COMMUNITY OUTREACH
BROADENING DIVERSITY IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES THROUGH A HIGH SCHOOL RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Project: Broadening Diversity in the Environmental Sciences Through a High School Environmental Justice Focused Research Experience
Project Lead: Steven Goldsmith, PhD, associate Professor, Geography and the Environment
Urban communities often suffer the greatest damage from poor water, air, and soil quality. Geoscience programs, including the environmental sciences, are the foundation for jobs tasked with remedying these problems; however, the racially minoritized residents who disproportionately experience environmental burdens are vastly underrepresented in these fields.
This partnership with Walter B. Saul High School in Philadelphia uses and immersive, locally based, culturally responsive research experience in urban environmental geochemistry, through an environmental justice lens, to broaden a pathway to the geosciences for underrepresented minoritized students. Students are engaged though both school-based active learning modules and a solutions-based summer research experience carried out alongside Villanova undergraduate students.
