By Caroline Hale
Climate Justice Academy Evaluation & Coordination Intern, Summer 2024
I grew up very curious about the environment and the natural world around me; as I have grown, so has this curiosity. Questions that pique my interest include: what level of responsibility do we as humans have to protect the environment? What does protection even mean, and do some people carry more responsibility for environmental stewardship than others?
As I have explored these questions more deeply, I’ve learned that while we all have a relationship to the environment, not everyone is equally impacted by environmental issues. This has made me consider the social justice implications of environmental challenges, which ultimately led me to explore an interest in climate justice work and research during summer 2024 through my internship position as the Climate Justice Evaluation and Coordination intern with the Climate Impacts Group (CIG).
My EarthLab Internship with the Climate Impacts Group (CIG)
This past summer, I was placed with CIG to assist the climate justice team in coordinating and evaluating the pilot year of their Science Justice Summer School. The summer school is a two week long interdisciplinary program offered to graduate students interested in learning more about climate justice and how to apply this knowledge to their prospective fields, such as economics, marine biology, or political science. The program discussed themes of settler colonialism, abolition, critical geographies, political ecology, detransitioning, maladaptation, Indigenous storytelling, and movement-building, to name a few. The days were filled with field trips, guest speakers, and walking tours, to make the experience as interactive and locally relevant as possible.
In preparation for the program, I conducted research to understand the current ways that programs like this one are being evaluated, and how to best evaluate graduate level students, a unique opportunity for me as an undergraduate. I wanted to incorporate a variety of mixed methods to evaluate the program to provide various engaging, and differing areas for students to share their experiences and feelings in a way that would be comfortable and conducive for each of them to share their feelings.
The interdisciplinary nature of the program created an environment conducive to constructive conversations, as students proposed solutions and ideas that people with other niches had not yet considered. Through this process I learned that a large piece of being successful in my position was about being observant and receptive to the needs in the room. The goal of these evaluations was to get feedback from students from the pilot year of the program. That feedback data can be used to improve future iterations of the program by compiling information from students into a digestible evaluation report.
Spending My Summer with EarthLab
EarthLab, the engine behind my internship with CIG, is focused on pushing the boundaries in academia to reimagine how to take action against climate change while involving students, communities, and various disciplines.
Each week this past summer, I was exposed to an amazing lineup of guest speakers and the EarthLab team through their internship program’s cohort model. I had opportunities to collaborate with my peers and professionals, sharing ideas and diverse perspectives. Every intern had agency, and interns’ ideas were deeply valued and considered.
This internship program, dedicated to connecting students with one another, helped me build a network to help navigate unique and rising challenges. I have gained new perspective, motivation, and technique working and brainstorming alongside my peers with different areas of knowledge, interests, and unique educational and life experiences.
Looking Forward
Being a student in a changing and increasingly delicate world is certainly a tough role to navigate. Since coming to the University of Washington and pursuing an environmental studies degree, I have found myself experiencing an interesting phenomenon outside of school: older generations expecting young people to “save the planet,” while also not taking young voices seriously. My summer internship was an opportunity to experience the opposite.
The local work I did with CIG and EarthLab was a microcosm of larger global environmental justice initiatives. While scientific training is of course crucial to environmental work, at the same time, science is often not black and white. Rather, science exists within the context of the communities and power structures that influence it. Similarly, there are vast and important differences across various people’s lived experiences that impact the way we interpret facts and figures.
Looking back on my summer, I realized I am constantly surrounded by people who are experts in their own environments and experiences. Whether they were formally trained scientists, my peers, guest speakers, or the person I met at the Link station and started up a conversation with, everyone had something important and unique to share with me about their environment that sparked new considerations in my mind. This summer, I got to experience various ways of acquiring knowledge and getting educated, far beyond the Western standard.
What I learned is this: Everyone has a stake in environmentalism simply by being a person on this planet and having lived experiences. I truly believe that every individual has a place to share something unique and important about the environment. By listening to diverse perspectives and understanding the importance of scientific inquiry, we lay the foundation for effective climate solutions. Expanding our view of who can contribute to climate justice fuels the creativity needed for these solutions.
I want to be continuously learning. With that, the aim of this piece is to spark ideas and conversations. If you read this and have thoughts, I genuinely want to hear them! Shoot me an email cmh20@uw.edu.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the entirety of the EarthLab 2024 cohort, my fellow interns have inspired me beyond belief. Thank you to Allie Long for encouraging me to shoot for the stars and helping me write this blog. A big thank you to my mom, for your unwavering support and thoughtful guidance. Thank you to Lissan Tibebe, Ben Packard, and the rest of the EarthLab team for your continuous support through my journey. Finally, thank you to Rishi Sugla, Zack Thill, and the team at the Climate Impacts Group for hosting me as your intern this summer!
Introducing NextGen Narratives, a fresh addition to the EarthLab news page, tailored for University of Washington students to express how they’re thinking about taking equitable climate action in a variety of ways. If you’re a student eager to join NextGen Narratives, don’t hesitate to contact Allie Long, EarthLab’s Communications Lead, at alongs@uw.edu.