Establishing Collaborative Partnerships for Equity and Justice

Virtual Workshop at the American Geophysical Union Meeting

Thursday, December 8th, 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. CT

To participate, you must be registered for the AGU meeting & you will need to add this workshop to your registration. If you have already registered, just return to the registration page and click on the dashboard "add sessions and events."

The advancement of equity and justice by the geoscience community calls not only for improving monitoring and forecasting to uncover climate and environmental health inequities at multiple scales, but also intentionally collaborating with community members, organizations, and decision makers to enable cultural and structural change. Because of our current education and training structures, this type of work is often outside of the expertise and comfort level of earth and environmental science faculty and practitioners.

Opportunities to collaborate to advance health equity are growing at AGU and beyond in response to community demand. At AGU this includes work by the Thriving Earth Exchange to help establish local partnerships between scientists and community organizations, position statements that feature education and collaboration strategies for equity (see for example Climate Change), and efforts by the AGU GeoHealth Policy & Leadership Committee to develop community-wide action opportunities.

Please join our AGU GeoHealth initiated session that will support scientists in identifying strategies to work with community partners in your research, education, and community engagement. Learn from and engage with expert panelists that have expertise engaging for justice and then plan action goals and activities to incorporate into education or research. This workshop will help you get started or help you innovate engaging environmental justice through research and teaching, in collaboration with community partners. Participants will be encouraged to explore additional case studies on partnerships created by AGU before the workshop begins. This session targets early career scientists who are planning community engaged research & education but welcomes all seeking to get started in community partnerships.

Expert Panelists

• Kelly Crawford, Sr. Advisor for Energy Equity and Environmental Justice, US DOE office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
• Mónica Diane Ramírez-Andreotta, Associate Professor, Environmental Science, Public Health, and Global Change Programs at The University of Arizona, scientists and collaborator with multiple community organizations through Project Harvest, gardenroots, Our Soil.
• Leatra Harper, FreshWater Accountability Project, Thriving Earth Exchange Community Lead for on Identifying Contaminants in Drinking Water.
• Karlos Marshall, Co-Founder and President, The Conscious Connect, Chief Diversity Officer, Dayton Metro Library

Workshop Facilitators

• Sarah Fortner, Office of Sustainability, Carleton College
• Kelly Crawford, Department of Energy and Environment
• Melisa Diaz, Geography, University of Colorado Boulder
• Abby Kinchy, Sociology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Participant Survey)
• Ben Zaitchik, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

Additional Partners: Rebecca Rehr, Maryland League of Conservation Voters, Jasmeet Dhaliwal, UC Santa Cruz, Mark Shimamoto, American Geophysical Union

Project EDDIE (Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry and Exploration), a community of STEM instructors and educational researchers committed to teaching inquiry with openly available educator materials, provides a partner platform for our workshop. Open data & helping people how to learn and reason from it support discovery and use.