Community Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Engineered Systems: A Case Study of Community-Engaged Vehicular Electrification

Polly Parkinson; Fawn Groves; Emma Mecham; Amy Wilson-Lopez; Ivonne Santiago; Jennifer Ramos-Chavez

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Equity, Culture & Social Justice Technical Session
Tagged Divisions: Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43247
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43247
Download Count: 227

Amy Wilson-Lopez studies culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies and approaches in engineering education.

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biography

Ivonne Santiago University of Texas at El Paso

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Dr. Ivonne Santiago is a wife, mother, Environmental Engineer, and teacher. She is an Associate Professor of the Civil Engineering (CE) Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Dr. Santiago has a combined experience of over 20 years in the areas of community engagement, water quality, water treatment and wastewater treatment in Puerto Rico (PR), New Mexico and Texas.
Currently, she is Chair of the El Paso Water Public Service Board (PSB), where she is a member of Engineering Selection and the Communications subcommittees, and the ad-hoc committee for storm water priorities.
She has been a member of the Environmental Protection Agency National Advisory Committee (NAC), that advises the Administrator of the EPA on environmental policy issues related to the implementation of the former North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and was a member of the Good Neighbor Environmental Board (GNEB) that advises the President and Congress of the United States on good neighbor practices along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Dr. Santiago’s history of service started in Puerto Rico as Director of the Water Quality Area of the PR Environmental Quality Board, in charge of Compliance, Permit, and Planning Bureau, that included Industrial and Non-Industrial permits, Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUSTs), and watershed restoration activities. As Director, she implemented the first Beach Monitoring program in coordination with the PR Tourism Office and the Blue Flag program (A world renowned eco-label) and implemented the first Total Maximum Daily Load Program in PR.
Professionally Dr. Santiago has been recognized with the 2019 El Paso Engineer of the Year by the Texas Society of Professional Engineers. This is the first time in more than 30 years that a UTEP faculty wins this prestigious award and the 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers’ Texas Section “Service to the People” award. This award honors civil engineers who have distinguished themselves with special service to the people and bring credit to their profession through community activities that are visible to the public. As Associate Professor her mantra has been to connect education to professional practice inside and outside the classroom as demonstrated by the local and state awards she has won: 2014 UTEP’s CETaL Giraffe Award (for sticking her neck out); 2014 College of Engineering Instruction Award; 2014 The University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award; the 2012 NCEES Award for students’ design of a Fire Station.
In her work, Dr. Santiago helps to find innovative engineering solutions through an understanding of the balance between sustainability, social equity, entrepreneurship, community engagement, innovation, and leadership to improve the well-being of people. A few examples include: interdisciplinary projects that provide safe drinking water to underserved communities in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, Puerto Rico, and Haiti; a bridge that connected communities in Puerto Rico; a solar charging station for natural disasters in Puerto Rico; innovation and entrepreneurship activities on water quality sensors and phyto-remediation; remote sensing applications using Hyperspectral cameras on UAVs for water quality and agricultural applications; and study abroad opportunities that advance the emerging field of Peace Engineering in Curitiba, Brazil; native communities in the Amazon in Villavicencio, Colombia; and underserved communities in Piura, Perú.
Dr. Santiago is passionate about providing experiential learning opportunities to both undergraduate and graduate students with a focus on Hispanic and female students. She is currently Co-PI of UTEP’s NSF-AGEP program focusing on fostering Hispanic doctoral students for academic careers; the Department of Education’s (DoE) STEMGROW Program to encourage students Latino(a) students and students with disabilities to pursue STEM careers; and DoE’s Program YES SHE CAN that provides support and mentoring to female pre-college students. She is also a member of two advisory committees to the UTEP’s President: The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee and of the Women’s Advisory Council, in which she served five years as Chair. She is also Co-PI in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE), where she co-Directs the Diversity and Culture of Inclusion Program, where she is also a researcher in the Adoption Thrust.

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Jennifer Ramos-Chavez

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Jennifer Ramos-Chavez, P.h.D., is the Environmental Education Manager at Insights Science Discovery where she coordinates and implements immersive environmental education programming. Additionally, Dr. Ramos-Chavez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Texas at El Paso where she studies the intersection between the environment, energy and education. Specifically, her research focuses on community-based participatory research and community-centered outreach. She is interested in understanding how student perceptions and behaviors are influenced by immersive environmental and engineering education programming.

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Abstract

Historically, Communities of Color have been disproportionately harmed by engineered technologies, systems, and infrastructures. As an example, highways and ports have usually been placed near or through Asian, Black, and Latiné communities, resulting in their systematic over-exposure to toxic emissions. We are in a historical moment during which national and global transportation technologies and infrastructures are being redesigned to promote sustainability. In this historical moment, it is imperative these large-scale redesigning processes do not continue to reproduce environmental racism, transportation injustices, and colonial relations in which beneficent outsiders make decisions for racially minoritized peoples.

Within this context, the purpose of this case study was to highlight the ways in which a racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically minoritized community sought to achieve procedural and distributive justice relative to vehicular electrification. In this case, we operationalize “community” as people who were served by six geographically-based neighborhood councils, within two municipal political districts, who had banded together to form a coalition based on numerous common interests. Against their consent, an inland port had been placed near their neighborhoods, resulting in numerous freight trucks, freight trains, and other vehicles contributing to toxic emissions that harmed human health.

To redress this environmental injustice, a multidisciplinary team, including engineers, sought to implement vehicular electrification in and near the community, including the installation of infrastructures (e.g., fast charging stations and roads that wirelessly charged electric vehicles) intended to reduce toxic emissions. To promote benefit to the community, they also sought to develop partnerships among different organizations (e.g., transit authorities, industries, and community organizations) to increase the likelihood that community members would obtain transportation benefits, health benefits, and economic benefits associated with vehicular electrification. We conducted a case study (with the community constituting one case) in which we explored how numerous community stakeholders sought to achieve the realization of procedural justice, or the rights of historically minoritized people to participate actively in decision-making, and distributive justice, or their rights to benefit from decisions.

This study is based on an analysis of numerous data sources, including surveys of community member’s perceptions of vehicular electrification (administered at various community events in the park); and the community liaison’s notes from community meetings relative to vehicular electrification. Preliminary analyses of these findings indicate the areas in which people sought distributive justice (e.g., access to high-paying jobs associated with electric vehicles) and procedural justice (e.g., community sovereignty regarding placement of infrastructures, such as utility poles). We intend for this study to result in an equity and justice roadmap for engineered infrastructures, with a focus on vehicular electrification, which highlights the ways in which a variety of people, organizations, and institutions can enact equitable processes to realize physical infrastructures that redress historical injustices and environmental racism.

Citation
Format

Parkinson, P., & Groves, F., & Mecham, E., & Wilson-Lopez, A., & Santiago, I., & Ramos-Chavez, J. (2023, June), Community Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Engineered Systems: A Case Study of Community-Engaged Vehicular Electrification Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43247

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Historically, Communities of Color have been disproportionately harmed by engineered technologies, systems, and infrastructures. As an example, highways and ports have usually been placed near or through Asian, Black, and Latiné communities, resulting in their systematic over-exposure to toxic emissions. We are in a historical moment during which national and global transportation technologies and infrastructures are being redesigned to promote sustainability. In this historical moment, it is imperative these large-scale redesigning processes do not continue to reproduce environmental racism, transportation injustices, and colonial relations in which beneficent outsiders make decisions for racially minoritized peoples.  

Within this context, the purpose of this case study was to highlight the ways in which a racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically minoritized community sought to achieve procedural and distributive justice relative to vehicular electrification. In this case, we operationalize “community” as people who were served by six geographically-based neighborhood councils, within two municipal political districts, who had banded together to form a coalition based on numerous common interests. Against their consent, an inland port had been placed near their neighborhoods, resulting in numerous freight trucks, freight trains, and other vehicles contributing to toxic emissions that harmed human health. 

To redress this environmental injustice, a multidisciplinary team, including engineers, sought to implement vehicular electrification in and near the community, including the installation of infrastructures (e.g., fast charging stations and roads that wirelessly charged electric vehicles) intended to reduce toxic emissions. To promote benefit to the community, they also sought to develop partnerships among different organizations (e.g., transit authorities, industries, and community organizations) to increase the likelihood that community members would obtain transportation benefits, health benefits, and economic benefits associated with vehicular electrification. We conducted a case study (with the community constituting one case) in which we explored how numerous community stakeholders sought to achieve the realization of procedural justice, or the rights of historically minoritized people to participate actively in decision-making, and distributive justice, or their rights to benefit from decisions. 

This study is based on an analysis of numerous data sources, including surveys of community member’s perceptions of vehicular electrification (administered at various community events in the park); and the community liaison’s notes from community meetings relative to vehicular electrification. Preliminary analyses of these findings indicate the areas in which people sought distributive justice (e.g., access to high-paying jobs associated with electric vehicles) and procedural justice (e.g., community sovereignty regarding placement of infrastructures, such as utility poles). We intend for this study to result in an equity and justice roadmap for engineered infrastructures, with a focus on vehicular electrification, which highlights the ways in which a variety of people, organizations, and institutions can enact equitable processes to realize physical infrastructures that redress historical injustices and environmental racism.

AU  - Polly Parkinson
AU  - Fawn Groves
AU  - Emma Mecham
AU  - Amy Wilson-Lopez
AU  - Ivonne Santiago
AU  - Jennifer Ramos-Chavez
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Community Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Engineered Systems: A Case Study of Community-Engaged Vehicular Electrification
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/43247
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--43247
ER  -