Positionality & Diversity Statement

​

I recognize that my positionality creates the potential to perpetuate the eurocentric and colonial ideologies that have largely shaped academia. I am a straight white woman from an upper-middle class family who emigrated from England to California when I was a child. While I am an immigrant and the first in my immediate family to earn a 4-year college degree, I recognize that coming from an English-speaking country with similar cultural values to the United States, and having parental financial support to attend college, means that my experience was very different from many immigrant and first generation students. I therefore practice critical pedagogy, including guest speakers from historically underrepresented groups and inviting students to share their perspectives. When designing reading lists, I include topics on environmental justice issues led by communities of color, such as air quality around the Salton Sea, and papers written by female-identifying scholars and by those who were educated outside of the Western-perspective. At the beginning of a course, I ask students to complete an Exit Ticket describing their interests, motivations, and anything they would like me to know about their background or lived experiences. This helps me tailor course content to ensure students can identify with presented research and adapt to meet learning needs.

​

The other aspect of my positionality that has influenced my teaching relates to mental and physical health. I have overcome my own struggles with anxiety and learned to manage pain from a chronic disease and migraine disorder. These lived experiences have made me a compassionate and understanding educator and why I utilize play-based learning to decrease classroom-related stress. It is also why I am able to meet student learning needs, whether it be explaining a concept in a different way or when I adapted lessons for remote participation to ensure a student’s continued success in a class after she moved home to improve her mental health. I am also cognizant of physical abilities when planning field-based learning; I explain the physical demands of a lesson before entering the field and offer a modified activity for students who are unable or uncomfortable.

​

While acknowledging my privilege, my ability to travel has also shaped my worldview and influenced my research and teaching. As a child, visiting family in England involved driving between hedgerows that separated agricultural land that converted habitat thousands of years ago. This contrasted with trips to Yosemite, which I believed to be completely untouched by people, but later learned my colonial-based education erased the Indigenous expulsion. My family frequently vacationed in Las Vegas, which spurred my curiosity about human development in deserts and became the focus of my PhD. Trips to China and India highlighted extreme wealth divides and taught me that, while theoretically possible, social and economic realities may limit environmental protection. These experiences are why I focus on environmental studies; humans interact with nature based on their personal needs and values, but those with power impose harm on wildlife and communities, leading to extinction and environmental injustices. Witnessing the global scale of this taught me the diversity of approaches in environmental protection and justice. Thus, I am not motivated to teach only what I know, but to facilitate student discussions about environmental injustices that they have experienced, encourage students to share their individual perspectives, and push students to think about how their own knowledge is shaped beyond what a teacher tells them. I recognize that I am still learning how to increase diversity and equity in my teaching, so I continuously adjust my practices based on student feedback to ensure inclusion and help more students see themselves in science.