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Published April 9, 2025
In Episode 46 of The Baldy Center Podcast, Monica Miles (Engineering Education) speaks about environmental justice, STEM education, sustainability of nonprofits, and how social policies impact the health of marginalized communities.
Keywords: Environmental justice education, Critical theories of race, Research methods, Social Justice, Identity, STEM, Pedagogies
Hashtags: #EnvironmentalJustice #NonprofitEquity #STEMEducation #PolicyReform #BlackLedNonprofits #UBPodcast #CommunityScience #EJScreen #UrbanHeatMonitoring #BuffaloVoices
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The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo
Episode #46
Podcast recording date: 3/4/2025
Host-producer: Tarun Gangadhar Vadaparthi
Guest Speaker: Monica Miles
Contact: BaldyCenter@buffalo.edu
Transcription begins.
Tarun:
Hello and welcome to The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy podcast produced by the University at Buffalo. I'm your podcast host and producer Tarun Gangadhar. In today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Monica Miles to discuss the intersections of environmental justice, nonprofit sustainability and STEM education, and the policies that shape them. Dr. Monica Miles is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She focuses on teaching about environmental justice and how race and identity are connected to it. She works to create safe spaces for black and other underrepresented communities. She's also the president of Mother Earth Literacies, a group that promotes social justice and healthy environments through education. Here is Dr. Miles.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and your journey into environmental justice, nonprofit sustainability, and engineering education?
Monica:
Absolutely. My name is Monica Miles, born and raised in Buffalo, New York. And I think that's a part of this journey. Very few faculty members are not only alumni of the University at Buffalo, are alumni of Buffalo Public Schools, and then find themselves as professors at the University at Buffalo. And so I understand that that may be a rarity, but I think it's a part of this journey. When I was growing up in Buffalo, I did grow up in a housing project and I didn't have the language of environmental racism. And things like my asthma, I really believed when I was a small child that there was an asthma gene. And somehow some people in my family got this asthma gene. Now I laugh about it, I'm like, girl, there is no asthma gene. But based on my lived experience, that's what I had observed, that people that I grew up with, lived with, lived around, we had high instances of asthma, and it totally shaped my lived experience where I also had extreme experiences with allergies and how I loved being in the environment, but I couldn't always be out there. I would have anaphylactic reactions to grass, and just different things were a part of my childhood growing up. And as I started to get older and my relationship with asthma changed, until more recently, where in 2021 I had contracted Covid, and it really reverted my asthma back to what it was when I was a child. But at that juncture in my life, I did learn about environmental justice, and I did learn that my environment was built and constructed and designed and decisions were made on behalf of people of color and poor people on where we would live and how we would live. I would say this part of my asthma journey, my connection to environmental racism and environmental justice, and all we have to do is look at where the health disparities are. Because literally where we treat people of color and poor people poorly, that's same way, those are the same locations that we see health disparities. Those are the same locations that we see environmental injustices. And it's through mapping with students where I've been able to like, okay, well now let's tell the story about what we're seeing here in the data.
My bachelor's and my master’s are in geology, but I didn't really come into environmental justice the way that I see it now until I became a critical race theorist. And I was like, wow, that's a part of this journey and I'm able to talk more about the environment. I am able to make connections to the environment and to the people that live there through critical race theory. And there was a whole discipline about environmental justice and just the sociologist Robert Bullard. Dr. Bullard was a black sociologist out of the civil rights movement who was able to shape that. The thing that I like about being a critical race theorist is that history matters, right? Where you are, who you are and the skill sets that you have, they all matter. And so that leads us to the nonprofit. If I'm in a community, so critical race theorists don't believe that they know something for the sake of knowing that they also have to do and they have to act. I was already in community, and I didn't know much about nonprofit structures, but I became a nonprofit expert and I've been able to work with black and women led nonprofit organizations that typically focus on the East Side because that's where we're seeing a lot of the disparities. Those are my people. When we're thinking about where we come from and we're able to touch these folks and we're able to, this work is relational. That's the connection with nonprofits.
And then the connection for engineering education is for each organization, we're taking a systems thinking approach to, well, what are your challenges here and how are we going about solving them? Oftentimes people will divert or defer rather to needing like an MBA, right? Oh, this must be a business problem. They don't realize oftentimes it's an engineering problem. How do we increase efficiencies? Or it's computer science problem or it's a data science problem. And those fields are not always positioned in the nonprofit space. I have been able to weave together these different spaces as a practitioner and as a researcher to actually help organizations solve problems within our community and so that they're moving this proverbial needle.
Tarun:
Thank you for sharing that, Dr. Miles. That's a really powerful journey. You co-founded Mother Earth Literacies and you're also an assistant professor at UB. How do these roles intersect in your work?
Monica:
That’s a really good question. I think that's probably the largest question of the day, because when we look at how tenure track faculty members are evaluated, community service is not a big part of what we do. It might be a little line. However, now that I have a minority and women owned business, we have the city status, we have the county and the state, so we've been able to go through these processes that can be challenging in order to provide a service and support nonprofits. Black led nonprofits, black led, and women led nonprofits that service the East Side. And that work is a little bit more, I would say challenging a bit to navigate because you have to know a lot. You have to know who are your politicians, where do they stand on different issues? What can they actually fund? Or is there a policy that they could help influence or develop? And then you have to know all the funders. Where do they stand? What do they typically fund? And are these things meeting the needs of nonprofits? And then also, are we making the nonprofits as efficient as possible so that they can be resilient during these times, especially during these times where we know federal funding is going to impact state funding and other local pots of money. Have we positioned you to be as resilient as possible in order to take a hit? So a hundred percent of your budget cannot come from grants. We have to think about what revenue can your nonprofit generate? Those are some of the challenges that we work through. And so it's just a different type of work, but that work connects to my professor work.
As an assistant professor in engineering education where I have a lot of, I would say credibility and trust within the community where I could say, hey, I have a student that I think would be a really good intern at your location, and I think they can help you solve this database problem, I think they can help you solve. Because I know the organization enough, I also know their STEM challenges, and so I'm able to meaningfully connect the two. For example, at Delavan Grider, we're getting ready to, we just were approved, so I don't want to, we'll give a soft mention here. We were just approved to be a part of a national heat monitoring program where we'll do urban heat monitoring here with high quality sensors, which is major for us data science folks. We're like, wow, you're going to have high quality sensors here. And it was funny, I've never had a funder say, hey, the two of you should probably talk. It was our little team and Erie County having a conversation and they said, you know what? We think you really should be the lead because you already have the students in place. There's a lot of similarities between what we were thinking, and we would love to partner with you on it. And it was just a beautiful experience to have a funder say, hey, we actually want to bring a sensor to Buffalo, New York. You all are working in the same urban areas. Let's get this going. That's a prime example of, because I have a relationship with Delavan Grider, and I'm there, and I have satellite offices in the community, so people are seeing me all the time that when these kind of opportunities happen, it's not like I'm cold calling you and like, oh, by the way, I know I haven't talked to you in a while and there are these sensors. It’s they don't feel blindsided. They see how it could benefit because we have been talking about it. I've also thought about how when we receive funding, how are we compensating our nonprofits so that they also are benefiting from this and not just the institution. I think that's where the contention usually comes from. It's like, oh, well, University at Buffalo gets this and we as a small organization, we don't have; $10,000 can go a long way in a small organization, $20,000 can go a long way. And I think that's the thing is just how are we compensating, as professors, when we do research with community partners?
Tarun:
Thank you for that, Dr. Miles. It's powerful to hear how those pieces come together in your work. Moving to the next question, many black led nonprofits face structural challenges in funding and sustainability. What legal or policy barriers make it harder for grassroots organizations to thrive?
Monica:
And I think that's always a tricky one because you have to look at the organization themselves. And so I'll go over a couple that I've noticed, which is one, which organizations actually qualify for any kind of lines of credit? So if you have a line of credit as an organization, that means you're not worried about, so let's say you have even 50 to a 100 thousand dollars in a line of credit, it could even be $25,000, whatever that is. That line of credit allows you to be a little bit resilient while you're waiting for your money. Sometimes it could take the state a year to pay you back, so that's a reimbursable grant. But if your organization is not in a position to shell out, let's say a 100k or 200k and then wait a year to get it back, those are big asks that a lot of small nonprofits struggle to meet. So they have to really look at, can I engage in this reimbursable grant? A lot of times the reimbursable grants are the larger grants, and so you have to be able to shell that money out upfront and then wait on it. And that is one of the, I think I would say a policy change that I think our politicians could help with is shortening the window. How long are people really having to wait? I have organizations that have waited over a year, 18 months, and these extended periods of time when they have done the work, they have done the work, they have paid out their payroll, they have compensated, they've done the project on their funding, which they have to figure out where did that come from to begin with. And then the amount of time and the amount of red tape it takes to be reimbursed. It’s not just a state thing that happens. The county can take a long time, the city can take a long time, which can deter smaller organizations from wanting to go after that funding because you can be putting yourself in a very compromising situation where it's like, well, you just won a $200,000 grant, but maybe you didn't know it was reimbursable. Should you have known that? I mean, well, we could argue, yeah, you probably should have known that. However, now you have to figure out where does that money come from in order to execute the project. So I think when they think about reimbursable grants, making sure that smaller organizations can get a percentage upfront, I think that's an easy solve where they can get the work going and it's not off of their unrestricted funds. They're not having to necessarily fundraise for it, or maybe they do have to tap into that again, that line of credit where maybe that line of credit allows them to move forward with the project. And then having shorter windows of not only when they can submit for reimbursement, but the amount of time it takes for them to actually be in reimbursed. Again, this is not just us, we're not picking on the state, we're not picking on the county, we're not picking on the city, the federal government they do it too. All of these government entities make it challenging to be reimbursed your grant after you've been awarded. So that would be one policy change that I think would be very helpful.
Also, when you sit down with the banks. I understand they have policies in place because they're a business too and they're protecting themselves. However, it's the same challenge that small business owners experience too. If the leader themself does not have good credit, they are likely not going to get a line of credit for the business. I understand why those things can be in place. However, if a nonprofit isn't positioned or a small business isn't positioned to compensate someone where they're getting a steady paycheck, well then, it's harder for them to maintain their bills. And so it becomes this very challenging cycle. So I think if there is a way whether, and I know that the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo has done this at times where they will loan at a very, very low rate to smaller nonprofits. I think that needs to be more of a practice where foundations and banks or even maybe our credit unions could think about the organizations. These organizations are doing the work of public service, and they're doing it with little funding, and they're doing it with all of their heart, and they're meeting the needs of the people. So they're doing the work of the government but with no money. And so if there are ways that even maybe having government lending to small nonprofits based on whatever the criteria is, I think that would help make them more resilient in being able to address their cashflow issues.
Just because it's a nonprofit doesn't mean no profit. These are all businesses. They're just different tax statuses. And so I think thinking in that way around, okay, well, what is the cashflow that allows you to be resilient? We just had a Head Start program close in Cattaraugus County. Now all of those little, small school age, well before school aged children, so these are anywhere from two and a half to four year olds are now out of their pre-K readiness program because that organization could not withstand the cashflow issue from the federal government. And so I think stepping in for those cashflow issues is a short window. You know the money's going to be reimbursed because they're getting government reimbursement. So I think connecting those two, the lending options connected to the reimbursement so that the organization itself can be positioned to go after those larger pods of government dollars.
Tarun:
Those are such important points. Thank you for highlighting them. Dr. Miles. Grant funding is competitive, and many nonprofits struggle with compliance and legal paperwork. What policy changes would make funding more equitable and accessible?
Monica:
I would say with some of the organizations we work with, that's one of the things we work on, making sure that their paperwork is in order. Making sure you're getting your CHAR500, so you're recognized as a charitable organization. Making sure your bylaws make sense to you. You should not need a law degree in order to understand your organization's bylaws. However, that's one of the things that we see happens is that bylaws aren't written in a way. It's all this legalese where people just don't understand what do we do and how do we run the organization? I would think that's one step is making sure that the bylaws are written in a way and are true. So that's one of the things we may say, oh, well, we submitted those just to get our nonprofit. That's a very common statement that we hear. People are thinking about compliance of applying for their nonprofit. Now that you have the nonprofit, okay, we need to update these bylaws in a way that makes sense so that you know who does what and how do you move the organization forward. And especially when you're growing a small nonprofit into a mid-sized nonprofit, people's roles may change, where you need a governing board and not a working board. That’s not necessarily a policy change, but I think that is policy within the nonprofit itself. It has to understand that your bylaws are the thing that you refer to, making sure that you're doing business in a way that is appropriate. It answers your questions. And when your bylaws don't do that, well, maybe it's time for us to amend them and review them. That's one of the things that nonprofits can do for themselves. But I also think that's something that legal practitioners that are providing nonprofits with bylaws based on templates or whatever, writing them in a way that it makes sense to somebody without a law degree so that the executive director and the president of the board can understand what it means. How often are we meeting? And there are some questions that the nonprofit has to be able to answer in order to move those things forward. But I think that's one of the biggest challenges is that when people then have to now figure out what do their bylaws mean and is that what they're going to do, that revising of the bylaws is a big challenge.
When we're thinking about what policy changes would make funding more equitable and accessible, I think one of the biggest things is having a loan option for nonprofits that have received their award letter. So you know that New York state is going to give you this reimbursable grant. I think there's a relationship and a partnership there where that could be sorted out so that the nonprofit can do the business of public service, which is what they're doing according to those guidelines, and they're spending it according to what they said, but they're able to have gap funding in order to make sure that the project is executed. I think that is something that could easily be changed where the nonprofit is, hey, you were awarded this funding. Because remember going back to if the nonprofit goes to the bank themselves and say, hey, I want to get a line of credit, oftentimes the answer is going to be no. They're going to say, well, hold on. We want the executive director's credit score. Where they could say, hey, we were awarded this funding. I think that is a relationship that should be and could be rectified, and hopefully through local banking options, I think is something that could be done.
Tarun:
That's such a clear call for change. Thank you for outlining that. You work closely with nonprofit leaders who sometimes fund projects out of their own pockets, should there be any legal protections or financial incentives to support them?
Monica:
Oh gosh. I think that goes back to that last comment. These folks are, we can't ask them to be any more resilient. We can't ask them to be any more resourceful. They literally are giving all they have and all that they can to the movement. And oftentimes, I would say, at their own detriment where they're not getting paychecks. And so you might have a nonprofit leader that's so invested in this work but is grossly underpaid. There is a cost to their family and their quality of living that nobody talks about. This is not at a cost. The problem is that these nonprofit leaders are already doing that. And I think it's where, going back to when there are grants, these government level grants are being awarded, I think the payback time needs to be much shorter where the organization isn't having to wait a year to 18 months to get their monies back. I think that is something that could easily be done and addressed, because when that money isn't coming in and they're having to wait for it, that means payroll oftentimes isn't running. I think that is something that could easily be done as a policy issue. And there should be financial incentives. What that is, I'm not sure, but I think from what I've experienced with these organizations is making accessing the funding less bureaucratic and with less headache. I mean, that's what anybody would say. But even if you're going to keep the headache, at least reduce the amount of time it takes for you to pay out. There are many organizations we work with that we are talking about, it's almost their operating budget that they're waiting on being reimbursed. And so that's just too high of a cost for nonprofit leaders. I would think that's one of the things we could do is shorten the amount of time it takes for them to actually be reimbursed.
Tarun:
That really speaks to the personal sacrifices leaders are making. Thank you for sharing that, Dr. Miles. You work at UB focuses on environmental justice. How do laws and regulations impact marginalized communities facing environmental challenges?
Monica:
One of the things that was directly impacted by my work is when the EPA, now I understand they did not personally shut it down, but one of the tools that my team has used is EJScreen. EJScreen was an EPA tool that was just a free web-based tool. I was using it with K -12 kids, educators, community representatives, students at UB. And it was just a way for us to pull up the data very quickly in a way that it made sense and that we were able to discuss what was going on in the community. And so that was a policy change that directly impacted marginalized communities where now it's much harder to get information that is credible and reliable, that is accessible where our data scientists are needed now more than ever to be able to extrapolate simple information.
On EJScreen, I could see what community, I could see everything from green space to health disparities to what communities had lower life expectancy. So it already connected health data with environmental data. And now that is a tool that has been removed, and that's not the only tool. So the map, My Waterway, that's another tool that the EPA lost, and they shut that one down. That tool you were able to pull and understand what watershed you were in, what were issues related to water, how much monitoring was done. So it really removed information from the hands of community members. This is where I started to rely more on private or tools not related to the government. Harvard tried to relaunch the EJScreen, and we used it, but some of the things, and I'm sure they're going to work out the quirks, but there were quirks because, and I'm sure when they copied the tool, there's probably some background code that we just don't know. I'm definitely not your computer scientist that knows how to do that. But it didn't operate in the same way when I looked at Buffalo data and I was like, oh, okay, this isn't helping me answer some of the questions. So then I started to rely on Headwaters Economics, which they have a Neighborhood at Risk where I can see, and again, it's based on census track, but I can see areas where there's a lot of imperviable surfaces. Especially now that we're going to be doing heat monitoring, it’s important for us to know where tree shade coverage is as we're looking at how are we monitoring and when. That’s most likely going to be a tool that we lean into because the tools that were for the public, a lot of those are removed in environmental mapping. That’s how it's directly impacting our environmental justice work. I used to be able to say, hey, okay, everybody, we're going into the computer lab, and I need you to go to this website. And then people were able to continue to do it from their phones, like, oh, Dr. Miles, I was able to. They were walking away with a skill where they could check these things, where now I have to make sure that if we are talking about air quality, that they know how to tap into the PurpleAir. Things like PurpleAir become really important because those are privately owned. You can buy your own PurpleAir monitor for like 300 bucks and you could figure out what your own air quality is, and then you could see all of the other PurpleAir monitors around you. And I think those types of efforts were always important, but I think those types of efforts are going to be the thing that increase, that continue to allow us to raise awareness when our government has fallen short.
Tarun:
That really shows how deeply policy can shape lived experiences. Thank you for that, Dr. Miles. Are there any policy gaps or legal loopholes that disproportionately harm underserved communities when it comes to environmental justice?
Monica:
One of the things that has come out of my work, and I don't definitely have an answer to this, it’s how and in what ways could you actually compensate communities when you have made decisions? So whether that's a corporate or industrial organization has made a decision and it has poisoned and contaminated a community. And then also what does that compensation or reparations look like? We've always struggled with what does that look like, especially when it comes to climate. So when we're thinking about climate change, we're like, well, who's at fault? It becomes this whole we all get squirrely, and even the conversations and the thoughts about reparations for marginalized communities to make them and ensure that they're resilient, we're just not doing that kind of work. So I feel like where the conversations need to go, we're not there yet. I've always seen with the legal field they have been more progressive in some ways than even our science counterparts. With what we're seeing with the involvement of the federal government in environmental work, I think there is going to be a lagging of the field. I think there are going to be those people, like myself, that no matter what, we're going to keep on pushing through and getting that good science out there, knowing that there can be potentially a cost or a risk to us. The same thing happens within the legal field. There are always those folks that champion and push things forward regardless, knowing that oftentimes not only our reputations, our safety, so you may not have any institutional protection to do this work. That’s what we're going to see is that historically we're waiting for those champions to come and continue to do the work. And that's the space I think that we're in right now. I think if you would've had this conversation five years ago, people were just beginning to really talk about climate change and so on, knowing that it's been a problem for decades. We've been having this problem, but it was starting to reach critical mass where, okay, we can't continue to do the things we've been doing right now. And then you have this federal administration where people that might have been more progressive might find themselves not pushing or researching in ways that they might have before.
Tarun:
Those are serious concerns, and I'm glad you're bringing them to light, Dr. Miles. DEI: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts are facing political pushback on the federal level and in various states. How do these challenges affect STEM education and nonprofit work?
Monica:
That's a really good question. And I will say, because I've been doing this work for over 15 years, and I've seen different iterations of it, those of us that have done diversity, equity, inclusion work, we are not surprised. And I said this in, I've said this a couple years ago, where I was like, I will never have another position that has diversity in the title. And people are like, what are you talking about? Well, the research was coming out that people that were in diversity titles didn't really have power or influence over making substantive changes or making changes that would truly make a difference. They were kind of put into a position where it's like, oh, did we do our climate survey? And if we did, we may not make any changes about it. Or the diversity person really didn't have much influence over hiring practices or spending practices within organizations. That’s something we've already known. We've already known that when there was attacks on affirmative action, well, those states that were already saying, hey, we're not doing affirmative action, that was nothing new, that was not this current administration doing something. These things were already in the works. And I think that's the part when people are like, how did this stuff happen so fast? No, it didn't really happen fast. You're surprised by it, but this is what was already there. And we know that when it came to affirmative action hires, white women were more likely to get those jobs than anybody else. So white women were benefiting from affirmative action, not people of color. And so I think when we think about that, and that may make folks feel uncomfortable, they're like, oh my gosh, we're set back so many decades because of this. I think it revealed what those of us that have been doing critical work, those of us that have been doing diversity work and equity work, we know that we have to move forward and do the work regardless. So doing the diversity work, when you didn't have a diversity title, it's just how you go about doing your business. Are you being thoughtful about who you hire? Are you being thoughtful about your spending practices? Are you being thoughtful about how you engage in the work? So on and so forth. People removed stuff from their websites in a blink of an eye. They removed their equity. We were getting all kinds of solidarity statements. We were seeing all kind of, I stand with Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter. We were seeing all of that when it was popular. But now that there may be some kind of risk, those that weren't really in it, and realizing that you are off when you are going against the status quo, there's going to be a risk. And I think that's the part where I was saying I was a critical race theorist when critical race theorists were getting death threats. When we think about that, when we think about are you doing what's right? Or are you trying to do what is popular? And I think that's the space where some of us that are doing the work, so we're thinking about how is it going to affect STEM education and nonprofit work. It's definitely going to affect it, but I think that's where we have always had to be good at our craft. We've had to pour from cups that were empty. We know how to survive and navigate this, right? We're channeling our ancestors. We're coming together in community. So I think you're going to see some of those grassroots efforts are going to be the things that sustain us. We're not looking for somebody to come and save us. I think for STEM education, I think higher education and the K-12 space will be impacted based on the quality of instruction. The quality of instruction is going to directly be impacted because we know, and we have known, and research has shown, when you provide spaces where students are becoming critical thinkers, they're more likely to be better STEMers. We know that. They're better innovators. But if we're pulling away learning about different individuals, different communities, if we're not learning from indigenous perspectives, we're not learning from Africana or African-American perspective or Latinx, so on and so forth. We're not learning from populations that we have marginalized. We are going to see, and I think we have seen, where mediocre folks that aren't critical thinkers are going to be championed for doing things, and I think those minoritized groups are just going to be just shaking their head. That's typically what happens, and I think we're going to see the things we have seen, so how is it going to be impacted? We're going to have less people of color in the field, and I can't say we out here singing their praises of how well they've done over the past few decades. They’ve always kind of struggled. I think that's what we're going to continue to see.
Tarun:
Thanks for breaking that down, Dr. Miles. Many nonprofits struggle with both governance, compliance, and sustainability. What advice do you often give to nonprofit leaders?
Monica:
Training, training, training, training. That's literally one of the things that, and I've used NonprofitReady.org, it’s a free professional development resource for board members and executive directors. Oftentimes, people struggle with governance and compliance because they don't know what they're supposed to be doing. And when people don't know what they're supposed to do, it's just like my daughter in my own house. If she doesn't know what she's supposed to do, she's going to make it up as she goes along. And so anytime you have a new board member elected, they need to go through training. That's one of the things that I think is the biggest issue, that you have people with big hearts, and they want to give, and they want to help, and they don't necessarily know what that looks like. Same thing for our nonprofit leaders, making sure that they're being poured into not just financially, but making sure that they have the training needed in order to run their organizations as efficiently as possible. That's one of the simplest things that they could do. I mean, of course they should have strategic plans and all that other stuff so that they know where they're going. Because again, when people don't know where they're going, they're making it up along the way, and then they find out, well, we've done a lot of movement, but we've been running in place. We haven't actually run the marathon. We're just running in place. But they don't know that because they're doing a lot of work, but it isn't necessarily moving them forward. I think that's one of the things that they could do.
Tarun:
It's a great advice, Dr. Miles. If you could change one major law or policy to improve nonprofit sustainability and community impact, what would it be?
Monica:
Well beyond restoring our EPA is one place. And I don't think, I'm not sure that the EPA, when they were running EJ Screen, they had a lot of workshops. But I think having more connections with our region leaders on how that could influence and connect to nonprofit organizations and schools who are at the front line of the issues. They’re seeing people that are sick, thinking even our healthcare providers. Are we connecting the environmental data to people that need it the most? I'm not sure we've done the best job at that. That would be one of the things that I would like to see change is that information gets into the hands of people so that people are able to make the decisions that are best for them and their community. And we are seeing that there's less now, more than ever. That would be one of the things I would like to see restored is having data available so that we can continue to do the work in our communities.
Tarun:
Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Miles.
That was Dr. Miles, and this has been The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy podcast produced by the University at Buffalo. Let us know what you think by visiting our X, formerly Twitter @baldycenter, or emailing us at baldycenter@buffalo.edu. To learn more about the Center, visit our website, buffalo.edu/baldycenter. My name is Tarun and behalf of The Baldy Center, thank you for listening.
Transcription Ends.
Tools like EJScreen allowed communities to see how health and environmental issues intersect. I was using it with K -12 kids, educators, community representatives, students at UB. It was a way for us to pull up the data in a way that it made sense about what was going on in the community. On EJScreen, I could see everything from green space, to health disparities, to what communities had lower life expectancy. So it already connected health data with environmental data. Removing that access is removing power from the people. That was a policy change that directly impacted marginalized communities. Now it's harder to get information that is credible and reliable.
—Monica Miles, PhD
(The Baldy Center Podcast, Spring 2025)
Monica Miles, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering Education, UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; President and Co-founder, Mother Earth Literacies.
Bio: Monica L. Miles is a dedicated mother, scientist, researcher, scholar, and community activist whose work focuses on equity, justice, and environmental sustainability. A proud graduate of Buffalo Public Schools (BPS), Erie Community College, and the University at Buffalo, where she earned three degrees, Monica’s educational journey reflects her resilience and commitment to serving her community. In her role as an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at UB, Monica is particularly passionate about supporting first-generation students and ensuring they have the resources and mentorship to succeed. As the co-founder and president of Mother Earth Literacies, LLC, Monica works tirelessly to enhance the quality of life in Western New York. Her research focuses on the role of identity, racialized experiences, and marginalization in K-12 and higher education, particularly in STEM and nonprofit environments. A critical race theorist and environmental justice educator, she is committed to bridging gaps and creating opportunities for underrepresented groups.
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We have always had to be good at our craft. We've had to pour from cups that were empty. We know how to survive and navigate this. We're channeling our ancestors. We're coming together in community. You're going to see that some grassroots efforts are going to sustain us. We're not looking for somebody to come and save us."
—Monica Miles, PhD
(The Baldy Center Podcast, Spring 2025)
Tarun Gangadhar
Tarun Gangadhar Vadaparthi is the host/producer for the 2024-25 edition of The Baldy Center Podcast. As a graduate student in Computer Science and Engineering at the UB, Vadaparthi's research work lies in machine learning and software development, with a focus on real-time applications and optimization strategies. He has interned as an ML Engineer at Maksym IT, where he improved deep learning models, and as a Data Engineer at Hitachi Solutions contributing to World Vision Canada initiatives. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from NIT Nagpur and has also completed a summer program on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the University of Oxford. Vadaparthi's research and projects are rooted in data-driven decision-making, with a strong commitment to practical innovations in technology.
Matthew Dimick, JD, PhD
Professor, UB School of Law;
Director, The Baldy Center
Amanda M. Benzin
Associate Director
The Baldy Center