SPARC Environmental Justice Project Application
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Please provide an overview and description of the project, including the history, a timeline, a description of how students and community members are involved in the project, and anticipated outcomes or goals.
Student Pathways
Student Pathways are the foundation of the SPARC EJ Lab. We view training and mentoring as part of the research process. Student participants are learning, developing, and critically engaging in ways that promote ongoing reflection, empowerment, and social change. The term ‘pathways’ reflects a long-term commitment to a thematic area over several student cohorts Student pathways begin with community-based participatory research and may lead to theses, dissertations, or paid positions that produce community-facing outputs and more academically-oriented scholarship. Opportunities to mentor the next group of students participating in community-engaged research are embedded into each Lab project.
Provide additional details about how students have been and will be involved in this project, including how their involvement will continue beyond one semester and opportunities for students to give and receive mentorship and take on leadership roles. Examples may include CEL projects, UROPs, Capstone course engagement, Independent Studies, TA/RA positions, etc.
Action Research
Action Research is a key element to all SPARC EJ lab projects as is the generation of knowledge. Research is designed by and with those taking action towards environmental justice. We are committed to contributing to processes of the development of applied and theoretical material, which includes both community-facing outputs and traditional academic scholarship. We value experiences and knowledge of community and faculty researchers. Our research outcomes are designed to be accessible and available to inform policy and change-making at multiple scales, from community initiatives to nonprofit programs, mutual aid projects, and municipal bodies such as city councils, school boards, and state legislatures.
Please describe how your project embodies action research. Include details about how the project is designed to inform action or change, how results have/will be shared and with whom, how the project develops or extends applied and theoretical material, and how it includes both traditional and non-traditional academic scholarship. Include details about any special skills or experiences that team members contribute to your action research approach.
Critical Community Engagement
SPARC EJ lab projects aim to avoid the ahistorical and nonpolitical approaches that have traditionally characterized social science and ecological research. These projects work in a research paradigm that sees research as a product of both community expertise and interdisciplinary academic training. Community members, who have historically been disempowered by extractive research processes, are positioned as co-researchers and direct beneficiaries of the products and processes of the engaged research.
Please describe how your project employs critical community engagement. Include details about how the project is rooted in community expertise and collaboration, how project members and participants are prepared to learn from community expertise, and how the project seeks to recognize and make explicit the socio-historical roots of the issue it is addressing. How does the project acknowledge and/or disrupt sustained systemic oppressions? How is the project reciprocal and mutually beneficial?
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