American University’s Center for Environment, Community, & Equity has advanced its development, establishing a new clearinghouse, anchored by newly appointed Director Dana R. Fisher.
Fisher is a professor in the School of International Service who has written multiple books and peer-reviewed articles that discuss topics such as environmental stewardship, climate politics and democracy.
She serves as the president of the Eastern Sociological Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes sociological scholarship. Fisher took the CECE director position in April and officially joined the AU faculty in July. Before coming to AU she was the director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland, College Park.
“When the folks at American reached out to me about this, I thought this would be just a wonderful opportunity to build something and start to do this kind of bridge-building across different disciplines to help to cultivate people who were doing research that will have an impact,” Fisher said.
Launched on Oct. 19, 2022, CECE aims to foster environmental work collaborations between various schools at AU, which include research, projects and events.
The Center’s interdisciplinary environmental work spans diverse topics such as justice, citizen engagement and racial equity. CECE’s four focus areas are climate and sustainability, environmental equity and justice, food, agriculture, land and water, as well as oceans and fisheries.
Due to difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, its launch was delayed and CECE was formally launched two years later than planned.
Fisher, upon her arrival in July 2023, sought to launch the CECE clearinghouse, an online platform hosting articles and content related to community, equity and environmental work at AU.
The clearinghouse officially launched in November and will include work and initiatives from different AU schools such as the School of Communication, SIS and the College of Arts and Sciences.
The CECE recently announced its inaugural faculty research incubator grants, which will fund research projects from these AU schools.
Current projects include “The Climate Story Gaps Project: Locating Untold Climate Intersections in Washington, D.C.” and “Remote Sensing and Knowledge Co-Production in Northern Haiti.”
Fisher said she sees this process as a new way to accelerate research projects at AU.
“We will actually be working with those teams to develop their projects and then fundraise around them so they can bring in external funding,” Fisher said. “My hope, assuming that we can continue to get the funding from the University on this is that it is going to be a yearly opportunity to fund and support research projects across the University.”
CECE will also host events centered around climate change, such as the COP28 DC Climate Hub, which brought climate activists, policymakers and ambassadors to speak at SIS.
One of CECE’s goals is to engage students in the center and its many avenues for research and environmental work.
Fisher said she appreciates how environmentally conscious the AU student body is, something that makes her hopeful for the future of the center.
“One of the big contrasts that was very clear to me right when I came in and visited for the first time from Maryland is that the student body is environmentally concerned and terminally focused and engaged, which is wonderful,” Fisher said.
In 2018, AU became the first carbon-neutral university in the United States, a feat that Fisher believes the student body significantly impacted. Fisher said she hopes environmentally conscious students can see CECE as a place to kick-start their…
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