{"id":685442,"date":"2024-08-06T06:27:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T13:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=685442"},"modified":"2024-08-06T06:46:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T13:46:10","slug":"bullard-center-pioneers-environmental-justice-internship","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/bullard-center-pioneers-environmental-justice-internship","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the Future: The Bullard Center\u2019s Pioneering Environmental Justice Internship"},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[162592,474552,241,134612,489822],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478442],"esri_blog_department":[478192],"class_list":["post-685442","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-education","tag-environmental-justice","tag-gis","tag-internship","tag-lived-experience","esri-blog-category-education","esri_blog_department-gis-for-good"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"Students from HBCU campuses gain GIS skills and learn from Dr. Robert Bullard who is known as the father of environmental justice.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<em>The 2024 Climate Corps. Photo by Dr. Stephen Pinkney, courtesy of the Bullard Center.<\/em>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"The Bullard Center at Texas Southern University offers an HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps (EJCC) Summer Program where students gain crucial knowledge and skills in geographic information system (GIS) technology to address pollution and climate change.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nKey Takeaways:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>The HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps program focuses on creating a deep understanding of environmental challenges that disproportionately impact Black and brown communities in urban and rural areas.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GIS has been embraced by environmental justice investigators because it combines data on place, the people who live there, and what happens there.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Students initiate projects related to local issues such as contamination from petrochemicals in Houston\u2019s air and water.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"At the start of each annual Environmental Justice Climate Corps summer program, students from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) take the \u201cToxic Tour\u201d through Houston's East End. They travel to some of the world\u2019s largest refineries, chemical plants, and hazardous waste sites that surround communities of color.\r\n\r\nWhile there, students talk to Houston residents who face the highest rates of asthma and cancer. They see what the city's pollution has done to the environment, such as how it stunts the trees.\r\n\r\nWhen they get back to the classroom at Texas Southern University (TSU), they explore the mortality and makeup of the communities they grew up in, using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/what-is-gis\/overview\">geographic information system (GIS)<\/a> technology to analyze place, race, and health layers on maps. Rooting these lesson in their own lived experience helps ignite passion and reveals data-driven discoveries about places they thought they knew deeply.\r\n\r\nThe program takes place at the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at TSU. Since the program's inaugural summer in 2023, more than 30 students from 11 HBCU campuses across the country have been given the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills in GIS and to learn from Dr. Robert Bullard, who is known as the father of environmental justice. Dr. Bullard conducted pioneering investigative research, taught for nearly 40 years, and wrote 18 books, including <em>Dumping in Dixie<\/em>, which explores the concentration of landfills in communities of color across the South.\r\n\r\n\u201cMany of our students have no introduction to environmental or climate justice. Even though some grew up in the Houston area, they had never been to the Port of Houston,\u201d said Denae King, an environmental justice researcher and associate director of the Bullard Center. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge epiphany.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn the same building as the Bullard Center, a GIS lab is maintained by the Urban Planning and Environmental Policy graduate program. The lab has 30 computers equipped with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/geospatial-platform\/overview\">ArcGIS<\/a> software, plus geospatial and demographic data about communities and the environment. Many students get their first exposure to GIS through the Environmental Justice Climate Corps program. \u201cThey understand how to use a map, how you explain data with a map, and what makes a map useful for a community,\u201d King said.\r\n<h3><strong>Leading with Geospatial Tools to Create an Impact<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nBecause the students in the summer program come from both science and non-science backgrounds, GIS is taught in a way that goes beyond the technology and moves quickly to real-life applications of the software.\r\n\r\n\u201cI always have to say to the students, \u2018Where are the highways? Where are the schools?\u2019\u201d King said. \u201cAs a resident, I need to be able to look at the map and understand where I live and how this relates to me.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[686582,685462,686592,686712]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"In the 1990s, Bullard was called as an expert witness in a case his wife, attorney Linda McKeever Bullard, was involved in. She represented Margaret Bean in the lawsuit Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management in the fight against a municipal landfill in the mostly Black middle-class neighborhood of Northwood Manor. Bullard, fresh from receiving his PhD in sociology from Iowa State University, noted that all six municipal garbage dumps and six of the city\u2019s eight incinerators were in Black neighborhoods. The successful case was the first recorded account of environmental racism, and maps played an important role in showing the harm to communities of color.\r\n\r\nSince then, Bullard has continued to probe environmental racism, making it the focus of his career to show how toxins disproportionately impact people of color in their jobs and communities. Further, his work <a href=\"https:\/\/drrobertbullard.com\/books\/\">has demonstrated<\/a> how environmental regulations don\u2019t equally benefit society. In 2021, President Biden appointed Bullard to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/environmentaljustice\/white-house-environmental-justice-advisory-council\/\">White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council<\/a>, and in April 2024 he was given a TIME Earth Award.\r\n\r\nBullard shows the students the impact of maps, overlaying public health data layers such as diabetes, obesity, and cancer onto communities of color. He shows how maps reveal the big picture.\r\n<h3><strong>Real-World Applications and Community Projects<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn recent years, the fight for climate change and environmental justice has grown more urgent. Cities are increasingly experiencing extreme weather events like heat domes, floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires. These events often result in disproportionate numbers of Black and brown people dying from climate-related diseases like heat stroke and asthma. \u201cWe don\u2019t teach environment in healthcare,\u201d King said. \u201cIt\u2019s not natural for a physician to ask you, \u2018Where do you live and what are your potential environmental exposures?\u2019\u201d\r\n\r\nAlthough the HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps is only in its second year of hosting students in the six-week program funded by the Macquarie Group, Bullard and TSU have been nurturing the next generation of climate justice activists for many years. The summer internship allows students to obtain a deeper understanding of mapmaking, environmental concerns, and community engagement practices.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019re helping students to understand it\u2019s not just about creating a map, but creating a map that resonates with people, a map that they can look at and get the picture pretty quickly,\u201d King said."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":685472,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Last year, student-led projects focused on the issue of lead in the drinking water at Houston-area schools, along with air quality and petrochemical contamination. \u201cThe community needed us to look at air monitoring data. We cleaned, analyzed, and mapped the data to show trends,\u201d King said.\r\n\r\nThis summer, students will hear from a data scientist who has mapped 90 proposed petrochemical facilities in the state of Texas. This work is part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.org\/environment\/moving-beyond-carbon\/beyond-petrochemicals\/\">Beyond Petrochemicals project<\/a> at the Bullard Center, with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Another presentation will detail research on the location of liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe show them how mapping is actionable and how we use GIS in the environmental justice work we\u2019re doing,\u201d King said.\r\n<h3><strong>Student Engagement and Outcomes <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nAt the end of the program, students can participate in the HBCU Climate Change Conference. With the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice hosts the conference that brings together HBCU faculty, staff, researchers, climate and environmental justice leaders, and students to better understand the data and how people experience the intersection of environmental justice and climate change.\r\n\r\nAt the conference, student presentations cover a range of climate justice topics and related industries like energy sources, carbon emissions, green jobs, and economic development. \u201cOur goal is to encourage them to get involved, to provide at least some information about environment and climate, to give them career options, and introduce them to research and presentation skills,\u201d King said.\r\n\r\nOf the 22 students who participated last year, 17 of them said they wanted to remain engaged in environmental work, and several TSU students started a campus organization related to climate justice.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis spring for Earth Week, they did a week of activities. A lunch and learn, campus cleanup, a dorm recycle-thon, and they introduced new e-bikes that students can use around campus,\u201d King said.\r\n\r\nShe hopes the program will continue to grow and add more students from various disciplines. \u201cWe want to pique their interest, to have them aware that environmental injustice is a problem that exists in people of color communities. We want them to know that there are solutions to the problem, and that they are part of the solution.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nLearn more about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/environment-natural-resources\/focus-areas\/environmental-regulation\">environmental agencies use GIS to analyze impacts, monitor toxins, and facilitate community engagement<\/a>."}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Bullard Center\u2019s Pioneering Environmental Justice Internship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps (EJCC) Summer Program brings students from across the nation together with Dr. Robert Bullard.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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