Environmental-justice scholar and educator Dorceta Taylor believes human diversity should be as integral to the environmental field as biodiversity is to natural systems. Through her research and teaching at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, where she is associate professor of environmental sociology, Taylor has demonstrated both the need and potential opportunities for diversifying environmentalism. She also has helped minority students gain access to jobs and internships at environmental organizations, governmental agencies and academic institutions.

In June, Taylor's pioneering efforts to raise awareness of these issues will culminate in the 2007 Faculty Diversity and Environmental Justice Research Symposium. The international conference, slated for June 7-9, will focus on faculty diversity in academic environmental programs as well as on domestic and international environmental-justice research.

"Just as diversity makes natural systems more resilient and robust, so too will diversity help to strengthen the environmental movement by creating a larger, broader pool of human capital," says Taylor, who is also associate professor of Afroamerican and African Studies.

She anticipates the symposium will attract between 100 and 200 researchers from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and other countries who will present their findings to a gathering of scholars, students, policy makers, environmental-justice practitioners and grant makers. The event, which is being organized by the Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, directed by Taylor, and the Leadership Initiative for Minority Female Environmental Faculty, also serves to advance the school’s mission and goals.

"Historically, this school has been on the cutting-edge of thinking and research about environmentalism, and has supported activities that not only impact environmental policy and decision making, but also shape the evolution of the environmental field," Taylor says. "We also have one of the largest clusters of social-science faculty embedded in an environment school as well as the oldest and most comprehensive environmental-justice program in the country."

In 1990, faculty organized the nation’s first academic environmental-justice conference to examine the links between race, class and environmental hazards. A more recent summit on diversity in the environmental field, held two years ago, set the stage for this year’s symposium, which will devote considerable attention to the emerging social movement spawned by concerns over environmental justice.

Another focal point of Taylor's research enterprise at SNRE is environmental history. She is now completing a trilogy of books that document the contributions made by the middle and lower classes to urban and rural environmentalism from the 1600s through the 1900s. Taylor’s project was sparked as much by students’ questions about "what was missing" in their historical studies of environmental politics as it was by her own desire to incorporate multicultural material related to race, gender and class in her teaching and research.

"Today’s students want and expect a more complex understanding of the social, biophysical, business and other aspects of environmentalism," she says. "They find that becoming well-grounded in environmental history can help them gain a better understanding of contemporary issues."

Read a related press release on Taylor’s research, "Mainstream Environmental Organizations Could Benefit by Hiring Qualified, Interested Minority Candidates with Environmental and Engineering Degrees."

By Claudia Capos

For more information, contact Mary Vingerelli at vingerel@umich.edu or call 734-763-6605.