The Global Environmental Justice Observatory: fostering students’ knowledge production, professionalization and belonging
Ravi Rajan and Flora Lu
INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses the design and implementation of an innovative, student-centered, pedagogical and research-oriented initiative at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), called the Global Environmental Justice Observatory (GEJO). The need for such a program is illustrated by two recent surveys of undergraduate experiences and perceptions. Every two years, all campuses at the University of California undertake an Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES). The 2020 UCUES found that UCSC students of color trail white students in terms of a sense of belonging at the university and feelings that they matter to the campus. Students of color surveyed also stated that they did not perceive that people of their race and class are respected on campus, and that they are uncomfortable with the climate for diversity and inclusion. In 2019, the People of Color Sustainability Collective at UCSC conducted a campus-wide undergraduate survey of over 2,500 students and found a high prevalence of environmental health threats in their home communities. Over three-quarters of students reported air contamination; around half reported housing insecurity and water contamination; and 45% reported food insecurity and a lack of green space. Communities of color disproportionately experienced such harm. While 31% of white students reported that they or someone in their family suffered from environmentally caused health problems, the rates for were 39% for Asian American/Pacific Islander students, 46% for Latinx students; and 55% for African American students.
As faculty members in the Environmental Studies Department at UCSC, we see the issues of belonging and experience of environmental justice as inextricably intertwined. Students need to see themselves and their communities reflected in curricula and programs. For too long, “environmental” issues have reified wilderness areas and biodiversity conservation – concerns which have long been associated with those of racial, economic, gender, and other forms of privilege. At UCSC, there is a widespread perception that white students and the relatively wealthy dominate the environmental movement on campus, discounting the environmental efforts of people of color and low-income folks whose efforts to reuse items, reduce consumption, repurpose, limit waste, etc. are often solely attributed to necessity rather than environmental concern (Lu et al., 2018). Mainstream environmental concern often manifests at the individual level through consumer behaviors (e.g., buying organic food and Patagonia brand clothing) accessible to those who possess more resources; or at the institutional level through techno-managerial or infrastructural approaches, neither of which tend to center equity. Instead, we argue that environmental education must include diverse sociocultural approaches and the lived experiences of historically marginalized communities who have borne the brunt of ecological degradation. In other words:
The current, predominant approach that is based on making these diverse members of our student body aware about sustainability (as an institutionalized concept) must be complemented by efforts that ascertain, validate, and incorporate the manifold ways that students experience and engage with the concept of sustainability. Paying attention to their sociocultural and economic positionality, including race, ethnicity, class, and gender, helps us to better understand what sustainability activities students undertake, what patterns emerge, and why … these issues are closely linked to student success and retention, matters of great concern to universities. (Lu et al., 2018: 80)
The concept of a sense of belonging has garnered much academic attention, as it has been shown to positively impact students’ social and psychological well-being, academic achievement and retention (e.g., Freeman et al., 2007; Hagerty et al., 1992; Hausmann et al., 2007; Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Pittman & Richmond, 2008). The term generally refers to “an individual’s sense of identification or positioning in relation to a group or to the college community” (Tovar & Simon, 2010: 200). As defined by Strayhorn (2019: 4), student sense of belonging includes “students’ perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, and the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the campus community or others on campus such as faculty, staff, and peers.” Hoffman et al. (2002) found that one of the most important factors in their sense of belonging is perceived peer support (38.8% of variance), followed by perceived faculty support (9%). They note, “Findings from this investigation indicate that ‘sense of belonging’ to the institution stems from perceptions of ‘valued involvement’ in the collegiate environment” (Hoffman et al., 2002: 249). Valued involvement occurs when students engage in supportive peer relationships and feel seen and supported by faculty.
For an R-1 institution like UCSC, which in 2017 ranked third worldwide for research impact, knowledge production and dissemination is integral to the mission and value of the university. The purpose of the GEJO is to further this mission by fostering both faculty and peer support to expand equity-centered environmental scholarship. In doing so, it aims to: (1) position students as knowledge holders and creators; (2) forge a powerful source of achievement motivation; and (3) remedy the relative lack of environmental justice content historically in departments such as ours. Training the next generation of environmental justice professionals entails support for both mind and heart. In terms of the former, the GEJO emphasizes the necessity of high-quality research, persuasive writing, professionalization skills, and content knowledge. It also supports students’ conviction, passion, purpose, and sense of belonging – for example, when students of under-represented groups see themselves and their communities as contributors of knowledge on issues of socio-environmental concern. Hurtado et al. (2015) conceptualize sense of belonging as the psychological dimension of true integration of students in a university “accepted as equals, recognized, respected and empowered as learners in a diverse community.”
AN EXPERIMENT IN BUILDING BELONGING
Rajan spearheaded the launch of the GEJO in 2019 with these insights in mind. The web-based observatory has three parts: (1) a student-edited, peer-reviewed journal that combines award-winning academic scholarship with high-quality interviews and art projects; (2) a bibliographic and encyclopedic section, in which students write essays covering events and concepts related to global environmental justice; and (3) a podcast (hosted on Soundcloud and Spotify) with leading practitioners and academics conducted with research and production assistance from undergraduate students. During the academic year 2021–22, a new feature – an art competition – was added, which might well evolve into a fourth dimension – art and media. The GEJO was built on the basis of another initiative, the College Eight Interdisciplinary Topical Cluster and Wiki, which Rajan launched while serving as Provost of one of UCSC’s residential colleges.
In the process of conceiving and building the GEJO, we engaged in deep conversations about inclusive pedagogy while serving together on our department’s Diversity Committee. These conversations, and a deep-rooted respect for one another’s approach to teaching, led to the beginnings of collaborations between the two of us. While the actual website was built by Rajan and his team, a great deal of the content was based on work done by Lu and her students. We share a commitment to providing under-represented students an opportunity to train to be professional scholars, thought leaders, and communicators.
This chapter explores the pedagogical goals behind the GEJO and assesses its impact by interviewing some of the key student participants during the first two years. It has three broad parts. First, it outlines the origins and student experiences in the GEJO. Second, it explores the impact of the GEJO on students via personal testimonies of participating students. Third, a reflection section offers some reflections on this experiment, and elaborates on the pedagogical basis of projects that seek to nurture belonging among under-represented students.
THE GEJO
The GEJO project has its origins in another learning website that co-author Rajan created while serving as Provost of College Eight (now Rachel Carson College). The College Eight Wiki, as that website was called (see https://rachelcarson-wiki.lt.ucsc.edu/wiki/College_Eight_Core), was created to address two key problems with delivering a first-year writing experience.
At the outset, it sought to address a critical trend that we found among our undergraduate students as they approached their research-based writing experiences: an over-reliance on unsubstantiated sources of information that they freely encountered on the web. Rajan and his team of instructors who taught the core course serving first-year students felt that one of the cornerstones of training for first-year undergraduates ought to be to educate them about the differential credibility of sources. The College Eight Wiki therefore offered a number of curated readings going above and beyond those in the course reader, offering students interested in further exploring the themes of the class to do so with the assurance that they would be drawing upon vetted content. It offered four such clusters of readings: environmental justice literature; art and the environment; environmental science and skeptical challenges; and activism and social entrepreneurship. In selecting these themes, Rajan and his team attempted to reach a wide range of student interests, which based on polling at that time included social justice and human rights, art and humanism, science, engineering and the public understanding of scientific uncertainty, and human agency. In addition to these modules, the College Eight program offered a section entitled “Dig Deeper,” in which they curated articles on topical issues, from urban agriculture to sea level rise. The Wiki also offered guides to further reading and a list of film and media resources on a host of topics. Additionally, the website offered specific modules to help foster academic skills needed to succeed in college. In particular, it connected intellectual content with useful writing prompts to enable students to decode effective academic writing practices and model modes of communication.
In creating the College Eight Wiki, Rajan and his team also sought to foster education through engagement. They realized that general education, especially at the first-year level, was largely meaningless to young people seeking to learn how to make a difference. To address this gap, they created two modules. One of these was on environmental news, which enabled students to find credible news sources that addressed environmental themes. The second module was entitled “Get Involved,” and included a host of ideas and opportunities to learn through active engagement. This module had links to volunteer and internship opportunities, and a host of other avenues to find community, locate mentors, and learn while being engaged in real, tangible issues. The College Eight program also invited environmental entrepreneurs and professionals from the wider community in Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley to teach pro-seminars in which students worked on actual problems that the speakers confront in their work. This enabled students to get a greater sense of how the professional world works, identifying the skills they need to contribute meaningfully to addressing the needs of the wider world of environmental business and social entrepreneurship.
The College Eight Wiki was built to support a new approach to pedagogy for frosh at UCSC mooted by Jaye Padgett, the then Chair of the Committee on Educational Policy at UCSC, in a bid to re-think general education. The model envisaged interdisciplinary topical clusters (ITCs) in colleges which combined various disciplinary approaches to a core theme or topic with solid grounding in writing. At College Eight, the ITC consisted of three quarters of courses. During the fall quarter, Rajan led a course that introduced students to the various themes mentioned above. The course included a host of guest lectures from campus and from the wider community. During winter quarter, professors from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department offered students insights into the world of scientific research on conservation; and in the spring quarter, professors from the Electrical Engineering Department taught a course at the cutting edge of green engineering and design. In each of the quarters, the course drew upon content from the Wiki, which served as a central depository of vetted content, available to students in all three quarters of the ITC. In addition to high-quality materials, the Wiki page provided the core lecturers with works that could serve as prompts for writing courses that were a central component of the ITC. The courses were all taught by senior professors at the top of their fields, so that first-year students could grasp the import and potential of high-level research. The first quarter of the ITC was mandatory for all students; while the second and third quarters were voluntary, although the uptake was high, with more than 100 students enrolled on average. Students who took all three quarters were offered a certificate in green education. In addition to the three-course core sequence, a series of “apprenticeship” courses were offered. These were taught by professionals from outside campus and imparted specific skills relevant to future jobs and careers.
Inspired by his experience with College Eight, Rajan sought to adapt the pedagogical approach to a wider spectrum of students, including juniors and seniors. The GEJO was the result. The GEJO was also an offshoot of the work done by the Diversity Committee in the Environmental Studies Department, on which both co-authors served for multiple years. As one of its efforts, the Diversity Committee met with a variety of stakeholders, including members of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) community. The picture that emerged was that many students felt deeply marginalized in a number of ways: they had few role models in the faculty; the departmental curriculum did not represent issues that were particularly important to them, such as environmental justice; and there was a feeling that some faculty from non-BIPOC backgrounds were invoking diversity language without investing in understanding the sensitivities of students and indeed some of their BIPOC colleagues. The underlying climate issues are complex and difficult, necessitating long-term, structural and sustained efforts by the department as a whole.
To create a space committed to issues of equity and difference at various scales, faculty in the department created a new undergraduate concentration, Global Environmental Justice. This concentration seeks not only to introduce environmental justice as a visible and comprehensive aspect of the curriculum, but also to offer a global outlook – both geographically and intellectually – by including a wide range of subjects, such as political ecology, science and technology studies, risk and disaster studies, environmental labor studies, environmental human rights, and gender and race studies. The curriculum allows students to choose a set of courses from a wide variety of offerings from the subject fields mentioned above.
Building on the College Eight Wiki, the GEJO website was created to support the concentration. With the assistance of a graduate student researcher, the initial version of the website included modules on bibliographies and syllabi; atlases and graphic representations of environmental justice research; information about associations and organizations around the world that do work on environmental justice and environmental human rights; and information on COVID-19 and environmental justice. With this in place, the next step was to address the question of how such a web resource could support undergraduates. The answer lay in an internship program that was, from the outset, student centered. Student interns helped edit a peer-reviewed journal, Global Environmental Justice, with articles chosen from student theses who had received honors on their senior thesis, thereby ensuring their high quality. Student interns also produced a podcast, “Liminal Spaces,” in which Rajan conducts interviews with leading scholars, lawyers and activists. Coming soon are many other features, such as an encyclopedia-like section, with short and long articles addressing keywords, concepts, events and biographies.
Collectively, these components are characterized not only by their high-quality content, but also by the active role that students, with faculty mentorship, play in the creation of such content. The process of editing the journal, for example, includes workshops in which Rajan teaches students what an academic journal is; the meaning and import of peer review as a quality control process; methods of selecting articles for publication and working with authors to convert student theses into journal articles; and other elements, including style, citation, and typography. Students also hone their time management and leadership skills. They are given autonomy over selection of content and the actual production, which increases their academic self-efficacy. Over the past two years, the student committee has worked intensively for three quarters each year. The first volume of the journal was published in fall 2021 and the second in spring 2022. Future volumes will be released during the spring quarter each year.
The process of creating the podcast has been similar. Student interns are trained carefully in the craft of podcasts and in management skills. The podcast interns then work on identifying candidates to interview in partnership with Rajan, and in researching their body of work. Rajan then draws on this research to formulate a set of questions and provides feedback to students on the art of academic interviewing and public engagement. Some of the students have been particularly focused on the production of the podcast, and in the process, have honed their skills in audio recording and editing. The GEJO internship is, for the most part, credit bearing, thereby enabling students to take it instead of another required course, and helping those saddled with high numbers of working hours each week in addition to schoolwork to participate in a program like this. That said, Rajan raised funds to support two students during the first two years with a scholarship, and the goal is to expand fund-raising in order to fund more students. The student interns are selected on the basis of interviews by their peers, who also on-board them prior to the formal work with Rajan. The internship thus far has provided students an opportunity to build on their formal schoolwork and acquire skills and expertise that can serve them in future professional careers, including academic research and service, communications, and public engagement.
STUDENT IMPACT
In the absence of quantitative metrics, it is difficult to assess the impact of the GEJO. Instead, the co-authors followed the tradition on the UCSC campus of eliciting written feedback from students, and invited all GEJO interns and contributing authors to provide their assessments of the project. It is difficult, based on the responses received, to generalize about student impact; and such assessments require systematic approaches that an informal program like the GEJO lacks the resources to conduct. That said, the student responses, such as they are, offer useful insights on student experiences and outcomes. The purpose of this section is to summarize some of the student comments and offer some commentary and insight. We begin with testimonials from two students mentored by co-author Lu on their senior theses, which were selected for publication in the GEJO journal.
My paternal grandparents and father fled Chile’s coup d’état in 1973 for a stable life and intellectual freedom. My mother, the first in her family to study biology, came to the United States from Ecuador for a summer research internship and eventually obtained a PhD. While I was able to navigate the intricacies of attending a large, public university cushioned by different aspects of privilege – two parents with postgraduate degrees and (in many cases) a white-presenting exterior – I still questioned my place as a first-generation American, as a Latina, as a Jewish woman. My involvement in interdisciplinary research is truly where I discovered my sense of belonging, particularly when I established a connection to environmental politics and justice in Ecuador, my second home.
Alejandra Zieger’s words hint at the interconnection between students’ identities, knowledge production, and sense of belonging at the university. Her thesis focused on the Andean Indigenous cosmology sumak kawsay, which loosely translates to “good living” and encompasses the importance of living harmoniously with nature. Alejandra argued that sumak kawsay was appropriated by the Ecuadorian national government under the administration of Rafael Correa and utilized to justify oil extractivism. The government’s agenda of resource nationalism and the justification for oil drilling and mining to promote prosperity was deeply flawed, especially for Indigenous communities whose territories constitute the sites of such exploitation. Alejandra conducted focus groups with Waorani women living in a village along an oil road, who shared their first-hand accounts of environmental degradation and its effects on quality of life and on mental and physical health. She admitted that the senior thesis pushed her, resulting in “many internal debates I had on whether I was as capable as others believed me to be. I remember feeling unsure about my ability to write a paper of this caliber and did not know if I would have any success conducting qualitative research out in the field.”
Similarly, when Riri Shibata talks about her undergraduate journey at UCSC, she also admits to grappling with imposter syndrome. “As a first-generation, queer woman of color, I constantly questioned my intellectual abilities, unfamiliar with navigating the social and cultural systems of higher education.” Riri was born in Japan but emigrated to the US at a young age: “I am a ‘Generation 1.5’: someone between two cultures, a hybrid identity. I had always felt like I was playing a tug-of-war between two cultures, trying to fit in rather than finding a place of belonging.”
Just as Alejandra undertook thesis research in her maternal place of origin (Ecuador) and spent time in a part of the country (the Amazon rainforest) with which she was largely unfamiliar, Riri traveled to a part of Japan – Okinawa – where she had not spent time previously. An early version of the project focused on food sovereignty and dietary practices that contributed to Okinawans’ lauded long life spans, Okinawa being known as a “Blue Zone” with a high concentration of centennials. However, Riri learned that Okinawa no longer led the world in longevity, and she spent one summer investigating the relation between the loss of traditional food practices and health. The surveys, interviews, and observations pointed to the powerful presence of the US military; and Riri’s thesis – based on a second summer of research – ended up exploring how Indigenous communities like that of Okinawa resist, adapt, and/or struggle under foreign military occupation. As she reflected:
“Okinawan traditional food culture seems to be slowly fading as the presence of the military further encroaches on their daily lives. I personally related to the ways food and food practices impacted residents’ connection to place, as I recalled the feelings I had when I moved away to college.”
Both Riri and Alejandra’s theses earned accolades for academic excellence, winning the Deans’ and Chancellor’s Awards, for the finest theses in the division and campus, respectively. Their projects constitute two of the four theses that Lu mentored – all of them authored by women of color – which were accepted for publication in the first issue of Global Environmental Justice. Not only are the authors diverse, but their research amplifies the voices of people around the world, from Native Amazonian women to elderly Okinawan residents. Most of the senior theses written in Environmental Studies are read by one or two faculty; the student-led journal makes this work more widely accessible. Alejandra stated, “I could not believe how much I was learning about the present-day effects of colonialism and loss of traditional ecological knowledge, a topic far removed from commonplace conversations in Santa Cruz and the United States at large.” As Riri reflected,
the opportunity to convey the voices of those directly affected by issues such as military occupation brought me a sense of purpose and confidence. Before I knew it, those feelings of imposter syndrome and cultural dissonance faded, all because of the educational experience that my mentors and university provided me. When I first came to UCSC, I would have never thought as an undergraduate I would be given the opportunity to travel across the world to make my research dream into reality. Coming to one of the top research institutions in the world, I did not think that my interests and aspirations would be worth anyone’s time.
Their transformative educational experiences have shaped their professional trajectories. At the time of writing of this chapter, Alejandra was a research assistant at the Project for Education Research that Scales , an organization that translates research findings into practical solutions toward educational equity. She conducts educational psychology research on the importance of classroom belonging and student voice on academic engagement and success. As Riri explained, “The feeling of confidence, reassurance, and unconditional support my mentors and different opportunities at UCSC gave inspired me to want to give others a similar experience.” Riri went into undergraduate advising, first at UCSC (for the Environmental Studies Department) and currently at San Francisco State University. “With my experience and determination to help students navigate their own journeys, I wanted to become an academic adviser to understand students’ obstacles, support their ambitions, and create academic goals and plans that realize their unique aspirations the way my mentors did.”
Next, we explore some comments by students who interned with the GEJO. A place to start is with impressions of members of the podcast team. Consider the following quotes:
I joined the Global Environmental Justice Observatory because it aligned with my major and the career choices I have in line for myself. As the lead podcast producer for the 2021–22 school year, I have worked closely with Professor Ravi Rajan, communicated with environmental justice professionals from all over the world, and collaborated with the podcast team in order to create and organize a high-quality podcast. (Audrey Peshkam)
As an intern for the Global Environmental Justice Observatory, I have had the privilege to work with like-minded individuals that share a passion for Environmental Justice concerns. The Observatory has provided me with resources and mentors that are continuing to impact my future career and academic goals as an undergraduate. My role consists of being a part of the podcast team as a podcast producer, and it has allowed me to expand my knowledge on technology and the way technology is shaping the academic sphere. The podcast was quite new when I first joined the Observatory and my contribution has been to help organize the podcast processes as a sustainable model for future interns to follow. In many respects, my experience as an intern grew my knowledge on the work I aspire to do in the future and has molded me to make the most of the academic resources offered as an undergraduate student. (Sarah Luna)
Working with the podcast team gave students like Audrey and Sarah an opportunity to interact with leading professionals in different ways. Audrey, and her successor, Alcides Fuentes, took on an externally forward-facing role, corresponding with the podcast guests, scheduling their interviews, and editing the podcast. Sarah and others did some of the crucial backend work, conducting research based on the writings of the podcast guests, and preparing draft questions which formed the basis for the actual interviews. These complementary roles gave students the opportunity to hone their skills in areas that are traditionally outside the ambit of conventional academic research, while affording them opportunities to lead and work with established global professionals. Members of the journal and art teams, however, derived other experiences, as the following three quotes suggest:
Being a member in the Global Environmental Justice Observatory continues to shape the way I engage with peers, mentors, and key agents who create, write, and speak about environmental justice issues. I now feel like a change-maker and I have an interesting perspective on environmental justice and its intersection with discourses in anthropology, sociology, geography, feminist studies, and more! Participating in interviews and editing large bodies of text from student researchers provided me with a unique insight into academic discourse. There have been inspiring moments where I grew in my capacity to expand on environmental justice vocabulary and terminology on research material from students. Concepts in the environmental discourse such as intersectionality, stewardship, indigeneity, and human rights are topics and themes that I have been able to become familiar with during this internship. (Cait Schilt)
The Global Environmental Justice Observatory has allowed me to learn more about environmental justice, work ethics, professionalism, and what it takes to be a team player. By engaging with my fellow peers and mentors, I have been able to grow as an intern and as an agent of change to produce an asset for both the environmental justice community and for those who would like to be engaged with the environmental justice community. Every week I work with my peers and mentors to contribute to the Global Environmental Justice Observatory, particularly for the Journal Editorial Board, where we not only work efficiently and passionately to produce and publish a volume filled with undergraduate academic essays, but also spread awareness of ongoing problems within the field of environmental justice. I have been doing outreach to obtain more undergraduate essays so that we can publish more volumes that are open to the public. (Sachi Powelson)
I co-authored a grant that was awarded by the CITRIS Tech for Social Good program that will fund an art show featuring student work that focuses on themes relating to environmental justice. Our hope is that this art show will grow into an annual event that will engage the student body at UC Santa Cruz and allow young artists to achieve recognition for their work, while also promoting interdisciplinary examination of environmental movements and problems. This internship has given me the opportunity to think creatively about how I, as a student, can contribute to the field of environmentalism and has also facilitated the development of connections with my peers who share the same passion for social justice and the protection of the earth. (Christina Vagnoni)
Through the GEJO, students are building belonging in multiple ways, with students transitioning from consumers of academic products to gaining a sense of how scholarly works are created and produced. Students who wrote senior theses found a much broader audience for their scholarship. For example, Kimberly Dare, whose senior thesis about the need for greater racial equity and mentoring for BIPOC students in the Environmental Studies Department was published in the second issue of the journal, said, “I do find it incredible that my thesis will be alongside other students’ theses and just knowing that it’s available somewhere else.” The production of a journal necessitated that student editors understood the grammar and logic of academic works, which in turn meant that they learned how to engage with the written work of other students and render it ready for publication in an academic journal. This process of learning, guided by faculty, meant that these student interns emerged with a good sense of how to produce academic work themselves. All three of these students, and others, went on to author significant works themselves. The 2020 UCSC UCUES survey found that while 34% of respondents had undertaken a research project or paper as part of coursework, only 19% had assisted faculty in conducting research and 14% had conducted their own research under faculty guidance. Clearly the kinds of research experiences showcased in the GEJO are needed.
Moreover, there is a celebration of the joy of discovery, serendipity and experimentation that stems from the design of the GEJO internship. Instead of being highly structured, the GEJO was set up as a platform infrastructure that enables exploration, with students afforded considerable freedom to shape their learning experience. In turn, the student interns were very inventive, and created multiple learning experiences that ranged from the conventional (e.g., reading groups) to novel (e.g., environmental justice through art). They also took ownership, meeting on their own on a weekly basis in addition to regular meetings with Rajan, and undertaking a number of activities that ranged from regular hikes to visiting cultural events. These initiatives also helped forge a learning community, which took on a particularly helpful tone during the pandemic, as it afforded a support network at a time when most students had felt isolated.
CONCLUSION
We believe that the GEJO highlights four key takeaways relevant for other environmental programs in higher education. First, it reflects the aspirations, identities and lived experiences of student demographics that had hitherto not felt included within the discipline of environmental studies. In a predominantly white department, students of color and other under-represented groups are often not positioned as ones who are experts in environmental studies, an example of educational deficit thinking (Castro, 2014). As Riri stated:
While UC Santa Cruz, and specifically the Environmental Studies Department promotes diversity, it is still a predominantly white institution with a larger wealthy student body, which emphasized the feeling that I did not belong there. Studying environmental studies and/or sustainability in higher education can often feel alienating for many of our students coming from marginalized communities. Oftentimes, the material does not reflect their daily lived experiences with the environment, and the injustice and inequalities they face because of it. Furthermore, what is taught under sustainability programs feels like an appropriation of the ways our ancestors learned to survive and nurture the changes and challenges they faced. During my time at the Environmental Studies Department, I faced challenges with the need for more diversity, equity, and inclusion for our students.
The GEJO has strong representation of scholars of color and non-Western ancestry. These are students with cultural competency, diverse knowledge, language skills, first-hand experience of environmental injustice, etc. to bring to this work. The GEJO gave these students a sense of belonging, a community of practice, and convivial spaces that enabled them to explore their ideas and to drive their own education.
Second, the GEJO created platforms that complement existing facilities and infrastructure provided by the university as a whole. It is worth noting here the salience of the concept of inverse infrastructures in theories of empowerment. The idea first emerged in Dutch attempts at consultative and participatory design, wherein – rather than impose infrastructures on communities based on expert judgment processes – infrastructures were built from below, drawing upon the specific needs of local communities. The GEJO is an example of deploying the concept in the context of higher education. It also draws upon Esteva’s (1987) idea of hammocks, wherein he proposes that people’s spaces can be regenerated by enabling communities to mold them to their needs, in the same way that hammocks adapt to the shape of human bodies, rather than forcing bodies to adapt to the shape of furniture. In the GEJO, the design decision described earlier, to have students shape the nature of their learning experience, was an example of the hammock concept in education. A practical example was the art competition and exhibition, which resulted in the hallways of the department being turned into a gallery about environmental justice, which made marginalized students felt more welcome in a department that is often hostile to them.
Third, the GEJO educated students not only in concepts and theories, but about what quality means in academia. Rather than the products of their work being judged by professors, they learned what high-quality research publications should look like. In turn, they applied this learning while selecting and editing articles for publication in the journal. It is worth mentioning here that dynamics of which peer-to-peer or near-peer learning enabled horizontal learning experiences, and not just vertical power dynamics in which the faculty are the only ones who opine and evaluate. As a consequence, students learned to more critically assess work.
Fourth, the GEJO enabled the building of relationships of trust, which in turn enabled honest feedback and mentorship. The sheer time that both Lu and Rajan invested in their students meant that the latter genuinely believed in their inputs. In turn, the two co-authors could push the envelope further and derive great results, such as high-quality, honors- and award-winning senior theses. Such support – namely when students are set up for success and feel like they are trusted and seen by mentors – fosters students’ sense of self-efficacy. Consequently, they can feel comfortable emotionally and mentally to then take the leap to being uncomfortable in an academic sense (e.g., going out of their comfort zone, extending themselves, expressing opinions that might differ from those of others, etc.).
Moving forward, the GEJO is going to focus more on the “global” part of our name, to forge networks beyond the US. The fact that the internship is open to students from all over the world encouraged students from afar – including the UK and the Netherlands, to take two examples – to join and participate. This in turn led to close friendships, shared projects, and thereby the broadening of perspectives all round.
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