Students innovate a more just environmental future

There’s a ceiling on the Innovation Lab, but there’s no barrier when it comes to the imaginations of students and teachers who use this amazing space in our Bechtel Family Center for Ocean Education and Leadership.

Like any classroom, it’s a place for learning. But it’s so much more. It’s an evolving piece of our nearly 40-year commitment to free education programs — a place where students seek solutions to environmental problems through an approach that emphasizes equity as well as innovation.

The lab promotes equity in the design process by helping teachers and students build empathy and design a solution with — not just for — their users. It also gives students and teachers the opportunity to go beyond a specific conservation issue to examine systems that give rise to the problem in the first place.

For example, we might first support teens as they work together to build a composting bin for their schoolyard. Then we help them use the same process to address an underlying issue: reimagining the school’s lunch line systems so they generate less food waste to begin with.

We’ve incorporated the same approach in Designing for Equity, Community, and the Ocean, our newest yearlong teacher institute that we launched last year. The institute prepares educators and future educators to design an equity-focused, eco-centered maker project for their classrooms.

As we continue to ramp up our education programming, the Innovation Lab will play a key role in helping students and teachers shape a more just environmental future.