(The Center Square) – University of New Mexico researchers are leading a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency project to diversify the water industry workforce.
Anjali Mulchandani, an assistant professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, is the project’s leader. The project is called “Educating the Future Workforce on Adapting Water Infrastructure to Climate Change Impacts on the Natural Environment.”
Mulchandani is the principal investigator on the project, alongside co-principal investigator Heather Himmelberger, director of the UNM’s Southwest Environmental Finance Center.
The project is a collaboration between four other schools: Wichita State University, Syracuse University, Arizona State University, and Morgan State University in Maryland. Mulchandani emphasized that three of those colleges are “minority-serving and/or Hispanic-serving institutions,” according to the release: UNM, Morgan State, and Arizona State.
“The idea is to increase and diversify our water workforce and prepare them to address climate change impacts to our natural and built environment,” Mulchandani said in the release. “Women and people of color are underrepresented in the water workforce. This project’s inclusion of three minority-serving institutions will provide us the opportunity to expose a diverse body of students to career options in the water industry and give them professional development and science communication training to set them up for success in their future career.”