Growing Equity-Focused Environmental Leaders and Educators

Grant Type

Annual Grant

Project Status

Completed

Award Period

FY2023

Awarded Amount

$86,600

Amount Used

$82,281

Project Description

The Bio/Diversity Project creates and implements programs that pay and train UArizona students to be campus and community leaders working to promote both environmental sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion in environmental fields, to make the University of Arizona and the greater Tucson community more environmentally sustainable and equitable. Students from the University of Arizona will participate in a semester-long for-credit internship program aimed at providing racially diverse and low-income K-12 students with hands-on, culturally responsive, and place-based environmental science studies.

By providing 20-30 paid intern jobs, this project intends to boost the ratio of BIPOC students participating in the internship program. The Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW) hopes to boost the percentage of BIPOC interns by at least 20%. Interns in the Bio/Diversity Project will develop career-readiness skills that will help them become environmental leaders.

Project Outcomes

Far surpassing their initial goal, making the internship a paid opportunity increased the number of BIPOC interns from 41% (Spring 2022) to 82% in Fall 2022, resulting in a 100% increase.

In the Fall 2022 semester, a total of 16 undergraduate student interns from 12 different departments across six colleges participated in the Bio/Diversity Project.

For the Spring 2023 semester, a total of 15 undergraduate student interns from nine different crediting departments across three colleges at the University of Arizona participated in the internship program.

Student interns dedicated ten hours per week to our diversity-focused environmental science outreach program where they learned about diversity-based approaches and developed their skills as educators.

In both semesters, the interns facilitated nine outreach lessons to approximately 600 students across 5 Title 1 K-12 schools. In sum, the interns devoted 2,400 paid hours to serving the local community.