UW Tacoma Digital Commons

This project is a result of a collaboration between Dr. Evans-Agnew (Nursing and Healthcare Leadership) and Dr. Compson (Interdisciplinary Arts and Science) at UW Tacoma. In their respective fields of nursing and philosophy, both professors study the concept of environmental justice. In conversation, they found that the concept was understood quite differently in each respective field. This led to the impetus to explore these differences. They were keen to involve students and the local community in this project and were awarded a Community Engagement/Curriculum Enhancement grant by UWT’s Center for Leadership and Social Responsibility to help collect voices from the local community on this issue. The interviews were made by students for a project in Dr. Compson’s TPHIL 456 Environmental Ethics class (Fall 2013).

This collection is a culmination of that project. Student teams were required to interview local people in the community or faculty at UW Tacoma who have some professional or research interests in environmental justice. They were all asked the same questions about how they understand environmental justice. The interviews were recorded on video, edited where necessary, and with permission of the interviewees, put up on this site. Students made written transcripts of these videos, which are available on this site. Student assistant Chris Lower provided brief abstracts of each interview, which are also included here. For their projects, students were asked to compare and contrast the content of two different interviews and explore some of the assumptions and values behind different definitions of environmental justice. This collection is made publicly available to enable others to hear local voices about environmental justice.

Dr. Compson and Dr. Evans-Agnew are grateful to the Center for Leadership and Social Responsibility for providing us with the grant to make this project possible; to the interviewees and the students for participating in and creating these videos, to Chris Lower for writing the abstracts, and to UWT Library Justin Wadland for making this collection available on the Digital Commons.