already asked me: Who does this policy help? Who does it burden? Why wasn’t student input part of this conversation from the start?”
Allaham said she also wants to address what she has coined as the “tragic academic legacy,” or the extended continuation of a curriculum or course that is working to the “detriment of students and their academic success.”
“My hope is to collaborate with the Council on Educational Policy and work towards something like a curriculum intervention program,” Allaham said. “You open something like Rate My Professor, [and the] rating is a 1.7. You open all the grades? The grades are D. Well, a solution would be, obviously, [to] amend the curriculum. You can make it better suited to the needs of students.”
Allaham is running with ANThem, a slate focused on “equitable, accessible, and transparent student government that reflects the diversity of our campus community” according to their platform statement.
Denise Rojas
Rojas is the current 2025-2026 Academic Resources Director and ACQUIRE Basic Needs Coordinator, and was the 2024-2025 Latiné Council on Diversity and Equity Coordinator. Through her role as Academic Resources Director, Rojas has worked with ASUCI to distribute student resources through quarterly boothing events and is currently working on a library loaning guide meant to help students more easily access library materials.
Related to her current role in increasing access to academic resources for students, Rojas considers financial security to be a critical focus of her campaign.
“I feel it’s really important to address [financial] issues firsthand, advocating for reduction of student fees where possible, advocating for no more implementation of additional academic student fees is also another core focus,” Rojas said in an interview with New University. “But I also want to focus on a lot of equitable and accessible access, because I feel a lot of the time, we have resources available, but they’re not being utilized because either students don’t know about it or they’re just not as accessible as the program or department wants it to be.”
Rojas’ vision, as listed in her ASUCI candidate profile, includes her interest in “Fees & Financial Accessibility” and “Student Resources & Support,” as well as an interest in “Courses & Curriculum” and “Policy & Advocacy.”
Beyond advocating for student fee reduction, Rojas also hopes to extend the eligibility deadline for class withdrawals if elected.
“I started seeing that, if other UCs can do it, I believe that our campus could also do it [and] be more flexible with students because a lot of students are parenting students. We also have working students. We also have full-time students who are going through a difficult situation,” Rojas said, mentioning how UC Santa Barbara’s withdrawal policy allows for students to withdraw from classes — without receiving a withdrawal marking on their transcript — later in the quarter, compared to UCI.
Rojas is running with the coalition AMPlifying Anteaters, whose goal is to “[lead] with transparency, accountability and meaningful progress” according to their vision statement.
Corinna Chin is an Arts & Entertainment Assistant Editor. She can be reached at corinnac@uci.edu.
Edited by Geneses Navarro