Addressing Environmental Justice in Higher Education Degree Programs

Interdisciplinary does not mean equi-disciplinary. Yet, interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) studies in colleges and universities are often seen as an opportunity to address elements of environmental education's past, which has been exclusionary at times. Because of time-and-resource limitations, curriculum construction in any area of study entails active decision-making of what to include. At the same time, this involves consideration of what and who the curriculum leaves out. The exclusionary practices are often unconscious, but they become particularly important when curriculum designers and educators leave content areas such as environmental justice (EJ) out of the IES curricula. Pinpointing exactly what influences whether EJ appears in IES curricula remains difficult, however.

In this study, the authors attempt to analyze institutional and program-level factors contributing to the inclusion of EJ themes and content in IES curricula. This study's authors consulted two major information sources from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to construct and test their hypotheses. The survey data, collected from 297 IES degree programs in 179 higher education institutions, asked IES program leaders to discuss program structures, partnerships, curriculum design processes, and program leadership and faculty. The researchers considered an EJ emphasis in the curriculum to be representative of the personal importance of the topic to survey participants as representative of its perceived value.

The researchers juxtaposed these findings with institutional and student characteristics such as diversity at both the institution and program-level, definitions of educational goals, and instructional values and attitudes. Additionally, the researchers analyzed responses regarding an ideal IES curriculum based on content and skill building.

The researchers found that 54% of the IES programs analyzed were considered science, technology, or engineering-based; 29% were at the graduate-level; 30% showed increasing enrollment of students of color; and 45% were in private institutions. With respect to the relationship between the importance and the actual inclusion of EJ, researchers found that the level of importance placed on EJ in a curriculum generally matched the level of emphasis placed on EJ in the degree program's actual content. Of the IES programs examined that indicated the high value of EJ, however, only 58.5% strongly emphasized EJ in their actual curriculum. The authors suggest that lack of resources, as well as lack of autonomy with regard to curricular design, might explain this disconnection.

Because communities of color and low-income communities are core to the EJ movement, this study considered whether student demographics factored into the inclusion of EJ in IES curricula. The researchers found that increasing numbers of enrolled students of color do not appear to influence higher values toward EJ in an IES curriculum. However, IES degree programs that showed increasing numbers of enrolled students of color indicated a significantly higher emphasis placed on EJ in the actual curriculum.

The educational goals of IES degree programs and prioritization of certain disciplines over others also returned interesting results. This study showed that IES degree programs that valued business or economic sustainability, ecology, and statistics had less emphasis on EJ in the actual curriculum. By contrast, those that emphasized social sustainability had more emphasis on EJ in the curriculum. The study found that IES degree programs in science, technology, or engineering fields exhibited significantly lower levels of importance on EJ in a curriculum and did not influence the inclusion of EJ in the actual curriculum. Programs in social sustainability, history, and normative thinking skills exhibited higher levels of emphasis on EJ.

The authors recognize that these results do not show whether IES degree programs fully integrate EJ content. They, therefore, call for deeper exploration of these topics, perhaps using qualitative approaches.