Dear SEHE colleagues and friends,

I'm thrilled to share news with you of all that has happened during SEHE's first months. This week (January 16), we are re-submitting our undergraduate program proposals for the Environmental Studies major and minor, and the Global and Community Health major and minor. We expect that all of these proposals will be up for a vote at the Senate Divisional meeting on February 27. Please come to the meeting and support us, again, with your vote!!!

In October, we met to begin the process of defining SEHE's values and protocols. As the CLEAR Lab writes, “Collectivities are made, remade, and maintained--they are not born ready-made, and their continuity is a result of ongoing gratitude and reciprocity.....” (18). My hope is that these values and protocols will grow and adjust over time as we learn from each other.

We shared space and celebration with many of you at SEHE events in the Fall. We cheered Ellen Reese and Juliann Emmons Allison as they were joined by members of Amazon Workers United to talk about their newly published book, Unsustainable: Amazon, Warehousing, and the Politics of Exploitation. We wrote together and shared bread at our September writing retreat at CIS. A small and hardy band of us met twice a week on zoom to share writing time, thanks to the Health Inequities Faculty Commons organizers Tanya Nieri, Jennifer Syvertsen and Kim Yi Dionne. Chikako Takeshita and Ellen Reese organized two fantastic faculty workshops in view of promotion to Full. We had professional successes to celebrate as well, including Michelle Raheja's promotion and Allison Hedge Coke's Thomas Wolfe Prize. Cathy Gudis led an extraordinary series of public events connected to the ‘Climates of Inequality’ exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum. As part of that series, SEHE faculty joined Inland Empire K-12 teachers, community college (RCC) and university faculty, to build on each others’ efforts in teaching sustainability, and to develop pathways to the SEHE majors.

We grew as a department: we are thrilled that Josie Ayala was named FAO of SEHE and the Department of Black Study. Collaborating with Josie and DBS Chair Sage Whitson has been a great pleasure and source of strength for me over the past few months. We meet regularly to navigate UCR's waters together. We have a shared department space in INTS: a conference room (INTS 3113) and a shared student collab space on the INTS 3rd floor (that will come into existence sometime soon, we hope!). We are excited to welcome Brenda Robinson to the SEHE/DBS unit this month as our new Administrative Assistant. CHASS Divisional FAO Tanya Wine has been a huge support to us ever since the department was approved. And SEHE has two awesome Butterfly Project student interns working with us this year: Evelyn Cruz Jimenez (3rd year Anthropology major) and Maria Manzano Perez (4th year Biology major).

We prepared to launch our new majors and minors next Fall: we visited with student organizations related to environment and health (including the leaders of the four free clinics at UCR), met with CHASS student advisors, published a website and worked with CHASS Student Affairs to set the majors up for success. And - massive cherry on top - we submitted 25, yes, twenty-five, new course proposals and cross listings!

I'm so grateful for your company on this adventure.

With best wishes for the New Year,

Dana Simmons
Acting Chair of SEHE