Fostering community-driven research and learning for social and environmental justice

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Are you an SCU faculty or staff member who is curious about how your existing work might link to environmental justice? What kinds of professional development opportunities would you like to be available? Are you looking for potential research partners among faculty, staff, or community organizations? Do you want to explore ideas for collaborative grant proposals? Join us on April 5 or 11 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. to learn about SCU’s Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative, including:

• ongoing research projects
• opportunities for collaboration, mentorship, and networking around environmental justice
• training programs for faculty
• forming community-based research partnerships
• availability of small grants and seed funding for your projects
• how to become involved in the Initiative

Register here. Refreshments provided. Questions? Feel free to contact Iris Stewart-Frey.

Register for this upcoming event on April 18 at 7:00 PM in SCU’s Music Recital Hall, organized by the Initiative’s Jesica S. Fernández, who recently launched our new Youth and Environmental Justice Project. The event will bring together Greater Silicon Valley environmental justice youth activists to reflect on and discuss their concerns and radical hopes for climate action. By featuring Fruits of Labor (2021), a documentary highlighting the story of a young girl agricultural worker and high school student in Watsonville, CA, the event will invite the audience to reflect on the complexities of coming of age in a time of climate change, environmental injustices, and economic inequities that intersect with race, gender, age, and immigrant status. The differential yet interwoven youth experiences, as featured in the film and through the testimonies of youth activists who will serve as panelists, will be complemented by insights from the documentary director, Emily Cohen Ibañez. The event will invite us to imagine possibilities for solidarity in action as we work toward climate actions that can restore sustainability and global thriving.

The Initiative’s Christopher Bacon, SCU Center for Sustainability Director Lindsey Kalkbrenner, and SCU Vice-President of Mission and Ministry Alison M. Benders presented to Chief Mission Officers and Campus Ministry Directors from Jesuit institutions, who visited SCU in November for an Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) meeting. Bacon, Kalkbrenner, and Benders summarized how Jesuit higher education is engaging with Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ encyclical and recent exhortation Laudato Deum, which calls for urgent action for climate and environmental justice. The trio also presented a case study of SCU's collaborative Leading Through Laudato Si’ Action Planning process, sharing strategies for sustainability governance, integration with university-wide strategic planning, and community engagement. As part of his work as Co-Chair of AJCU’s Laudato Si’ Commission, Bacon shared research conducted with students Annika Sodergren, Mary Xiang, and Katie Duffy, showing that more than 90% of the Jesuit higher education institutions in the U.S. and Canada have committed to Pope Francis’ 7-Year Journey Towards Integral Ecology, and preliminary results of a carbon emissions and climate action inventory. The Laudato Si’ Commission is currently developing transformative proposals for Jesuit higher education as they prepare for high-level presentations at the AJCU Faith, Justice & Reconciliation Assembly July 16-19, 2024.

Jennifer Merritt (SCU Miller Center), Laura Robinson (Miller Center, Sociology), and the Initiative’s Iris Stewart-Frey presented on the Miller Center Model of Undergraduate Action Research with Social Enterprises for Social Justice, and its intersections with the Initiative’s community-driven research and learning for environmental justice to the first international/multi-institutional Social Impact Start-Up Academy (SISTAC) networking meeting. The SCU team emphasized the role of Jesuit values of educating the whole person and the inspiration provided by the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si in shaping long-term international community partnerships, continuously improving our curriculum, and impact-oriented fellowships designed to advance Sustainable Development Goals. Stewart-Frey also shared insights from her work last summer in Rwanda with Jibu and a student team. Jibu empowers women and provides sustainable and clean drinking water to residents of eight African countries. 

In Our Research

Iris Stewart-Frey, colleague Jake Dialesandro and collaborators from California Rural Legal Assistance, and undergraduate students Samantha Lei, Lilah Foster, Sarah Movahedi, and Euichan Seo presented their work on barriers to accessing safe drinking water in the Central Valley through multiple presentations at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December 2023. Stewart-Frey gave an invited presentation on community-driven and co-produced water informatics to address vexing nitrate contamination under drought for the Central Valley’s environmental justice communities (based on research by Stewart, Dialesandro, Noel, Jensen, Foster, and Lei). Other presentations focused on:

• Documenting Shade and Tree Canopy Access Inequity under Extreme Heat for Environmental Justice Communities in a Large City of California's Central Valley (Dialesandro, Stewart, Seo, Lei, Movahedi) 
• Lip Service on the Advancement in Water Equity and Justice in California's Central Valley with the Implementation of the CV-SALTS Program (Lei, Stewart, Dialesandro )
• An Analysis of Disadvantaged Communities in the Central Valley for the Sake of Water Equity and Justice through the Implementation of the CV-SALTS Program (Movahedi, Stewart, Dialesandro, Lei). 

An article related to this work was published in Eos.

The County of Santa Clara awarded the Initiative's Food and Climate Justice Program and community partners Veggielution and Democracy at Work Institute $217,000 in support of a two year project to create a more diverse, equitable, and resilient regional food economy. The project’s goals include developing a food worker-owned cooperative in East San Jose, CA, and conducting a feasibility study and policy analysis with small-scale food entrepreneurs. The project will involve organizing a set of participatory education and networking activities linking the cooperative with potential buyers, including regional hospitals and universities that are using values-based procurement policies (such as the Good Food Purchasing Program) to transform their institutional food systems. The Initiative’s Christopher Bacon (Principal Investigator) will collaborate with students, colleagues and partners to conduct and the feasibility study using a community-based participatory action research approach; disseminate study results; co-produce an agroecology, urban agriculture and food policy summer short-course; and provide support for a participatory monitoring and evaluation process. Student research assistants will have an active role, including SCU alumnus, Antonio Amore Rojas, who Veggielution recently hired to serve as the cooperative manager to help launch this project.  

The Initiative’s Christopher Bacon and student researchers Katie Duffy, Paulina Ursua Garcia, and Mary Xiang presented and facilitated a community conversation on student basic needs at SCU’s inaugural First-Generation, Limited-Income Student Conference (FLI). The team shared research findings showing that first-generation students are significantly more likely to be food insecure, an overwhelming majority are from low-income households, and international students are more likely to be food insecure. The researchers recommended more data sharing and study of the status of first-generation, limited-income, graduate, and international students; greater collaboration across departments at SCU to refer students to available resources; and increased visibility of resources for students in need. More information about SCU student basic needs research can be found on the team’s blog. The conference was hosted and organized by the LEAD Scholars program and sponsored by the Office of the President, the Inclusive Excellence Division, SCU Admissions, the Division of Student Life, the Ignatian Center, and the Department of Sociology.

Research Grant Spotlight

Highlights of research supported by our research grant program.

Recent Programming

In November 2023, the Initiative’s Chad Raphael presented at two workshops on integrating environmental justice into the elementary and high school curriculum. At SCU, Chad presented on community science and environmental justice to visiting K-12 science teachers from Incheon, South Korea, hosted by Initiative grant recipient Won Jung Kim (SCU School of Education and Counseling Psychology). He also presented on incorporating integral ecology across the curriculum to a secondary school educators’ summit organized by Jesuits East. Chad is collaborating with Michael Downs from Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland and Brenna Davis of the Ignatian Solidarity Network to organize a west coast high school educator summit at SCU in June 2024, thanks to support from SCU’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education and Division of Inclusive Excellence, and a Bishop O’Dowd donor.

Smallholder farmers practicing rainfed agriculture in the Central American Dry Corridor are particularly vulnerable to climate change. The initiative's Iris Stewart-Frey and collaborators and community partner CII-ASDENIC have co-developed a climate app (NicaAgua) designed to provide locally-adapted state-of-the-art climate forecasts and climate change information. Between November 2023 and March 2024, the SCU team supported CII-ASDENIC in facilitating a series of capacity-building workshops in the Condega region of Nicaragua that focused on hands-on training for familiarization with the app, and feedback regarding usability for decision-making.  Smallholder farmers reflected on what they interpreted from climate graphics and what information is most needed, giving impetus for further design and development of the NicaAgua app.

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