2018 Conference

Mealtime Roundtable

Students from marginalized communities often have valuable skills for the ES field from years of living at the wrong end of the pollution tailpipe and surviving by using family and community resources when political and economic resources are lacking. Efforts to recruit students from marginalized communities into STEM fields such as environmental science have often (and fruitfully) focused on reducing financial barriers and increasing exposure to STEM fields at a young age. This roundtable looks in another direction that likely affects both recruitment and retention: What do such students find when they dip a toe into the waters of environmental science? How well do introductory ES courses reflect, or at least provide space for, the perspectives, interests, and strengths of students from marginalized communities?

Participants are invited to talk about what works to help ES courses, particularly at the introductory level, support and activate the strengths that many of these students could, and increasingly do, bring to the ES field. How, first, are the perspectives, interests, and strengths of students from one type of marginalized community the same or different from those of another, and from those of students with more privileged backgrounds? Given these perspectives, how can course goals, topics, assumptions, readings, and/or assignments make room for these students and their expertise and questions?