The Community Resilience CNI Fellowship is one of several fellowships offered through the UC President’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative (CNI) and Global Food Initiative (GFI). To view the full range of CNI and GFI fellowship opportunities, visit here. While most fellowships for Academic Year 2019-20 have been filled, the Community Resilience CNI Fellowship remains open.
At the UCI Office of Sustainability, we are working on several projects that foster people-centered and inclusive solutions to climate and sustainability 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 work from 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 needed to ensure that climate and sustainability solutions protect and defend both biological and cultural diversity.
The selected Community Resilience CNI 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. The fellow will also support the UC-wide efforts to integrate social equity into the work of the UC Sustainability Steering Committee and the UC President’s Global Climate Leadership Council. At UCI, this work will include involvement in UCI’s Community Resilience Co-Lab. The student-led Co-lab aims to build a stronger campus community response to the enduring and intersecting crises of environmental, racial, and social injustice. It brings together UCI graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and staff from across disciplines and departments to co-generate critical and collaborative shared space for community, experimentation, skills-sharing, and action. The selected fellow will work with staff and faculty mentors from the Co-lab to plan and carry out AY 19-20 fellowship activities to continue to weave together students, faculty, and staff working at the intersection of these issues.
This fellowship runs from September 23, 2019 – June 13, 2020.
The fellow will receive:
- hands-on, project-based experience in the fellowship area;
- approximately $4,000;
- campus and university-wide recognition as a member of a select group of student leaders;
- an opportunity to convene in person with climate and food fellows from across the UC system at the beginning and end of the fellowship year;
- an opportunity to participate in intensive sustainability leadership training and retreat; and
- guidance from prominent scholars and mentorship from practitioners in the field.
In return, the fellow is expected to:
- contribute approximately 8-10 hours per week to the fellowship during academic year 2019-20;
- orally present one status update each quarter at select campus-wide events;
- attend one fellows’ study break each quarter;
- write at least one blog post each quarter for select social media platforms;
- create at least one additional way to engage at least 20 additional members of the campus community in the fellowship project;
- complete work products specific to the fellowship project by June 12, 2020; and
- write a short mid-term report (date TBD) and final report by June 12, 2020.
The fellow is expected to participate in the following UC system-wide activities (expenses paid):
- attend one multi-day residential Sustainability Leadership Training (October 4-6, 2019);
- participate in quarterly meetings and/or conference calls as needed;
- attend Fellows’ field trip in April 2020; and
- participate in a symposium and poster presentation held in conjunction with CHESC in June or July 2020.
To apply for the Community Resilience CNI Fellowship, send a cover letter and résumé to communityresilience@uci.edu.
In your cover letter, please indicate (a) what interests you in this fellowship and (b) what qualifies you to participate in this opportunity.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until filled.
