GEOLOGY, SOCIETY, AND JUSTICE: CREATING AN UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE LEVEL PLACE-BASED GEOSCIENCE CLASS TO RECENTER LAND JUSTICE IN GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

Geoscience education has long been guided by formulaic objective truth-seeking and methodologies inherited from centuries of practice rooted in the Western worldview that continue to permeate and shape the role of geoscience. Long-awaited recent efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education are welcome and necessary. However, they fall short of addressing entrenched social and environmental injustices when they fail to challenge traditional disciplinary pedagogies and training in one of the least diverse STEM fields. Geology can hide in quotidian interactions and objects or can be central concerns in large geopolitical questions. As Kathryn Yusoff (2019) asserts, no geology is neutral, and as Indigenous and Western geographies both hold, the peoples and their human networks are as much a part of the landscape as the rocks, biota, and water that form and define it. Rooting learning in sense of place and querencia–that which gives us sense of place, anchors us to the land, and makes us a unique people (Estevan Arellano, 1997)–improves engagement and study of environmental justice within the storied landscapes we study and teach about as geoscientists. Fundamentally, people are inseparable from landscapes and memories of place are recorded across human, other than human, and geologic dimensions.

In this novel and interdisciplinary course, we employ place-based education that draws from a broad swath of disciplines and worldviews. We seek to create a space where students from different disciplines and backgrounds co-create new knowledge and understand different epistemologies to face complex issues of injustices head-on. Open to undergraduate and graduate students in and outside of geosciences at a Research-Intensive Hispanic Serving Institution, “Geology, Society, and Justice” bridges the gap between faculty-led BAJEDI programs and student experiences in classroom settings by challenging traditional epistemologies of the role of geoscientists and land. We recenter relations between land and people within discussions of geoscientific issues and highlight the un-generalizable perspectives, research, and experiences of historically excluded voices. To enact change, we must challenge the geoscientific paradigm and work to decolonize the classroom and minds of future geoscientists as an act of ongoing praxis of land justice.