Miami Dade College’s work in Geographic Information System (GIS) and Climate Change created and deployed several free online courses: Introduction to GIS, Drone to Map, Flooding Simulation, and one course designed for educators on Drone Control. Through those courses, MDC continues groundbreaking research on the physically and socially vulnerable areas of coastal Miami-Dade County by collecting and analyzing hazard data such as sea level rise produced by climate change. Once that research is completed, students will use the data to do a preliminary vulnerability assessment of buildings in the identified areas. As evidenced by the recent Hurricane Idalia, the MDC project has far-reaching applications for any coastal region and for communities with vulnerable building structures. 

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Year 4 project with the Navajo Nation applies PIT tools to support renewable energy and tribal energy sovereignty. A recent effort produced Navajo language videos on renewable energy as part of educational outreach. Lead student researchers at RIT and Navajo Technical University were awarded summer 2023 internships at Sandia National Laboratories. Through this full-time, 90-day summer experience, each student worked on a research paper and final presentation on renewable energy, building on their academic background and tribal membership. After their internships, approximately 20% of students stayed at Sandia as year-round interns and 11% were eventually hired as Sandia employees.

University of California Santa Cruz is conducting a 16-month training and digital investigation with student researchers across three University of California campuses to support marginalized and low-income Latin American communities affected by environmental harms. The project introduces students to digital investigation techniques that draw from the cultural capital of the students’ demographically diverse backgrounds (especially their ability to speak languages other than English) and interdisciplinary majors. The project provides much-needed research support to environmental groups, with an explicit focus on documenting the killing of indigenous environmental defenders in Brazil. Students will also help develop a toolkit for how to investigate human rights violations connected to extractive practices.