This summer, the Feminist Research Institute had the wonderful opportunity to host four undergraduate interns from UC Davis and UC Berkeley. As part of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) Workforce Innovation Program, Corinne Nicholson, Luna Hohner-Shields, Jennifer Lainez, and Ijada Nguyen worked under Dr. Sarah McCullough to assist in the Environmental Justice (EJ) Leaders program. Each intern collaborated with several EJ Leaders in their community-participatory research surrounding topics such as derailment, clean energy, green landscaping and infrastructure, manufacturing waste, and Black hair product chemicals.

While their internships are coming to a close, each intern’s contributions will be showcased in the EJ Leaders’ presentations in Davis on October 5th, 2023 and in Sacramento on October 6th, 2023.  

Corinne Nicholson

Corinne is an incoming second year at UC Davis studying environmental engineering. This summer she worked on Katia’s Together for Nature project and Zoe’s project on how schools can be EJ hubs. For Katia's project she investigated sustainable landscaping, restoration, conservation, and urban heat islands in northeastern Illinois. Additionally, she collaborated on Zoe's project, focusing on implementing green architecture and advanced design in Californian schools. 

Luna Hohner-Shields

Luna is a senior at UC Berkeley in the Society & Environment program. This summer she supported the Environmental Justice Leaders program by researching environmental justice education programing and renewable energy policies. She also collaborated with Katia’s Together for Nature project, and wrote about how energy topics intersect with both Alec and Diamond’s work. Finally she was connected to UC Davis PhD student Meg Slattery and will continue to work with and receive mentorship from her as Luna completes her honors thesis.  

Jennifer Lainez

Jennifer is a recent graduate from Davis with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. This summer she had the opportunity to support the Environmental Justice Leaders program and more specifically, work with EJ Leader, Diamond Spratling on the topic of protecting black women from endocrine disrupting chemicals. For this project, Jennifer researched different types of products that black hair stylists would use and assessed each chemical that was a part of the product. She also analyzed data from a survey of Black hair stylists conducted by Diamond and created a presentation summarizing the materials. All this work contributed to promoting women’s health in our environmental sector and educating women in their health and the products that they use.

Ijada Nguyen

Ijada is a UC Davis student expected to graduate in June 2024 with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering. This summer, Ijada contributed to the EJ Leader research projects by organizing resources on their major topics, as well as proactively participating in discussions and identifying key ideas in line with their project goals. Ijada worked on Atenas Mena's project highlighting the widespread consequences of train derailment and Zoe Temple's project identifying the roles schools can play in promoting environmental justice.