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Introducing the Sustainable Environment Institute

For many of you, this newsletter will be your first contact with the SEI. You’re likely to wonder who we are and what we’re all about.

We are LACCD educators deeply concerned with the state of the environment and passionate about the need to raise the level of environmental awareness among our students. We began meeting informally a long time ago, in 2007, under the auspices of the District Academic Senate, and in 2011 became an official DAS committee. In recent years we have put out a newsletter, maintained a website, occasionally sponsored speakers, and developed ties to outside environmental organizations. 

That there should be more discussion in the district about the environment is for us a given,  as the magnitude of the problems the world faces could not be clearer. The climate emergency stares us baldly in the face, witnessed by this summer's heat waves in the Arctic and fires in the Amazon. Air pollution, water scarcity, endangered ecosystems, and the prospect of widespread species extinction are additional enormous challenges. A broad understanding of the environment and the human impact upon it has never been more vital, and the district community should be more deeply involved in that pursuit.

Our immediate goal is to communicate environmental news. We will do so through a more frequent and much more widely distributed newsletter, an expanded website, and a new speaker series. We are especially interested in presenting local and statewide environmental news, which is often underreported in the media. Meanwhile, UCLA, CSUN, and other local universities have created important sustainable environment programs, and we will report on the crucial issues they raise for the future of Los Angeles. Needless to say, we will share news about environmental programs at our colleges.

SEI is about more than communication, however. We also encourage and support the expansion of district environmental studies/sciences classes and programs and coordinate district participation in the Southern California Marine Institute at the Los Angeles Harbor. We are in the process of installing air quality/weather stations at some of our colleges, and we participate in various local environmental conferences and meetings. We’d like to see all these programs grow substantially. 

Our primary task right now, however, is the communication within the district of environmental news. We urge you to visit our website, which includes a wide range of relevant articles from both national and international sources, as well as links to numerous environmental organizations. We have a blog on the site and welcome your comments.

If you would like to help in any of our projects, please contact us. We welcome the participation of administrators and staff, and faculty from all disciplines. Broad public education is essential to the health of our beleaguered planet, and we all have a role to play. Join us! 
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LA Harbor Opportunity for LACCD Students

Owing to our membership in the Southern California Marine Institute, East LA’s Randy Adsit is able to take his Environmental Science students on regular four-hour field trips aboard the research vessel Yellowfin in and around LA Harbor. Other science faculty are encouraged to take advantage of the same opportunity. 

The Southern California Marine Institute provides research facilities at the Los Angeles Harbor to a consortium of local universities and colleges, including UCLA, USC, and local Cal State Universities. In 2015 SEI arranged for the LACCD to join SCMI,  and we remain the only participating community college district. 

​Field trips aboard the R/V Yellowfin are offered at a large discount to SCMI members, and offer great teaching opportunities for many science faculty. Please contact us, if you're interested. See our website for additional photos.
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​One of the creatures they collected was a sea mouse—a type of polychaete worm (bristle worm), related to regular garden earthworms. They live in the mud of the sea floor and mostly eat detritus (dead organic material).
Map of the LA River WatershedMap of the Los Angeles River watershed and urbanized areas
 The Revitalization of the LA River  

​You have all probably heard something about the ambitious plan to revitalize the LA River. From the large-scale rebuilding of the downtown section being designed by Frank Gehry and associates, to the more modest park designs and greening projects in the San Fernando Valley and southern Los Angeles neighborhoods, the revitalization process promises to change our perception of the river and its role in the urban milieu. The easiest way to learn more is to go to the mayor's online clearing house for all things LA River, which includes links to all major stakeholders and agencies. 

One key stakeholder, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, has formed the Upper Los Angeles River & Tributaries Working Group, a multi-agency organization overseeing state expenditures in selected areas of the San Fernando Valley for green spaces and outdoor recreation. The State Legislature stipulated that a revitalization plan must be developed before funds are expended, given the complex ecological and political history of the Upper LA River area and the unique obstacles revitalization faces there. In particular, there is a severe lack of parks and opens space in the region, but the large tracts of commercial/industrial development make creating such spaces difficult. The group intends to “place a prioritization on planning efforts that represent disadvantaged communities...developing a revitalization plan that addresses the unique and diverse needs of these waterways and the communities through which they pass.” As a result, extensive community engagement and outreach to disadvantaged communities is anticipated.
 
Four areas in the Valley are in focus: those near the Aliso Canyon/LA River confluence, the Tujunga Wash, the Pacoima Wash and the Verdugo Wash (other areas may be added at a later date). Since three of these waterways are adjacent to district campuses, and the Gold Creek Reserve is within the Tujunga Wash area, there should be a good opportunity here for faculty and students to participate in the planning and surveys. In fact, EcoAdvocates, the student activist group at Valley (see related article), worked on initial community outreach during the Spring semester. 

We will continue to report on the Master Plan for the LA River in upcoming issues. Funding aside, there are some serious obstacles ahead: recent studies by the US Army Corps of Engineers have warned that areas along the river from southern Burbank to downtown may be in a dangerous flood area, making river revitalization much more problematic. Also, there is a question as to the compatibility of rainfall diversion and river revitalization. These concerns might well force planners to redraw their maps. 
News Briefs   
  • On Sept. 20th youth strikers around the world  will walk out of school and work to join marches and rallies on behalf of climate action. Activities will continue through Sept. 27, coinciding with the UN Climate Summit on Sept. 23 in New York. Organizers, including the Sunrise Movement and Friday’s For Future USA, say the week will mark the largest-ever global mobilization for climate action, with over 6,000 events in 150 countries planned. Large numbers of adults are expected to participate, which will be a first since the strikes began last November.
 
  • The campaign for the University of California to divest from fossil fuels received a big boost in July when 77% of the faculty statewide voted to ask the Board of Regents to end all investments in “the 200 publicly traded companies with the largest fossil fuel reserves.” Students have been petitioning the regents for such a divestment since 2013. Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, which started the international campaign, said such a step would be “one of the biggest moments in the seven-year history of the fossil fuel divestment movement."  

  •  A group of STEM researchers based at Carleton College and Illinois State University, et al, have created a collection of environmental education projects using “large, publicly available datasets to engage students in STEM and improve their quantitative reasoning." The suite is called Project EDDIE (for Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry and Exploration), and the teaching modules cover such topics as ecology, limnology, geology, and hydrology. The researchers also provide guidance on the best utilization of the modules. Project EDDIE is a branch of SERC, the Science Education Research Center at Carleton.​​

  • Two new climate change studies released this summer have debunked the history argument of climate deniers. Even though 97% of scientists believe that human agency is causing the planet to warm, skeptics have continued to argue that the temperature change of recent decades is a naturally occurring phenomenon, similar to the warming that took place in the North Atlantic region during the Middle Ages. The studies show that there is no evidence, going all the way back to the Roman Empire, for any event that compares in degree and extent to the warming that is now occurring.
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West LA College Offers Nation's First AA Degree in Climate and Environmental Studies
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West Los Angeles Collee has just launched an AA degree program in Climate and Environmental Studies. While other community colleges, such as SMCC and De Anza, offer degrees in sustainability, this is the first in the nation to focus on climate change. The interdisciplinary major will include core courses in global climate change, environmental ethics, and statistics, and students will be able to select from a variety of electives, ranging from chemistry and geology to the economics of globalization and American social problems.

Just approved by the state this spring, the degree is designed both for those who plan to transfer to four-year institutions and those who want to add value to their current careers. With a BA in the field, students will be able to work as sustainability consultants, environmental scientists, green building/construction professionals, air and water quality specialists, renewable energy technicians, and science educators, among other possibilities.

There are currently just eleven people signed up, but that number is expected to grow this fall. The program is under the direction of Assistant Professor Jennifer Cole, who has been at WLAC just since 2017. She credits the support of college president, Dr. James Limbaugh, for the quick development of the degree.

Limbaugh told the Community College Daily that he’s been “concerned about climate change for the last couple of decades…I realized I have a moral responsibility to help students from urban areas like Los Angeles become aware of climate issues. Students need to understand that climate change is the biggest single problem we are facing globally.”
Valley EcoAdvocates Working through the Summer
Students in the San Fernando Valley including LAVC's EcoAdvocates protest the LADWP gas fired power plant in Sun Valley. The Valley Sierra Club helped organize the protest. 
Eco Advocates, the Valley College environmental group, has been very busy this past year and through the summer. The ten-year-old club has been revitalized under the leadership of Eddie Kaufman-Morrow and Anahí Rizo, working closely with the Sierra Club’s Katya English. They have organized events ranging from Arbor Day (where they planted trees in honor of Armenians killed in the genocide) to a recent campus cleanup. EcoAdvocates also worked with the Valley Facilities Department to get refillable drinking water bottle stations installed in some buildings as a way to reduce the large quantity of plastic thrown into the waste on campus. 

Off campus, EcoAdvocates has been active in the Valley, especially in joining the fight against the Dept. of Water and Power’s renewal of its gas-fired plant in Sun Valley. This is one of four such plants the DWP currently operates. The giant utility recently announced that three will be closed in the next few years, but that the Sun Valley plant will remain open. This has met with considerable opposition from elected officials and neighborhood councils in the Valley.

Students in the club have also helped the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as it works to revitalize the tributaries of the Upper Los Angeles River system (see related article). 

EcoAdvocates is one of the longest-running student clubs at Valley College. They meet once a week during the school year and have an ambitious agenda for the fall, with a major recruitment drive planned . Recently they launched their first online newsletter, so we can all follow them.
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​Students pulled weeds in the Allied Health & Sciences garden area adjacent to the classroom building. With Gerardo Ceja, (left) and Jess Callejas, Savannah Gerson, Maricela and Eddie Kaufan-Murrow (right).