Environmental & Social Justice

Candice Youngblood has received a $20,000 grant from Aerie to develop Youth on Root, a state-wide youth leadership program focusing on environmental health disparities. Youth on Root seeks to be a healing space and educational resource for high schoolers in low-income communities. The initiative was featured on Forbes magazine's website:

Abstract

For decades, families across a swath of southeast Los Angeles County have lived in an environmental disaster zone, their kids playing in yards polluted with brain-damaging lead while they wait on a state agency to remove contaminated soil from thousands of homes. Now, the cleanup faces even greater uncertainty. A bankruptcy plan by Exide Technologies, which operated the now-closed lead-acid battery smelter in Vernon that is blamed for the pollution, would allow the site to be abandoned with the remediation unfinished.

Nigel Golden presented the 2020 Ambrose Jearld Jr. Lecture on Diversity and Inclusion in July. His remarks focused on the importance of addressing the cultural and structural barriers to full participation by marginalized communities in STEM. Golden provided a framework for addressing the systemic issues that may explain and/or address those barriers.