Students develop framework of potential environmental justice minor | Academics

Students at the American Cultures Center’s Environmental Justice Initiative, or ACEJ, are advocating for UC Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources to create an environmental justice minor.

The students have been developing the minor for approximately two years, creating the minor’s framework, working with faculty and advocating for its implementation. They launched an online petition for the minor this week for Earth Week, collecting signatures of support.

The group hopes to formally present their petition to the administration next semester.

“(This minor is) taking existing environmental justice work that’s happening at Berkeley and streamlining it and structuring it in a way that can amount to students taking the minor and coming away with a really tangible and concrete credential,” said Amelia Pinto, ACEJ curriculum coordinator.

In addition to advocating for the minor, ACEJ works with the American Cultures Center to develop courses, organize events and fund an environmental justice research fellowship.

Pinto said ACEJ’s initiative to create this new minor is part of a broader movement for environmental justice in higher education. Zora Uyeda-Hale, a program coordinator at the American Cultures Center, said the minor grew from student advocacy on campus, including the Decolonial Environmental Network and a previous DeCal course, “Decolonizing Environmentalism.”

“What environmental justice can really do is provide students in any discipline — in any major — (with) the kind of worldviews, perspectives and justice-oriented pedagogies and thinking that can help guide them with whatever they want to put their skills towards in the future,” Uyeda-Hale said.

Kate O’Neill, the associate dean for instruction and student affairs at Rausser College, has met with the student group multiple times. Pinto said CNR administrators are holding internal discussions following those meetings, according to an email from O’Neill.

ACEJ aims to raise awareness of the minor and measure support through their petition.

“We need to recognize that CNR sometimes presents some of its work as apolitical, but all of this work is political — the environment is political, ” Uyeda-Hale said. “It’s not enough to just assume that there might be some classes or some professors that are committed to this work.”

O’Neill said the minor, if approved, could be available to students sometime between fall 2027 and fall 2028 at the earliest.

O’Neill noted the lengthy approval process for minors on campus but recognized ACEJ’s strong coalition.

“There is a need for systematic study of EJ at UC Berkeley – it’s already one of our strengths, and part of our voice in the wider world,” O’Neill wrote in the email.

Pinto encouraged community members to show their support by signing the petition, leaving testimony or contacting ACEJ.

“We want this work to outlast all of us,” Pinto said. “To outlast our time at the university in a way that can be protected and defended, just like every other social movement that has been fought for on this campus.”