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ENST
Environmental Studies Newsletter 2020 Capstone Class of Spring 2020
Congratulations to 2019 ENST Student Award Winners! Shanti Belaustegui Pockell '19 for Outstanding Student of the Year for Academic Achievement.
Ryan Sandejas ‘19 for Environmental Studies Student Leader of the Year
Contents
Statement from the ENST Program on Coronavirus and Racism 2 From the Program Leader, Sarah Ray 5 ENST Demographics Over Time 6 ENST 195: New Course Report 7 ENST Launches Student Leadership Institute 8 ENST Club Update 9 ENST Sponsors EJ Award 10 ENST Collaborates with Art 11 Class Notes 13 Meet Deepti Chatti 17 A Word from ENST Peer Mentors 18 Congrats Graduates! 19 Faculty Research Corner 20 ENST Student is Super Generous 21 Acknowledgements 22
Statement from the ENST Program on Coronavirus and Racism As the news about coronavirus overwhelms us with worry and fear about our loved ones and the spike in suffering around the world, it may be tempting to find “silver linings” in news about how great the environment is doing, now that humans are leaving it alone. Our news feeds are full of these scenes: China enjoying a level of air quality it has not experienced since it became the industrial heart of the world, critters braving landscapes that are usually occupied by lots of people, fuel consumption at an all time low, less noise and light pollution, the list goes on. Meanwhile, since the U.S. President began calling coronavirus the “China virus,” incidents of violence against Asians, Asian-Americans, Chinese, and Chinese-Americans have skyrocketed. One family, including a 2-year old and a 6-year old, was stabbed by a person who thought they were Chinese and that ending their lives would help prevent the spread of coronavirus. The Environmental Studies Program at HSU firmly condemns such acts of violence. Further, we want to expose the racism inherent in claims about the “silver lining” of nature’s rebounding, and articulate the links between these claims and such acts of violence. Addressing racism and violence against Asian-Americans in this moment is not the job of entities focused on hate crimes; environmentalists and environmental organizations have a profound responsibility to engage these conversations and reckon with their complicity in legacies of “green hate” and eco-fascism.” A historical perspective of the roots of American environmental ideas is part of this reckoning. Early views of ecology and resource conservation in the mid-19th century were deployed for the purposes of social engineering: America’s finite resources and land was framed by leaders such as Theodore Roosevent and Gifford Pinchot as needing to be preserved, but only for certain people--white, able-bodied, upstanding Anglo-Americans. In the early 20th-century, these Social Darwinian, Malthusian values led to racist antiimmigration laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, and became the foundation for America’s eugenics movement, which resulted in the genocide of Native Americans and other groups deemed “unfit” for life in an ideal “America.” These values and policies were then emulated by the Nazis as they spread their “blood and soil” ideology, connecting a geopolitics of “lebensraum” (“living room”) with genocide. The earliest environmentalists in America were just as interested in designing what they perceived to be an ideal society and race as they were in preserving and understanding ecosystems. We can see resurgances of the racist underpinnings of environmentalism in the 1970s debates about overpopulation and immigration, and Earth First!’s hailing of AIDS as a boon for the environment. In contrast to these moments, the environmental justice movement was born, which aimed to center social justice in environmental considerations, and distinguished itself from these racist arguments coming out of the mainstream environmental movement. Social
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justice scholars and activists have long observed the “greening of hate,” but it would be a mistake to think the racist agenda of some environmental ideas are a vestige of the past. The Environmental Studies Program at HSU seeks to highlight this history in our moment of pandemic precisely because of the growing violence and animosity toward non-white Americans. Some of this aggression is couched in environmental ideas. For example, the shooter in the El Paso mass shooting claimed in his letter that one reason for his desire to kill Mexicans was because of climate change and the resulting “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” When we hear arguments that a natural disaster (like a tsunami or hurricane) is nature’s way of cleansing the planet of humans who are reproducing too much, or that a health disaster (like ebola or AIDS) is “nature striking back” at humans for their evil ways, we must stand up against the ongoing use of “nature” to justify violence against marginalized communities. People who say that the coronavirus is good for nature are implying, perhaps inadvertently, that the thriving of human life is incompatible with the thriving of nature. Such claims create a zerosum solution: if we want humans to keep living, then we have to accept the destruction of nature, or vice versa. The latter position opens the door to eco-fascism and reproduces unnecessary and potentially dangerous Cartesian and colonialist ways of seeing the world. Indeed, the very separation of categories like “nature” from “culture” has long been problematic as it has allowed for some people to extract resources, labor, ideas, and more from other people who they equated with nature. But many human groups have thrived alongside nature, and nature alongside them. It is irresponsible and futile to ask people to make a choice between nature or humanity. Asking whether we should save humanity or save nature isn’t the right question, and it overlooks the real problem--colonial-capitalism’s treatment of certain environments and certain people as valuable, while others are disposable. Touting the rebounding of nature in this context may seem an innocent, non-racist appeal. However, in the context of understanding environmentalism’s racist legacies, we can see that such an appeal creates oversimplified divisions between nature and humans. This binary ignores the ways that communities of color are disproportionately suffering coronavirus outcomes, and have and will continue to disproportionately suffer the effects of environmental degradation, even as they are often the communities who least contribute to that degradation. Furthermore, such a binary fails to account for the many ways that many indigenous communities have long lived in ways that enhance ecosystem health, and how colonization has impinged on their ability to continue to do so. A virus like coronavirus is not nature’s way of inoculating itself against all humanity, and when we imagine this to be so, we create conditions for ignoring all of these ways that inequality and difference shape different communities’ access to environmental goods, like the ability to breathe, and costs, including infection.
As we celebrate the planet getting a break from emissions, the EPA is busy rolling back many hard-won environmental protections and moving forward the keystone and other pipelines. This news is nothing to celebrate. Moreover, the fact that more peoples’ lives will be saved by the reduction in emissions than by anything we can do to prevent coronavirus infection suggests that we are focusing on the wrong problem, and ignoring the far larger problem of colonial-capitalism’s reliance on some people being more disposable than others. The problem isn’t that nature has been disposable; the problem is about who gets to decide which humans are the most disposable. The coronavirus is not an equalizer. It is exacerbating existing inequalities; the bodies of black and brown people are disproportionately in the jobs that are on the frontlines of risk, such as health workers and farmworkers, are already in positions of legal and medical disenfranchisement (such as in detention camps or prisons), and are suffering the worst health outcomes. We must stop demonizing a monolithic notion of “humanity” as bad for a monolithic notion of “nature,” and combat the deployment of “the environment” to fuel fears of virus-spreading “others.” Instead of thinking about nature temporarily bouncing back, we must be using this dire moment to work for that post-fossil-fuel future, where people are no longer more likely to die of pollution than pandemic. We look to the vision and action of groups like Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, Indigenous Environmental Network, Just Transition, and admire the local work of Cooperation Humboldt in organizing for the world we are now all the more called to build in this crisis. The ENST program at HSU stands with communities of color whose oppression has long been achieved in the name of “preserving nature.” We call on other environmental groups to take action against such violence, and to take the lead on drawing these connections. We amplify the work of groups like Avarna and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, who are taking such actions. We urge our students, faculty, administrators, and peers to see this moment of crisis as an opportunity for further support of decolonial, abolitionist, and liberatory world-making.
From the Program Leader, Sarah Ray We have a lot to update you about! A quick summary of what we’ve been up to follows, and you can find more in-depth pieces on these updates in this issue of the ENST Newsletter: • In fall 2019, we welcomed Dr. Deepti Chatti, our new tenure-track faculty in Environmental Justice. • Our Peer Mentoring program received a great boost from Graduation Initiative 2025 funds, coordinated by Mary Virnoche and Sociology grad students Kat and Lenny, who we cannot thank enough for training and supporting our peer mentors this year, Emily Read and Sara Daniel. • I came back from a year away on sabbatical, and want to thank Rosemary Sherriff for helping keep ENST afloat while I was gone, Laura Johnson for mentoring and advising so many ENST majors, and Chris Malcolm (now a tenure-track professor at the Maine College of Art) for superbly covering my classes and supporting students. • We have been collaborating with the Art Department, English, and other programs to continue to develop curriculum to meet ENST students’ desires for training in a variety of areas.
• With support from the Campus as a Living Lab grant from the CSU Chancellor’s office, and alongside HSU’s Climate Action Analyst Morgan King, I’m piloting a Student Leadership Institute for Climate Resilience during Spring Break 2020. • Toyon published through the English department through an Environmental Justice creative work award, and look forward to our second year of acknowledging one stellar ENST major with an Environmental Studies leadership award at the end of the year.
We always love to hear from you, so please go to the ENST website and post alumni updates or send an email update to me at Sarah.Ray@humboldt.edu. If you have the means and desire, we would also love your monetary contribution to the ENST program, which helps greatly to materially support our student awards and events.
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ENST Demographics Over Time Despite overall college enrollment decreases across the nation (and at HSU), ENST continues to grow each year, and has 158 majors as of Spring 2020. In addition, in the beginning of the program, we had fewer underrepresented minority (URM) students than HSU overall, but have since surpassed HSU’s URM ratio. Notably, we now have approximately 80% female-identified students, which is significantly higher than HSU as a whole. We take all this data as a testament to the success of our efforts to integrate liberatory pedagogy in our classes, center social justice in our curriculum and instructor training, respond to student input about curriculum and career goals, and scaffold professional development through the program. Indeed, these are encouraging trends.
ENST Student Type
Sex
% URM
Location of Origin in CA
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ENST 195: New Course Report Report on New Introductory ENST Class: ENST 195- Topics in Nature/Culture In fall 2019, we rolled out the first section of ENST 195: Topics in Nature/Culture, a new requirement in the ENST curriculum. The course was added to serve as a way to engage freshmen in the major more than is possible in ENST 120: Introduction to Environmental Studies, which is only one unit, which means it doesn’t afford the time for students to become immersed in the field of environmental studies or build community with each other. Furthermore, the problem of retaining students between freshman and sophomore year-- what is often referred to as the “sophomore slump”--means that it is really important to engage students in their major and life at HSU before they finish their first year. A second purpose of the new course is to help students get better prepared for the other classes in the major. In the Program Review we did a few years ago, it became clear that some skills students were missing in the old curriculum were the introductory-level concepts of interdisciplinarity and a critical social justice lens. Therefore, ENST 195 is intended to a) introduce students to the field of environmental studies so they get excited and more certain about the major and HSU, and b) prepare them a bit better for the other courses in the curriculum. Faculty who teach this course can bring their own interest to the topic, as long as they achieve these two goals. In fall 2019, Dr. Sarah Ray taught the course with a focus on Climate Change, introducing students to what it means to study a “wicked problem” like global warming from an interdisciplinary perspective and bring tools from many knowledge practices-- from traditional ecological knowledge to “street science” to wildlife ecology to economics-- and to do so through the lens of social justice. In spring 2020, Dr. James Ordner is teaching the course through the lens of four topics-Climate Change and Citizen Activism, Water Scarcity, Human-Animal Relations, and Public Lands and Natural Resources. From an initial course feedback review, these goals are being achieved, and we will continue to work on preparing students for the major by getting them excited about the uniqueness of ENST approaches to environmental issues and by ensuring they have a basic grasp of interdisciplinary and intersectional tools of analysis. ENST 195 is also the only class in the curriculum that is open to non-majors. For undecided students, it’s a great class to take to learn more about what ENST is all about. Meanwhile, ENST 120 will remain the more utilitarian intro class, serving as an extended orientation to HSU and the ENST program and an introduction to career and professionalization goals in the degree.
ENST Launches Student Leadership Institute Student Leadership Institute for Climate Resilience: ENST Pilots New Leadership Course as Alternative Spring Break From March 16-18 this year, 21 students (mostly ENST majors) will be taking part in the campus’s pilot of the Student Leadership Institute for Climate Resilience (SLICR), a residential, immersive leadership program for students who want to develop skills in social change and community resilience. The program was developed by Abigail Reyes and Aryeh Shell at the University of California-Irvine and combines principles from a variety of social movement and organizing groups, such as Just Transition, Emergent Strategy, Movement Generation, and the Work that Reconnects. Upon completion of SLICR, students will understand concepts of sustainability and community resilience, and be able to use leadership practices and skills that develop personal resilience and that spark effective action for campus and community resilience. SLICR’s facilitators will be ENST program leader Sarah Ray and Morgan King, HSU’s Climate Action Analyst. Sarah, Morgan, and ENST affiliate faculty member Rosemary Sherriff attended two weekends of teacher-trainings in Santa Cruz in 2018. The Institute will be run as an ENST special topics course (ENST 480), and entails a service learning project with Cooperation Humboldt, our local Humboldt County Transition city organization. Because Cooperation Humboldt’s organizing principles are so closely aligned with those of the SLICR curriculum, students will gain crucial experience applying the insights from the institute to real-world community resilience-building projects. One-time funding for the HSU pilot of SLICR is from the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s Campus as a Living Lab (CALL) grant. We will be looking to find ways to institutionalize the program in future years through other sources of sustained funding.
SLICR Logo Design by Same Stone ‘18
ENST Club Update By Reanne Meighan, Club President The ENST Club has been up to getting to know everyone this semester. After re-activating the club, we decided that our main focus is to build community. This club is open to any major. Our meetings were every other Monday from 4-5pm at CCAT. We started the semester off with a potluck because food brings everyone together. In October, we decorated Dr. Sarah Ray’s, our faculty advisor, office door. During our final club event of the semester, we learned a little about urban homesteading. We were able to visit a fellow HSU student’s farm in Bayside to learn about urban homesteading. While at the farm, we learned a variety of skills. These skills ranged from building a fire, harvesting vegetables, and how to prepare a farm-to-table meal. We were able to see a variety of farm animals including ducks, sheep, and two Kunekune pigs. It was a way to build connections with others, while learning new skills. In the spring semester, the ENST Club plans on doing a diverse range of events to further build community. Some club members are planning on going to the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, OR, in early March 2020. We are invited to start our own garden to learn how to grow our own produce on the farm in Bayside, while continuing to learn more about urban homesteading. Meetings are Thursdays from 12-1pm in NHE116 To get involved with the club or have any questions, please email enst.club@humboldt.edu and follow us on Instagram at @hsu.enst
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ENST Sponsors EJ Award Environmentalism has long been a feature of By: Marcos Hernandez the creative work published by Toyon Multilingual Journal of Literature and Art, Humboldt State University’s oldest student-run literary publication. Admittedly, much of what you will find in previous issues reflect traditional or mainstream modes of environmentalism which often privilege certain voices, silence others, and do not account for how environmental problems disproportionately impact our most vulnerable communities. In recent years, the Toyon staff have attempted to address this history by re-envisioning the kinds of environmental work they want to see published in the pages of Toyon and by striving to better promote environmental and social justice in all Submissions in every genre category are dimensions of literary publishing. considered for the annual Environmental Justice award. Toyon accepts poetry, In 2016, the Environmental Justice Award was fiction, creative nonfiction, critical analestablished, the result of a collaboration beysis, translation, screen/plays, spoken tween Toyon and Environmental Studies proword, and visual and audio art. Submit gram leader Sarah Ray. Sponsored by the Envi- your environmental justice creative ronmental Studies program at Humboldt State, work to Toyon by the September 30 anthe award recognizes exceptional achievement nual deadline and be considered for the in environmental justice writing and art. In the 2021 Environmental Studies Program four years following the award’s inception, each Award in Environmental Justice Writing issue of Toyon has curated a permanent feature & Art! section in the journal showcasing environmental justice art, and we now actively seek to Interested in working on Toyon staff publish literary and visual art that works at the and promoting environmental justice in intersections of identity, power, and place. We literary publishing? English 460: Literat Toyon are so grateful for the ENST program ary Editing is an option for fulfilling the for their continued support and collaboration Media Production emphasis in ENST and on this always necessary and ever timely projis offered every fall. ect. Come to Volume 66 release party on Wednesday, March 25 in the Kate Buchanan Room (KBR) and join us in celebrating this year’s Environmental Justice Award winner!
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ENST Collaborates with Art By Nicole Jean Hill I’ve been teaching ART 395: ART & PLACE since 2016, a course that includes an exciting mix of ART and ENST majors. My desire with the course is to introduce students to the criticism, creative-problem solving and tools involved in photography-based communication in response to place. Photography has a dual role in visual culture - it can serve as record keeper within the genre of documentary photography and also provide an outlet for creative expression within its place as a fine art medium. Oftentimes, the boundary between these two facets are blurred for both the creator and the viewers. Students in this course are asked to explore photography from both of these frameworks while examining the history, use, and impressions of various sites. Through this, we learn the basics of cameras and software. Assignments have taken the form of reexaminations of the traditional, yet often underestimated, genre of landscape photography to the reuse of preexisting images found in archives and social media. Student projects developed in the course have ranged dramatically in style and content, but each project is rooted in the artist’s response to a single location. This includes documentary projects on watersheds and tree species, and still lives of objects collected from encampments along the edge of Eureka. Projects sometimes push the boundaries of art practice, including Emmaly Crimmel’s creation of a Tinder page for a maple tree located in the art quad in which she chronicled the tree’s ultimate matches on the site, exploring the use of nature as a social media strategy.
Liam Hazelton created highly detailed yet abstract examinations of the water filtered from the Mad River, resulting in a contemplative piece about the disconnect between the natural world and the clear water in our taps. Work from the “rephotography” assignment that merges historical images with contemporary views of the same place were transformed into murals and wheat-pasted in Opera Alley in Eureka for a month-long exhibit in March of 2019. This provided an exciting opportunity to engage the public with art pieces exploring the complex past and present of Humboldt County. Beginning in Spring 2020, my colleague Stephen Nachtigall will be offering ART 372: Radical Graphics: Climate & Activism that will introduce the use of digital media and design tools for social and environmental activism. The hope is that these two courses will provide creative outlets for students to explore self-directed projects while developing the skills necessary to apply and appreciate visual art and design as a communication tool. Curriculum in visual art encourages a critical eye on the methods through which the visual world can both record and manipulate, uncover and seduce. It has been exciting to see ENST students applying creative visual problem solving both in and outside of the art curriculum and I hope to see more interdisciplinary methods explored in the coming years using art and design as storyteller.
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Class Notes
Claire Roth, Class of 2017
Claire Roth graduated from the Environmental Studies program with an emphasis in media production in May 2017. In the year following graduation, she worked in several administrative offices at HSU, including Geography, Environmental Studies, the College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences Dean’s Office, and the College of Natural Resources & Sciences Dean’s Office. Claire then relocated to Eugene, Oregon in July 2018 where she began her current position as Safe Streets Coordinator with a local 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit called Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation (BEST). BEST’s mission is to advocate for better transportation options, safer streets, and walkable neighborhoods. This includes actions like advocating for more equitable neighborhood designs that will serve people of all ages and abilities, addressing the role of car culture in the ongoing climate crisis, and organizing a committee of community members to inform projects and goals.
The Environmental Studies program at HSU was truly a blessing for me as a first generation college student. I had the opportunity to meet some of the most helpful, caring professors that walked with me every step of the way. Since graduating from the ENST program, I’ve been able to work as a Kindergarten Associate Teacher for a local elementary school. I got to create and teach lessons on environmental and social issues, using kid-appropriate activities to help these young minds become more aware of the environment they call home. It was an honor to have such a tangible influence on these little humans. As I continue my search for my full-time passion project, I continue to stay involved with education as I tutor first generation students at an LA high school. Noemi Pacheco, Class of 2017 Noemi Pacheco, Class of ??? Since graduating in December, I’ve been living in Arcata and mainly focusing my energy on creative work. I’ve been honing the craft of tattooing, which has been supporting me financially (if only just) and doing a lot of writing as well. Now that I’m back from my travels I’m hoping to step back from tattooing and step into a job as a writing tutor - either for College of the Redwoods or through an independent tutoring company. My own writing endeavors have recently involved poetry and slowly chugging away at the cli-fi novel I dreamed up in my last semester of school while taking Janelle’s environmental writing class. Sam Stone, Class of 2018
Class Notes
Maricela Wexler, Class of 2017
Since graduating I dove into the world of environmental education. Shortly after graduating I became the director of the Arcata Marsh Science Camp. I rediscovered my love of educating children on animals, plants and natural processes. However, through my Environmental Studies Major, I now understood the importance of educating children from different backgrounds. After my summer was over, I traveled to Moab, Utah which was a long way from the lush redwood coastline of Arcata, worked at Dead Horse Point State Park which is a small state park near Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. I worked there for about 9 months and received my Wilderness First Responder Certification. I loved Utah but missed my family and friends back home in California so I got a job at Whiskeytown Environmental School (or WES) near Redding. I loved being a field instructor with WES until my time came to end due to the Carr Fire of 2018. I moved home and began working at Effie Yeaw Nature Center. It was truly an amazing experience. I now work for California State Parks Off-Highway Vehicle Division as an Interpreter. I transferred to HSU in 2015, and graduated from the Environmental Studies program in 2017. My emphasis within the ENST major was Community Organizing. The Environmental Studies program helped me locate my sense of direction and purpose. Being highly interdisciplinary, the ENST major allowed me to test the waters in various subjects and land on a direction that best suits my skills and interests. I emerged with a better understanding of the interconnected nature of all things, which shapes my everyday decisions and relationships. Today I am the Fundraising Campaign Director for Dell’Arte International in Blue Lake, CA - just 8 miles east of Humboldt State University. I am also a volunteer community mediator, and project management assistant (sub-contractor) at Equinoss Consulting. Informed by the ENST curriculum, my goal is to continue building the skills necessary to support the people and causes I care about.
James Bradas, Class of 2018
Presently I am doing utility forestry tree survey work for a PG&E subcontractor at home in the bay area. We are assigned the data route by route within a certain circuit or sub-circuit, we follow the power lines, crosslist the data with the trees present (or where they used to be, or we’re totally lost, which happens), and use our knowledge of endemic tree species to determine if it needs a trim from the power lines or not. If it does, we sign it up in the data, tag the tree with the year’s inspection color, and attempt to make contact with contact data for the location. If the tree doesn’t need work, we move on. This job makes us use our work trucks as our primary offices, otherwise we’re on our feet and I average 5-7 miles walked per day, all terrain and all weather. The ENST program at HSU certainly has provided me the perspectives necessary to do this work in a professional manner, perhaps you can say those perspectives are interdisciplinary? In the biggest and broadest scale, ENST core discourse re-activated an intimate, dynamic sense of place in seasons and scale in the east bay area.
Parker Stewart, Class of 2016
Class Notes Madi Whaley Class of 2018
Giuliana Sarto
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Madi graduated from HSU in Fall of 2017 with a BA in Environmental Studies and minors in philosophy and economics. Since graduating, she has worked on projects such as a podcast with Dr. Ray, Big Planet Big Feels, focused on the intersections between climate change and emotions/mental health. She now works on a regenerative vegetable farm in Vermont. She is also working with a start-up project called Moon and Stars, focused on growing native Abenaki strains of corn via regenerative practices, and distributing nixtamilized corn, arepa, and empanada to densified areas along our railway system. The goal is to provide food that is both nutritious, ecologically sound, and culturally valuable, as well as to amplify Latinx culture and traditional ways of knowing in Vermont.
Since earning my ENST degree in the Fall of 2018, I moved to Los Angeles. I am currently a cook at The Mar Vista in LA where I am pursuing my passion for the culinary arts. I think back to the graduation pledge of social and environmental responsibility we took as HSU graduates and I’d like to implement this towards restaurant kitchens transitioning towards zero waste in the future.
Class of 2018
Anais Southard Class of 2018
Since Graduating from the Environmental Studies program, I have been delving deep into the world of organic farming. Growing food is my passion, and ENST has been essential in teaching me to value my work as the vital community contribution that it is. ENST teaches us that the environmental and the social are interwoven and that the work we do locally ripples outward and onward. The ENST program made me a better writer, thinker, dreamer, and communicator, and these are skills that will buoy and ground me throughout my life.
Class Notes Kira Wadsworth Class of 2015
Ciera R. Townsley -McCormick
After graduating from Humboldt State University in 2015 I applied to Antioch University New England’s(AUNE) Masters program in Environmental Studies. My concentration was in advocacy for sustainability and Social justice where I continued my work on the social and environmental impacts of militarism on Guam. Locally, in Keene, NH I have worked to create workshops and conferences such as ‘Unpacking Systemic Racism’ and ‘building a better world’ all with the goals of breaking down misconceptions and siloes and working toward a sustainable future. Since graduating from AUNE I have started a residential and commercial curbside compost pickup business in Keene, NH, Elm City Compost. I also got married and changed my last name from Yeomans to Wadsworth and my husband Mark and I plan to move back to Guam in the near future!
After graduating from the ENST program at HSU in 2017, Ciera got married to her highschool sweetheart. In 2018 she moved to Germany with her husband and the Military. She is currently working toward her Master’s degree in Recreation, Sport, and Tourism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This program alignes well with ENST and has elements from the humanities and environmentalism. Ciera also volunteers within the Military community and runs a second-hand shop.
Class of 2017
Send us your updates! Email Sarah Ray (sarah.ray@ humboldt.edu)
Join Forever Humboldt! It’s bigger than an alumni association – it’s the association of all Humboldt alumni, students, parents & families, faculty, and staff. We’re here to showcase pride in our university and encourage everyone to help support its mission.
Meet Deepti Chatti Deepti Chatti joined HSU in Fall 2019 and she is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and Faculty Research Associate at the Schatz Energy Research Center. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of the environment and her research centers the social equity challenges that undergird sustainable development efforts to improve energy access in the global South. Her current research ethnographically analyzes clean cooking technologies and programs in India, and studies the politics of trans-national field experiments on sustainable development, energy access, air pollution, and climate change. Deepti came to HSU from Yale University where she was completing a doctorate. Deepti has an interdisciplinary educational background with graduate degrees in the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and engineering, and several years of work experience outside academia. Since joining HSU, she has taught Power, Privilege, and the Environment, and Environmental Studies Research and Analysis in Fall 2019. In Spring Deepti is teaching Energy Justice to a diverse set of advanced undergraduate and graduate students at HSU, which is a class that analyzes how energy systems are integral to understanding the social inequalities of our times. For more information, visit: https://www.deeptichatti.com/
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A Word from ENST Peer Mentors The peer mentor program has given me an opportunity to spread my passion for Environmental Studies as a major and to help guide my peers towards the direction they would like to take the major. I would like this program to be something students can rely on and get support from. Being a student can be confusing and overwhelming, but it can be incredibly useful to find community within the people around us that share similar passions. As mentors, we assist other students in making their DARS plans, learning how to use DARS, registering for classes, making schedules, etc… But, most importantly, I want students to be aware of what is going on within the community, how to get involved, how to figure out what they want to study and focus on, and so much more. By being a part of this program, I feel the most excited about meeting people that are in my major and hearing their experiences as students so that we can bring ENST to its highest potential. I’ve met with over 40 students last semester, and some of them multiple times. This semester, we’d like to plan a DARS workshop for people that are struggling with how to use it. We’d love to hear from you and what you’d like to see us do as peer mentors. -Emily Read, (er167@humboldt.edu) I love being part of the ENST Peer Mentoring program, it has been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. Almost every time I meet with a student for the first time, I ask them why they were interested in Environmental Studies and what they want to do with the degree and I am constantly blown away from the passionate and amount of variety in the answers I hear. The other part of my job, that I also very much enjoy is helping students with their DARS, deciding course plans and class schedules, study abroad options, minors, even double major options, internship opportunities, major involvement, ways to connect to the local community, and so much more. I want ENST students to know that Emily and I are here for them by email, by appointment and during our office hours to discuss anything related to Environmental Studies, so reach out we are here for you! -Sara Daniel, (srd68@humboldt.edu)
Congrats Graduates! Congrats to our amazing majors! We are so proud of you! Spring 2020 Spring/Summer 2019 Fall 2019 Aleman, Destinee Amber Belaustegui Pockell, Shanti Balam Camacho, Joely Anne Atlan, Etienne Frederique Belleau, Aidan Coronado, Karina L. Samuel Bishop, Shana Diaz, Emily Beissert, Anna Christina Brown, Mary Elizabeth Farzadpour, Shayan Reza Cabello, Jose Angel Daggett, Kaitlyn Breann Foster, Ameera Diamond Castruita, Cassandra Marie Garcia, Samantha Gutierrez, Desteny Chwastyk, Benton Lee Gentry, Ethan Clifford King, Christian Joseph Dunlap, Samuel David Gillick, Tatiana Joy Lopez, Reanne Charlotte Ferreira, Evie Gallego Gomez, Jonathan Ortiz, Iran Gil, Nicholas Andres Hazelton, Liam Lloyd Crites Sully, Noelle Elizabeth Henry, Jami Danielle Henry, Aja Lynn Torres, Ashley Hong, Angela Kalarney, Mysti Brooke Virzi, Lauren Adriana Iorizzo, Ava Sierra Kennedy, Elena Christina Wall, Sarah Rose Marshall, Matthew Sonny Zimmerman, Terrika Chelise Junker-Gregson, Lily Emily Kinman, Miles Ray Medina, Rachel Elizabeth Lamphere, Kassandra Pesis, Shane Paul Mallory, Joseph Michael Puga, Ana Meighan, Reanne Francis Rausch, Amber Renee Nguyen, Benjamin Evan Robles, Stefan Noel, Daniel J. Russell, Elizabeth Marie Owen, Emily Jane Sanchez, Eduardo Emmanuel Pignone, Anthony James Sanchez, Lauren Alexis Raigoza, Michael Sandoval, Sandra Raven, Cheyenne Kay Sendejas, Ryan Andrew Samoy, Christina Leann Wardle, Lauren May Smith, Gabrielle Grace Wells, Jasmine Le Trippsmith, Scarlett Rose Di Gregorio, Sofia Mara Saveria Ureno, Alejandra Santana
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Faculty Research Corner Sarah Jaquette Ray publishes book on eco-anxiety and the climate generation
While on sabbatical, ENST program leader Sarah Ray wrote a book for what she calls “the climate generation”-- people just like ENST majors-- on how to grapple with anxiety, despair, and grief in these politically and ecologically frightening times. The title of the book is A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, and will be published by the University of California Press on Earth Day, 2020. The book is meant to be an accessible book that provides what she calls an “existential toolkit” for readers struggling with worry about the fate of democracy and the planet.
As a companion to the book, Dr. Ray is organizing a workshop at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich in July that will gather teaching resources from educators around the world on how to teach about climate justice in this heavy moment. Along those lines, she has published a website of teaching resources on climate anxiety with CSU-Fullerton English professor Nicole Seymour through a UC-CSU faculty collaboration, called NXTerra: Transformative Education for Climate Action, available at https://www.nxterra.orfaleacenter.ucsb.edu/topic-climate-change-emotions/. In November, Ray also published a co-edited book, Latinx Environmentalisms. The whiteness of mainstream environmentalism often fails to account for the richness and variety of Latinx environmental thought. Building on insights of environmental justice scholarship as well as critical race and ethnic studies, the editors and contributors map the ways Latinx cultural texts integrate environmental concerns with questions of social and political justice. Includes original interviews with creative writers, including Cherríe Moraga, Helena María Viramontes, Ana Castillo, and Héctor Tobar.
ENST Student is Super Generous Thanks to ENST major Brittany Panela for donating all her winter job earnings to ENST students seeking funding support to attend GEOG 301 in Costa Rica in the summers. Program Leader Sarah Ray is working with Advancement to figure out how to set that fund up, but in the meantime, what a generous gift from a huge-hearted current student in ENST! If Brittany inspires you, consider donating to help grow her fund! https://alumni.humboldt.edu/giving/enst-giving
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our ENST office admin Kameron Lopez and Alma Zechman and the CAHSS Dean’s office for their support. We would also thank our ENST affiliated faculty for helping us strengthen our program. Thanks to Taylor Conrad for creating this newsletter.
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