The transition to a low carbon economy in the U.S. has potentially wide-ranging implications for North American tribal nations, many of whom have significant oil, gas, and coal resources that provide jobs for local workers and revenues that sustain vital government services, both of which are threatened by the move away from fossil fuels.  On the other hand, tribal lands are also home to many potentially attractive sites for new renewable energy infrastructure like solar arrays or wind farms, which could offset job and revenue losses from the decreased use of oil and gas. Understanding these tradeoffs, and the likely outcomes of various pathways towards a greener economy, is vital for evaluating current and future U.S. energy policy and for ensuring that the costs and benefits of the move to a low energy economy are equitably shared. Funds from this grant support a team led by Monika Ehrman at the University of North Texas, Dallas—in collaboration with scholars at the Resources for the Future, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the University of Montana—to undertake a suite of interrelated research projects that together seek to advance understanding of how the transition from fossil fuel production to clean energy will affect smaller tribal nations in the Midwest and Southwest. Ehrman and her team plans to partner with tribal nations across three different states (New Mexico, North Dakota, and Colorado). The project will begin with a series of in-depth meetings, interviews, and focus groups with leaders and key stakeholders in each tribe to inform research design, craft data sharing partnerships, and ensure that research outputs are well positioned to inform future decisions by tribal communities. The team will then use advanced economic modeling techniques to estimate the likely impacts of different policy-driven changes in the price of fossil fuels on oil and gas revenues for each of the tribes. A second component of the projects involves environmental and geospatial modeling assessments of tribal lands as potential sites for wind, solar, and other renewable energy generation. Researchers will work with participating tribes to examine how that potential for renewable energy generation differs under various policy scenarios.  Finally, a third aspect of the analysis consists of legal analysis of how U.S. energy policymaking can better account for tribal sovereignty and self-governance.   Research findings promise to inform both U.S. and tribal energy policymaking and will be reported through several academic papers, policy briefs, and symposia. Ehrman and her team will also undertake a host of community-oriented workshops and gatherings to share findings with tribal nations and will hold presentation and discussion sessions in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on examining natural resource law. The team also expects to organize community engagement activities through the Native Nations Institute at University of Arizona.

Federal and state agencies have numerous grant and funding programs designed to incentivize researchers to develop new clean energy technologies and to speed the process by which clean energy innovations are brought to market. We know, however, that Black, Latino/a and Native American researchers do not participate in these programs at rates proportional to their representation among researchers, and there has been little research on what factors are driving this trend.  This grant supports a team led by Bryan Patterson at Johnson C. Smith University to explore the role that Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) play in clean energy research ecosystems. Patterson is leading a team that includes collaborating researchers at Florida International University and The Ohio State University and practitioners from the HBCU Community Development Action Coalition, the National Association of State Energy Officials, and BW Research. Together, the team will examine the experiences of clean energy researchers from MSIs and HBCUs in four urban regions across the Southeast: Charlotte-Greensboro, North Carolina; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The team will conduct 25 interviews with under-represented energy scholars of color in each region to understand the barriers and opportunities these scholars face in receiving federal funding, conducting research, and disseminating their findings. The team will also produce policy-relevant research briefs that provide insights and recommendations for government agencies investing in clean energy research, including a scorecard to help local policymakers assess their regional energy innovation ecosystems with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As the U.S. transitions towards less carbon intensive means of producing energy, important questions arise about how this transition will likely impact different communities across the country.  For instance, how do rural, urban, and suburban areas differ in their ability to adapt to economic and socio-cultural changes driven by clean energy innovation? How might various energy and environmental policies hinder or accelerate workers moving into clean energy sector jobs? How might energy transitions differ across geographies, especially in the South, where little research has been done on these questions to date? Funds from this grant support a team of interdisciplinary scholars led by Shelley Welton at the University of South Carolina and collaborators at the University of Tennessee who aim to advance our understanding of how the transition to clean energy technologies are affecting vulnerable and marginalized populations in the American South. Focusing on urban, suburban, and rural areas in Columbia, SC and Knoxville, TN, the team will conduct 80 interviews and 6 focus groups to better understand community energy vulnerability, worker experiences in the clean energy transition, and overall community priorities across a diverse range of neighborhood types.  Interviewees and focus group participants will be identified and selected with the cooperation and input from local community organizations, including representatives from environmental institutions, worker collectives, and local faith communities.  The scholars anticipate that these interviews will lead to the identification of both unique findings about the concerns of particularly vulnerable communities, as well as common themes across communities, that can inform and strengthen future energy policymaking at the local, state, and national level.  In addition to peer-reviewed articles reporting on both findings from specific locations and themes that cut across research sites, the team will produce community-oriented materials, such as “A People’s Guide to Energy Policy,” envisioned as a white paper and accompanying website that shares findings and information with local community organizations, as well as an interactive “As Goes the South StoryMap” that will serve as a digital narrative for the project and include interviews, images, and videos.

There is a long and complicated history of fossil fuel development on Indigenous lands, with mining for coal and drilling for oil and gas leading to environmental degradation in these communities while also serving as a source of income for Indigenous tribal governments. As energy transitions away from fossil fuels take place, there both is a real financial risk to these communities due to revenue declines, yet there is also an opportunity, and a desire, to use these developments as an opportunity to transition toward cleaner energy production and help Indigenous communities become less reliant on these revenue sources. This grant supports a team led by Julia Haggerty at Montana State University, in partnership with colleagues at Little Big Horn College (a local tribal community college), Plenty Doors Community Development Corporation (a community development organization), and faculty from the University of Wyoming to better understand the fiscal implications of energy transitions for Indigenous communities. The team will work closely with leaders of the Crow Nation in Montana, engaging with this community in depth, serving as a case study that can be shared with other Indigenous nations to further extend the project’s impact. The project will use multiple approaches to understand how fiscal policy intersects with economic vulnerability in the context of energy transitions on tribal lands. The team will develop a dataset that aligns coal revenue information with financial disbursement information, undertake focus groups to better understand public revenue and expenditure issues, and conduct extended interviews with tribal members. They will also produce materials for the community, including oral histories from the interviews, assessments of how changes in fossil fuel revenue might impact social services, and a series of workshops and trainings for current and emerging leaders in the Crow Nation to help them learn about the impact of energy transitions on Indigenous fiscal policy and best management practices.

The Radio Astronomy Data Imaging and Analysis Lab (RADIAL) is a project of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) that aims to use radio astronomy as a means to develop a diverse STEM workforce.  Representing a partnership between 14 separate Minority Serving Institutions (MSI), NRAO, and the University of Wisconsin and led by Anja Fourie, RADIAL is launching a major effort to facilitate successful enrollment of undergraduate students at its MSI partners into graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin.  Funds from this grant will support numerous aspects of RADIAL’s efforts, including the creation of undergraduate certificate programs in Data Intensive Research in Radio Astronomy at its partner institutions; the creation of mentoring and training experiences for MSI students, including stipend support; guaranteed admission and funding to attend graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin for up to four students from participating MSIs; assignment of student liaison officers to represent students withing the alliance; the convening of annual science colloquium; and the creation of a task force to research, report, and ultimately train graduate programs on holistic graduate admissions processes.  Grant funds will be administered by Associated Universities Inc, acting as a fiscal agent for the project.

This grant supports a partnership between Spelman College and Michigan State University (MSU) to create an innovative educational pipeline that couples high quality instruction in cutting edge data science with particularized training in disciplinary sciences like mathematics and physics. Led by Monica Stephens Cooley (Spelman) and Andrew Christlieb (MSU), the five-year (“3+2”) program starts at Spelman and is aimed at undergraduate STEM majors who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in STEM-focused data science.  Developed in coordination with MSU, the Spelman curriculum has been curated to equip Black women undergraduates with skills and training that will make them attractive candidates for admission to MSU’s highly competitive, two-year master’s degree program in data science. Grant funds will support the recruitment and training of an initial cohort of ten Spelman students over the next two years. In addition to the program’s educational merits, the participation of Spelman, both a women’s college and a Historically Black College, in the partnership represents an exciting new avenue for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM graduate education and could serve as a model for the important role Minority Serving Institutions have to play in increasing women’s and Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o graduate degree attainment in the sciences and engineering.

This grant supports a series of initiatives led by Catherine Propper at North Arizona University (NAU) to facilitate both the recruitment of Indigenous and Latina/o students into STEM graduate education programs at NAU and transform graduate education at NAU toward a more student-centered educational model that is oriented toward student success.  The primary effort will be the creation of a cohort-based bridge program between NAU and partners Diné College, a tribal college operated by the Navajo Nation, and NAU-Yuma, a Hispanic Serving Institution whose student body is drawn largely from the largely Latina/o population around Yuma, Arizona.  Using structured mentoring, course exchanges, retreats, and other curricular and programmatic efforts, the program will attempt to facilitate a pipeline bringing undergraduates from Diné and Yuma into STEM master’s degree programs at the NAU main campus.  Other planned efforts include revising graduate admissions processes in order to be more inclusive and to increase diversity across the institutions, ongoing faculty training in order to transform relationships and environments in labs and classrooms, and engaging family members in order to ensure a holistic approach to student success. 

This grant supports an initiative at Georgia State University (GSU) to create an innovative program designed to further the recruitment, persistence, and progression of Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o undergraduates into quantitative science graduate programs around the nation.  Created in partnership with the National Math Alliance, the “Math Path Program” is comprised of numerous components.  The program will include a structured math mentoring program that will automatically opt-in all first-year GSU math students.  First-year majors in math-heavy disciplines like statistics or physics will also be invited and encouraged to participate, with a particular focus on including Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o students. GSU will also launch a summer internship program, develop a series of mentored math teams for second-year students, work with the National Math Alliance to develop programming that facilitates the graduate application process, and create a graduate school “transition grant” that will defray site visits, moving costs, and other expenses for students who apply and attend STEM graduate programs.  Partnering with GSU in the effort are a series of graduate programs at Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, and Purdue University, who collectively offer a diverse variety of graduate programs where GSU students may choose to continue their education.