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Wake Forest awarded $1M grant for project focusing on environmental justice

Wake Forest University has been awarded a $1 million grant for a project focusing on environmental justice.  

The grant from the Mellon Foundation will support the creation of a model program for teaching issues related to climate change and environmental justice.

The three-year effort will be led by Wake Forest Professor of Humanities Corey D.B. Walker.

Walker says the idea is to bring together educators, public officials, and community members to develop a new curriculum.

He points to last year’s fire at the Winston Weaver Company fertilizer plant, located in a residential neighborhood, as one impetus for the project.

"After the Weaver fire, what we realized is that we cannot continue to educate and produce knowledge in the same way," says Walker. "In many ways, Weaver served as a wake-up call for us."

Walker says the grant money will fund activities including a summer institute for collaboration between journalists and activists, as well as area university and college faculty. Planned reading and research projects will help create a template for educating students and the public about environmental justice issues.

Walker believes the project is an opportunity to reshape how those issues are addressed.

"We hope that this inaugurates a new day for universities to begin to help and respond with our community partners to building and sustaining a transformed world," says Walker. 

The project will also advance STEM-focused community programs supported by previous Mellon grants.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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