The Initiative provides grants to SCU faculty members to conduct research on environmental justice, especially involving a community-based approach. 

Here is the request for proposals for the 2021-2022 round of grants. Applications were due January 31, 2022.We will accept a new round of applications in the 2022-2023 academic year

This program supports SCU faculty and academic staff to develop curricular projects that engage students in community-engaged research and/or advocacy about issues of environmental and social justice. Participants can develop a new curricular project or revise an existing one, and can apply to include a Teaching Assistant or Research Assistant in the program. The program is named for Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which urged humanity to act on the twin crises of ecological destruction and social justice.

Here is the request for proposals for Laudato Si’ across the Curriculum for the 2022 cohort of participants. These applications were due January 31, 2022. The program will accept a new round of applications in the 2022-2023 academic year.

This study uses surveys to investigate how people with disabilities prepare for climate-related disasters. Together with community partner United Spinal, the project will work to rectify the disproportionate impact of climate change on disabled populations by addressing the current lack of disaster preparedness among people with mobility disabilities by studying the impact of providing disaster kits and education outreach.

Power outages are very costly. Investment in grid modernization will save the U.S. economy billions of dollars, but this investment doesn’t seem to be equitably shared. This community-based research project assesses loss of electricity in low-income communities and strategies to help these communities to benefit from reliable and affordable clean energy.

The project involves conducting a research-practice partnership with beginning STEM teachers and their students to critically examine and take conscious actions on climate and environmental issues. This partnership will support students to act as rightful youth experts in examining and exposing environmental injustices experienced by students’ local and global communities. 

The Youth for Justice Project is an afterschool program in downtown San José that supports preadolescent youth in developing their sociopolitical citizenship through a critical ethnic studies art-centered curriculum. The project supports middle school youth in their understanding of racial and environmental justice and centers youth voices within communities experiencing systemic inequities.

This project will augment a student-developed website illustrating how current racial segregation and COVID-19 trends in San Jose, CA are shaped by redlining practices. Through outreach with community organizations we aim to further develop this interactive tool to meet the education and advocacy goals of organizations working at the intersections of environmental justice and public health.

Extreme heat harms communities in unequal ways, with people who are vulnerable most affected. There is limited evidence about how heat affects people who are unhoused. Our community-based research assesses (1) heat exposure for people living in homeless encampments in San Jose; and (2) strategies that people who are homeless use to cope with extreme heat.

The purpose of this project is to formulate a participatory research process with parents to collect data from students at Gardner and Washington Elementary schools who participate in SCU’s Center for Sustainability Garden Clubs and Garden Labs. The grant will allow for students and parents to work together with SCU partners on a community-defined project related to environmental justice and healthy living in their community.

This project supports the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s efforts to restore traditional landscape management practices via its Preservation Foundation. We seek to recover traditional ecological knowledge—including information on plants, animals, and gathering places—from early anthropological field notes to contribute to the environmental health and sovereignty of the contemporary tribal community.

Reclamation promises to reinforce coastlines against rising seas, but it also threatens to draw people to the coast, compounding risks and displacing existing communities. In this project, we partner with Walhi, an environmental advocacy NGO, to document the effects of reclamation on wealthy and poor coastal communities in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

This community-based, environmental justice project invites children/youth/families from Santa Maria Urban Ministries programs in the greater Washington neighborhood of San Jose to imagine themselves as artistic creators and protectors of the climate. Participants shape research questions and goals that are culturally and neighborhood-specific, investigate relevant scientific concepts/findings/solutions, express their feelings and visions through higher-order thinking in the visual and performing arts, and present their creations, discoveries, and advocacy plans in the first youth-led tUrn Climate Creativity headliner at SCU.

This study uses interviews to investigate how disability identity and information seeking affect the range of potential responses to climate change. It will help to rectify the disproportionate impact of climate change on disabled populations by addressing the current lack of research on how people with mobility disabilities prepare for and deal with environmental change.