Community Engaged Research (CER) is increasingly being considered a conduit to social and environmental social justice by actively engaging communities in the process of knowledge creation. This study explored CER engagement and perceptions among Environmental Engineering and Science faculty. AEESP members and others were invited to complete an online survey. Among 145 survey respondents, only 43% agreed that CER scholarship is recognized and rewarded during annual review, promotion and tenure (RPT) at their institution; 54% disagreed that members of RPT committees understand CER scholarship. Over half (59%) reported currently or previously conducting CER; leverage salience theory predicts that faculty engaged in CER were over-represented among survey respondents. Among those conducting CER, 81% had received funding for some of their CER; a median of 30% of their CER proposals had been funded. The most common CER funding sources were federal agencies (53%), the local university (43%), other (22%), NGOs (21%), and state agencies (13%). Among CER-active faculty, 81% had published their CER. The publication venues included: refereed journal papers (59%), refereed conference proceedings (37%), non-refereed conference papers (18%), conference abstracts (18%), book chapters (12%), and other forms (27%); 25% indicated that they have not published some CER work. Open-ended responses reflected a range of themes, including that CER was inconsistently valued on the standard metrics of funding and publications, may be more challenging than traditional research, and may be confused with service or teaching. This pilot study with a limited number of responses indicates the need for further research.

The Hispanic Alliance for the Graduate Education and the Professoriate (H-AGEP) developed and implemented a model to train and transition Hispanic STEM doctoral students into faculty positions at community colleges. The National Center of Educational Statistics reported that only 5% of all full-time faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions were from a Hispanic background, and the percentage is even lower in STEM areas. There is a national need to increase the number of Hispanic faculty. The H-AGEP program focuses on this educational need. The Alliance comprises the City College of New York, the University of Texas at El Paso, LaGuardia Community College, Queensborough Community College, and El Paso Community College. The model consists of teaching mentoring and training, mentoring training for undergraduate students at community colleges, and professional development to address career preparation, transitioning, and advancement at academic careers in community colleges. Over the last five years, five cohorts with 27 graduate students have been recruited. The evaluation findings reflect the Fellows’ skills improvement in teaching and mentoring and the Fellow’s perception changes about considering community college faculty as a career. The integrated research examines the factors that influence the success of Hispanic doctoral students as they complete doctoral degrees and enter their professions. The presentation will focus on the model elements and the program’s success and challenges.

Early engagement in undergraduate research promotes improved critical thinking, scientific reasoning, academic performance, retention, and satisfaction with college. We initiated a Water Science Communication Fellowship for students to create a communication project to educate the public on a water resources issue. Two tracks of students were recruited: 1) Early-stage students who had never participated in research and produced a project based on an assigned mentor’s research; and 2) later-stage students who produced a project based on their own existing research. Students select their own mediums (e.g., paintings, podcasts, videos, infographics) and work individually with their mentor and together as a cohort to develop and refine their projects. Participating students and mentors represent a wide variety of backgrounds, including biology, physics, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, economics, environmental science, and geography. Several tangible benefits were seen in the program’s first year. Students formed an active multidisciplinary cohort that created a sense of belonging to the university; most of the students are now working in the research lab of their mentor; and students from the prior year’s cohort are organizing and mentoring the next year’s cohort. Research mentors have obtained broader visibility of their research by using the produced communications pieces in grant proposals, research papers, presentations, websites, and other public avenues for knowledge sharing. In the program’s second year, qualitative and quantitative surveys were implemented to measure if participation increases students’ self-efficacy and research identity. Results can be used to scale this opportunity and create similar communication fellowships for other transdisciplinary programs.

It is well established that communities of color experience disproportionate exposures to environmental contaminants producing negative health outcomes, and that many of these exposures are legacies of residential racial segregation, such as redlining and underbounding. While the environmental justice movement has made great strides in incorporating public health research into these issues, there has been less effort focused on integrating environmental engineering training into the movement. This presentation describes our NSF supported research on developing and implementing a suite of integrated, interdisciplinary, community-engaged, anti-racism training opportunities for civil and environmental engineering undergraduates at the University of South Florida and the University of California, Berkeley to build capacity for addressing environmental justice challenges. For this project, we integrate environmental engineering, applied anthropology, and STEM education to redesign existing civil and environmental engineering courses to focus on equitable development within a particular community while providing broader educational training to address environmental engineering challenges, meet community identified needs, and consider the systemic impacts of structural racism. Initial partnerships and interventions are focused on the historically segregated Black community of East Tampa, and include research on urban infrastructure, brownfields, food security, and jobs creation among other issues. The project is also studying the impacts of the new curriculum on student perceptions of racism and justice and on faculty interest and capacity for catalyzing additional curricular and co-curricular change. A greater goal of these efforts is to address Environmental Engineering Grand Challenges identified by the National Academies through updated engineering accreditation criteria.