Meet the co-director of GSRC at UCI
- Yuxin Shen
- Jan 25, 2017
- 2 min read
Dr. Adonia, an urban anthropologist passioned on environmental justice and urban transportation. This blog will highlight her experiences and how does one of her initiation impacts my life as an international student—the Global Sustainability Resource Center at UCIrvine.
Reading through some works she has done in the past few years, I admire the great passion she brought to sustainability, especially on biking. As an anthropologist, she proves that sustainability is something everyone can engage and put their energy to.
She brought a few opinions that I personally really agree with, such as that “many people who view driving a car as a passport to a better life”. This happens a lot on developing countries, so do developing cities/counties. Probably because car is more expensive than bicycles, so having a car equals a better social economic statues. That’s also what I’ve experienced in China. People who live in Beijing used to ride a bike to all the places, but within 30 years, the city has completely changed. You could rarely see any bikes on the road anymore, and the traffic contributes a lot to the serious air pollution. I remember when I was little, I could play on the street with my friends. But nowadays, the street has occupied by cars. People can hardly walk on it.
What I really impressed with is that even though she committed to live in a sustainable life, I quote that “From 2008 till 2011, I lived carfree as an engaged researcher studying and organizing bicycle projects in L.A.”, she didn’t extol bicycles excessively. Instead, she holds a critical view of bicycles by saying that “Different people experience bicycling in positive and negative ways because bicycling takes place through bodies subject to the hierarchies of our society”. And from this point, bicycles are more like something that can reflect social justice.
After she graduated from UCI with a master and a PhD degree, she started the Global Sustainability Resource Center, which becomes one of the first and biggest sustainable center on campus. And they offer a lot of opportunities for students, such as the Costa Rica program, which some of my friends went and shared their great experiences.
As a board member of the Earth System Science Club on campus, and a member of Theta Psi, which is a fraternity focusing on global sustainability, I got many chances to work and correlated with GSRC and experienced their dedication of connecting all the on campus sustainability organizations together.
Overall, Dr. Adonia is doing great things not only for UCI, but also for a bigger picture. To find out and read more about her: http://www.urbanadonia.com/p/about_22.html
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