Alabama State University EnvironMentors Chapter

The new Chapter at Alabama State University (ASU) was initiated by Dr. B.K. Robertson, Professor of Environmental Microbiology and Toxicology within ASU’s Biology Department. Alabama State University is a historically black and publicly supported institution located in Montgomery, Alabama. 

Dr. Robertson served as a mentor in several existing mentoring programs at ASU geared to engaging underrepresented minorities in advanced studies in science and math, including HBCU-UP and STEM Summer Undergraduate Research Program. He saw the potential for EnvironMentors to interest and prepare minority high school students in the environmental sciences, and proposed that ASU be among the first EnvironMentors pilot chapters.

ASU Chapter Goals

The primary goals of our ASU Chapter are to increase the number of under-represented minorities trained to build environmental careers and to become stewards of their communities and the environment; and enhance the environmental science education at ASU by providing the pipeline for recruiting and training students from under-resource communities to become future leaders who can adequately address issues of environmental concern in their communities.

Montgomery’s public school system includes nine magnet schools emphasizing technology, science, performing arts, accelerated academics, and international studies, and other academic areas.  In addition to the potential for EnvironMentors to interest individual students in environmental sciences, Dr. Robertson anticipates that bringing EnvironMentors to Montgomery will provide a catalyst for the city’s public school board to consider including environmental science within the magnet school system. 

Dr. Robertson selected Carver Senior High School, one of Montgomery’s four traditional public high schools, as the ASU EnvironMentors chapter’s first partner high school due to the high school’s proximity to ASU’s campus. Carver High School’s Biology teacher, Mr. Edward Davis, is an alumnus of ASU and a former student of Dr. Robertson’s.  Dr. Robertson appointed Biology PhD candidate and Graduate Assistant, Sabita Saldanha as the ASU EnvironMentors Chapter’s Student Coordinator.

ASU EnvironMentors Program Gets Up and Running

Dr. Robertson, Ms. Saldanha, and Mr. Davis initiated their EnvironMentors program in the fall of 2007 with several presentations on EnvironMentors at Carver High School. There was strong interest in EnvironMentors among Carver high school students, with over thirty-five students initially signing up to participate in the program. The team limited the number of students who were matched in one-on-one mentoring relationships in order to maintain a manageable student cohort for the first year of the program. After careful review of the students’ applications, Dr. Robertson and Ms. Saldanha enrolled twenty Carver High School students in the first year of their program.

Dr. Robertson and Ms. Saldhana recruited at least twenty-two mentors to provide one to onementorship to each of the students.  There was a strong interest in EnvironMentors among faculty and graduate students in ASU’s Biology Department, and within ASU’s College of Education. All twenty students were matched in one-to-one mentoring relationships with ASU faculty and graduate students from the Department of Biology and College of Education.

ASU EnvironMentors Chapter Fall Events

Dr. Robertson and Ms. Saldhana held the Chapter’s Program Orientation on October 12th, 2007 which was a great success. The team used the interactive student-mentor interviewing activities developed by the DC Environmentors program to support students and mentors in getting to know one another better and to identify preferences of who they might want to work with.  Ms. Saldhana then matched all twenty students and mentors based on shared interests. She and Dr. Robertson held their first ASU Chapter EnvironMentors Kickoff just two weeks later at which students and mentors met their assigned partners for the first time.

Ms. Saldhana worked with the students in a variety of creative exercises contained in theEnvironMentors Manual to assist them in developing their EnvironMentors Project Topics based on personal interests related to the environment. She also communicated with mentors to support them in their work with the students in the project topic development process. All twenty students had their EnvironMentors topics by the end of the 2007 calendar year and are now working with their mentors on their experimental research.

ASU Chapter Strengths

Among the greatest strengths of our new ASU EnvironMentors Chapter is the tightly knit sense of teamwork among the full group. Dr. Robertson, Ms. Saldanha, and Mr. Davis are all strongly committed to the success of the program and are working very closely together towards that end.  Because most ASU’s mentors are drawn from ASU Biology Department and College of Education, there is a strong sense of community and camaraderie among mentors that is inherently built into the ASU 2007-08 program.

Sample of ASU Student Project Topics

1. The effect of climate, oil, and deforestation on birds and other wildlife.

2.   The effects of lead from industrial companies on the environment.

3.   How different aquatic environments affect the formation  of biofilms.