The Bay Area has always been part of the worldwide efforts to better conserve the natural resources of our fragile world. Simultaneously, we are often on the forefront of efforts to diversify segments of our culture that have historically been uninviting and exclusionary towards people of color.

There is a great story on Bay Nature by Tamara Sherman,“Now is a Good Time to Hold Up a Mirror.” Bay Area Conservation Groups Say They Want to Become More Diverse. What’s Stopping them' that connects these two threads. In it, our very own Merritt College gets a nice mention. 

As organizations reconsider the ways they recruit and retain staff, a new program at Merritt College offers training in the specific skills for students to get jobs in conservation and park fields outside the traditional academic pathway. “I was always told if I wanted to study biology and environmental science, and have a career, [I] had to become an academic, go all the way through to a Ph.D.,” said Brad Balukjian, the founder and director of Merritt College’s Natural History and Sustainability Program. “I saw an opportunity to create a program that could fill the Bay Area environmental sector’s job needs in many different ways. We should recast or rethink training and education to provide options for people to work in nature and for the environment.”

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