On privilege: Being, recognizing and expanding - MSIs, HBCUs, EJ, and ESA

Background/Question/Methods

Why should anyone teach at a minority-serving institution (MSI)?  Because it’s more than just a job. Within the next decade minority children are expected to comprise more than half of the nation’s students.  Because many of these first-generation students will attend MSIs, their impact will continue to be astounding.  For instance, while total enrollment at the 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is about 300,000 or 13% of all Black students attending college and university, these institutions produce ~25% of the nation’s Black college graduates and most of the Black doctorates.  Similarly, although the 450 institutions comprising the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities  (HACUs) comprise less than 10% of all institutions of higher education, they enroll more than two-thirds of all Hispanic college students.  While the impact of MSIs, as illustrated, is disproportionately large, their impact in the ecological and environmental sciences is much smaller.  Many, if not most, of these institutions do not have programs emphasizing environmental science let alone ecology—despite the fact that these very populations have historically suffered environmental impacts at disproportionate levels and are anticipated, because of lower resistance and resilience, to suffer even more as a result of global climate change impacts.  

Results/Conclusions

Ecologists are well positioned to help address these issues, but only if they become engaged.  Working at an MSI offers a unique opportunity to engage with these communities, to diversify the field of ecology, to diversify the ecologists in the field, and to profoundly influence all of our futures.  I have, during a three-decade teaching career at an HBCU, taught ecology, environmental science, science and public policy, and a variety of other environmentally related courses.  In those courses, along with student participation in my research program, I have been privileged to interact with a large number of minority undergraduate and graduate students who have, themselves, gone on to careers in the ecological and environmental sciences, including environmental consulting, working for environmental NGOs, serving as a federal agency program manager, being a member of a state public utilities commission with focus on renewable energy and transportation, and even working as a university professor.   In addition, there are numerous others currently in graduate programs and even more who, although they did not chose ecological or environmental careers, bring an environmental perspective to their work, lives, families, and communities.