- Research Grants
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 2023 grants. Applications are due January 31, 2023.
- Research Grants Awarded
- Molly King (Sociology) - $3000Ready-to-Roll: Emergency Preparedness Intervention for People with Mobility Disabilities in the Face of Climate Disaster
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.
- Maryam Mobed Miremadi (Bioengineering) & Maryam Khanbaghi (Electrical Engineering) - $3000Fair Distribution of Electric Power One Microgrid at a Time
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.
- Won Jung Kim & Kathleen Jablon Stoehr (Education) - $3000Research-Practice Partnership with Beginning STEM Teachers and their Students in East San Jose Communities
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.
- Jesica Siham Fernández (Ethnic Studies) - $3000The Youth for Justice Project: A Racial & Environmental Justice School-Based Art for Action Afterschool Program
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.
- Sharmila Lodhia (Women’s & Gender Studies) & Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health) - $3000Mapping the Legacy of Redlining in San Jose, CA during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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.
- CJ Gabbe (Environmental Studies & Sciences) & Jamie Chang (Public Health) - $3000Assessing Extreme Heat Vulnerability for the Unhoused in San Jose
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.
- Lisa Martinez (Bronco Urban Gardens) & Laura Nichols (Sociology) - $3000Growing Neighborhood Resilience via School-Based and Community Garden Research
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.
- Lee Panich (Anthropology) - $3000Reclaiming Traditional Ecological Knowledge for the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation
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.
- Naomi Levy (Political Science) & Ryan Tans (Political Science) - $3000The Consequences of Coastal Reclamation in Indonesia
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.
- Kristin Kusanovich (Theatre & Dance) & Omar Davila (Child Studies) - $3000Climate Creativity: An Environmental Justice project for Youth Creators & Protectors
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.
- Molly King (Sociology) - $3000Disability and Climate Change Knowledge
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.