Open Fellowship Application for Students

Summer Fellowship

UCI Community Resilience Projects seeks applicants for one full-time summer fellow. The summer fellow will work on projects that advance UCI’s collaboration with CRECE, a community cooperative in Santa Ana. CRECE (Community in Resistance for Ecological and Cultural Empowerment) is a farmer-owned cooperative “committed to transforming our food system through cultural cohesion, community-based stewardship of land, and equitable policy advocacy. [CRECE’s] mission is to create community-run microfarms for the health, empowerment, and sovereignty of working-class families in Santa Ana.”  The fellow will contribute to activities in support of CRECE’s youth compost team, community gardens, and Cempoaxochitl (marigold) Project leading up to Dia de Los Muertos 2018. Fellow activities may also include collaboration with additional community organizations based in Orange County such as Orange County Environmental Justice. The fellowship entails activities in CRECE’s community gardens as well as research and writing to support curriculum development, trainings, funding proposals, and outreach. It is anticipated that the fellow will split time between CRECE’s operation in Santa Ana and the UCI Community Resilience Projects’ office on the UCI campus.  Seeking 8 – 12 week summer commitment. Exact start and end dates to be negotiated based on anticipated number of hours per week. Graduate and undergraduate students from all disciplines are welcome to apply. The fellowship is categorized as a paid internship, valued up to $4,800.

Year-Long Fellowship

At the UCI Office of Sustainability, we understand that transformations in physical infrastructure alone will not suffice to achieve the University of California’s climate and sustainability goals. How we build the human infrastructure to get us there is also key. We are working on several community resilience projects that are intended to foster people-centered and inclusive solutions to our climate challenges. These projects are driven by students, faculty, staff, and community collaborators who come together for meaningful exchange, education, research, and action for social transformation. We are developing a shared understanding that the problems of climate change, racism and all social injustice, economic inequality, and our challenged democracy are connected, and so are the solutions.“Community resilience” describes our efforts to create the human infrastructure through which climate and sustainability solutions foster and reflect social cohesion and inclusion of underrepresented voices in our university community and beyond.

Project Supervisors: Oscar Teran, JD, Director, UCI DREAM Center; Abigail Reyes, JD, Director of UCI Community Resilience Projects, Office of Sustainability

Student Project: The selected fellow will work with UCI Community Resilience Projects to integrate and align UCI’s sustainability and climate activities with UCI’s wide-ranging activities that forward understanding and progress on racial and social justice. This work will include coordination of and involvement in UCI’s Community Resilience Co-Lab, a collaboration among UCI Community Resilience Projects; UCI Cross-Cultural Center; UCI DREAM Center; UCI FRESH Basic Needs Hub; UCI Center for Black Cultures, Resources and Research; UCI Global Sustainability Resource Center; and the UCI Student Housing Sustainability Program. The selected fellow will work with supervisors from the Co-lab to plan AY 18-19 fellowship activities to continue to weave together students, faculty, and staff working at the intersection of these issues. The fellowship is part of the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative Fellows Program.