If you would like to learn about social justice and the environment, or are eager to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges, Root is the place for you. Focusing on identity, sustainability and social justice, Root provides students with the skills they need to become change-agents on campus and beyond.
Transitioning into a new environment can be anxiety inducing, but also exciting. By the end of the Root program students will have created a community that challenges, supports and encourages personal and intellectual growth. In previous years, some of the highlights of the program were:
- Connecting with off-campus partners such as Wild Soul River which focuses on abolition, herbal medicine, and social justice
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Exploring Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, where we learn about urban farming and environmental justice through hands-on activities
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Building community around a campfire with s’mores at an overnight
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Deepening understanding of our identities and how they relate to one’s environment with discussions, workshops, and experiential activities about the historical trajectory of activism at Williams
The Davis Center, formerly the Multicultural Center, facilitates campus conversation on race, gender, sexual orientation, and class with the objective of creating a more equitable and inclusive campus. The Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives is the campus sustainability center whose work recognizes the value of the intersection of sustainability with social justice, environmental justice, equity and inclusion. Recognizing the natural overlap of their work, in 2014 the Davis Center and the Zilkha Center partnered to design Root. Root is an EphVenture designed to raise questions and generate discussions about who we are, where we live and how we interact with the various environments we occupy. We use ‘environment’ to refer to rural and urban, natural and constructed, and sociocultural spaces that shape our interactions with each other and with the world.
Root alumni have gone on to serve the campus as leaders of MinCo and environmental student groups, Community Engagement Fellows with the Davis Center and interns with the Zilkha Center.
Megamenu Social