Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Increasing Diversity and Community Participation to Achieve Environmental and Social Justice

Abstract

Communities of color are disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution and by obstacles to influence policies that impact environmental health. Black, Hispanic, and Native American students and faculty are also largely underrepresented in environmental engineering programs in the United States. Nearly 80 participants of a workshop at the 2019 Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Research and Education Conference developed recommendations for reversing these trends. Workshop participants identified factors for success in academia, which included adopting a broader definition for the impact of research and teaching. Participants also supported the use of community-based participatory research and classroom action research methods in engineering programs for recruiting, retaining, and supporting the transition of underrepresented students into professional and academic careers. However, institutions must also evolve to recognize the academic value of community-based work to enable faculty, especially underrepresented minority faculty, who use it effectively, to succeed in tenure promotions. Workshop discussions elucidated potential causal relationships between factors that influence the co-creation of research related to academic skills, community skills, mutual trust, and shared knowledge. Based on the discussions from this workshop, we propose a pathway for increasing diversity and community participation in the environmental engineering discipline by exposing students to community-based participatory methods, establishing action research groups for faculty, broadening the definition of research impact to improve tenure promotion experiences for minority faculty, and using a mixed methods approach to evaluate its impact.

Racial and Gender Diversity Among Students and Faculty in EHAC-Accredited Environmental Health Sciences Programs: Trend Analysis from 2009 to 2021

“… 30 , 31 This underrepresentation needs to be addressed through effective recruiting, retaining, and supporting strategies. 32 However, no published gender or racial diversity studies on students and faculty specifically in the field of environmental health currently exist, which would be beneficial in determining the extent to which efforts and resources to increase diversity among EHS students and faculty are needed.…”

Cultivating solidarity for action on social justice in engineering

“…Efforts to critically analyze injustices in and through engineering and its education have been in motion for quite some time. In recent years, efforts to integrate justice into engineering education have generated momentum to explore pathways to counteract and correct the negative impacts engineering and engineering education have on marginalized populations (Montoya et al, 2021;Leydens & Lucena, 2017;Winberg & Winberg, 2017;Karwat, 2015;Lucena, 2013;Cumming-Potvin & Currie, 2013;Baillie & Pawley, 2012;Riley, 2008;Baillie, 2006).…”

Toward Operationalizing Equity in Water Infrastructure Services: Developing a Definition of Water Equity

“…In addition, water-sector infrastructure literature offers inconsistent definitions of equity and does not explicitly distinguish between equity and equality. Equity studies in the water sector have focused on water affordability, − water quality, and health exposures, the view that water is a right or economic good, , and the spatial distribution of water services . These studies do not propose an operational definition for use in practice.…”