Four UC Berkeley students were awarded $15,000 grants last month for their work on environmental issues.
The students’ projects range from establishing a Bay Area student-run environmental justice clinic to studying plant species restoration. Christopher Casillas, Kendra Klein, Jessica Shade and Ryan Shaening Pokrasso — all campus doctoral candidates — received the awards, which were announced in August.
Casillas, a student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, said the grant has enabled him to travel to Nicaragua to continue studying how various fishing practices affect the local economy. He is currently in Nicaragua working with several groups of fishermen.
“I’ve been working down here since the end of 2005, and one challenge that I’ve seen is trying to figure out what intervention (from development organizations) might be the most supportive of the local communities as a whole,” he said. “Over a period of collecting information, (the communities) get to come to better ideas of what might be the benefits of different interventions.”
The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation — founded by campus alumnus Bob Switzer — gave 20 awards total to college students in California and New England to fund research aimed at improving the quality of the world’s environment.
Out of the 20 recipients, five were students at other University of California schools, giving the UC system a total of nine grant-winners.
Casillas said the foundation establishes a community-like network of different individuals, many of whom have similar interests.
“They really work to facilitate the creation of collaboration and idea exchange,” he said. “I think this is a really powerful and interesting aspect of the fellowship.”
All four of the UC Berkeley students who were awarded this grant this year have been involved in several environmentally-centered research organizations including the international coalition Health Care Without Harm and Ecological Society of America’s Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability program.
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