Patterson receives 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Scholars

Editor’s note: Original stories by UCLA Newsroom and UCLA Samueli

Civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Regan Patterson is one of four professors that will be able to develop new UCLA classes that have an impact on Los Angeles and beyond, thanks to the fourth annual Chancellor’s Awards for Community-Engaged Scholars.

Supported by the chancellor’s office and the UCLA Center for Community Engagement, each award of $10,000 will allow a faculty member to enrich the university’s curriculum through a course that features collaborative learning experiences with community partners and that addresses issues significant to his or her own work, ranging from labor organizing and environmental justice to aging and health care access.

“These collaborative research partnerships are great examples of the many ways that UCLA is deeply engaged with Los Angeles,” said Shalom Staub, director of the Center for Community Engagement. “Extending these research partnerships to include our undergraduate students will strengthen our students’ relationship with, and impact on, the larger communities in which they live and work.”

Course: “Developing an Engineering Community-Engaged Scholarship Course in Environmental Justice”

This course introduces students to the concept of environmental justice by having them collaborate with community-based organizations on environmental justice projects that they will co-create with each organization. In addition to working with their community partners to complete projects, students will examine methods for assessing disparities in exposure to various environmental hazards and will discuss a variety of topics, including water quality, climate and energy justice, race, ethnicity and class.

“My hope is that students walk away understanding approaches to addressing environmental hazards and injustices that go beyond solely technical approaches in order to center justice and community. I want them to learn to value different forms of knowledge, as well as recognize the sociopolitical context and justice implications of their work.”

Regan Patterson