From drought and wildfires to biodiversity loss and climate inequity, the environmental challenges of our time will require scientists who bring diverse perspectives, lived experiences, and deep community roots.
The Bren Emerging Environmental Scholars (BEES) Program is building that pipeline. BEES partners with the Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP), a UC-wide initiative that prepares first-generation and low-income students at Title I high schools for higher education. BEES also partners with the Promise Scholars Program, a UC-wide program supporting undergraduates who may not otherwise have the financial resources to attend university — extending the pipeline from high school all the way through college. Through these partnerships, BEES is building the next generation of environmental scientists starting with showing students, early and often, that they are welcomed in the field.
“The Bren Emerging Environmental Scholars program was a pivotal experience for my high school students in the Marine Science Academy, expanding their awareness of academic and professional pathways for their future. Learning from and interacting with PhD students who are just a few years ahead of them allowed my emerging scientists to imagine themselves thriving in that space. They all went home excited to dive deeper into environmental science and research, and were inspired to grow in their capacity to protect, restore, and conserve coastal habitats in their own backyard.”
A Day at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve
The 2026 Memorial Day weekend ushered in 21 students from Channel Islands High School to the Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve, one of the last remaining coastal wetlands in Southern California. For the next five hours, BEES PhD mentors Sadie Cwikiel, Lesley Figueroa, and Kimiko Russell-Halterman led them through rotating field stations, a beach lunch, and a visit to the Chrisman California Islands Center, where mentors shared their own paths into environmental science and opened the floor to questions. In the mud, at the water’s edge, kneeling over a quadrat counting snails, are the moments these BEES students realize pursuing an advanced degree in this area of study is open to them. These students spent the morning doing what PhD students do: observing, measuring, questioning, and connecting what they saw to larger ecological systems. This is what the BEES model was built to do.
“I enjoyed when Kimiko was talking about clams. I learned that different sizes are special and help them survive.”
“I loved the mentors who showed us around. I loved their energy.”
“I learned how to count snails and algae with the grid and observed the environment.”
Who Gets to be a Scientist?
For many of these high school students, seeing themselves as scientists has rarely been presented as a possibility. Teachers, like Theresa Lujan at Channel Islands High School, are the ones who bring students to the table and invite them to explore future possibilities facilitated through the BEES program. BEES challenges future career perceptions, not by telling students they could become scientists someday, but by showing them they already are.
BEES PhD mentor, Ale Vidal Meza, grew up between Lima and the Andes, where her grandparents’ relationship with the land gave her an early sense of environmental responsibility. She brings that same grounding to every BEES interaction by connecting students’ own neighborhood observations about greenery, noise, and concrete to the urban ecology she studies. “Everyone is already doing some of that monitoring work of their own environment”, says Ale.
“They are probably and very likely already scientists themselves. By being out on the land… doing some form of stewardship or restoration, by doing that observation… they are environmental scientists. It’s just a question of what type of scientist do they want to continue to be?”
When a student, during a field trip to The Nature Conservancy’s Dangermond Preserve, asked whether she studies monkeys, Ale’s response was immediate. Ale asked the student, “well, what animals do you see in your own neighborhoods?” Raccoons. Possums. Coyotes. “Those are the animals I study,” she told them. “And they’re as cool as monkeys.” That instinct to meet students where they are runs through everything Ale does as a mentor.
The Power of Seeing Someone Like You on a College Campus
For many students, a university campus has never felt like a place meant for them. EAOP works to change that by connecting students from underrepresented communities to college preparation resources and academic support. BEES is the bridge that brings that work to life at Bren. When EAOP students visit UCSB through the BEES program, they are doing more than just a campus tour. They walk through Bren Hall and see the labs. They hear graduate students talk about their research and their own pathways into environmental science. They walk down to the beach that sits right on the edge of campus. They enjoy lunch in the dining hall alongside current students. Their visit is intentionally immersive; the goal is not just to show students what a university looks like, but to let them feel what it is like to belong to one. This design is inseparable from who is leading and fostering the experience.
“As long as other women see that I am also a woman of color in STEM, that’s all that matters to me — showing we also have a place and a voice within this field. It’s a field where diverse perspectives should be encouraged, because how are we going to solve such a complex issue without diverse perspectives?”
Bren PhD student and BEES mentor, Emma Rigatti, is an environmental scholar because of the women in STEM before her. Emma’s path into science was shaped by an Asian woman who built one of NASA’s climate models. That mentorship changed her trajectory. Now she shows up for high school students the same way: as a scientist, a mentor, and proof that the field has room for them. Her research on how coastal oak trees respond to drought conditions in Southern California comes alive in the field, where students connect what she teaches them to what they are actually seeing underfoot. “It was cool to see them connect those dots in a way that maybe they wouldn’t have done in a classroom,” she said. “Place-based learning was really impactful for me.”
High school students from Santa Maria visit the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
The Investment that Ripples Both Ways
What donors make possible through BEES is not just a field trip or a classroom visit. It is a relationship between a PhD student and a high school student that changes both of them. Emma credits BEES with making her a sharper researcher. “Having students ask me questions was really helpful. I would think, ‘I haven’t actually thought about it from that perspective.’ It helps me be a better critical thinker.” And for students themselves? An afternoon counting snails at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh becomes the afternoon a student first holds a quadrat, connects clam shell size to survival, and realizes that science is something they can do, not just read about.
For more information about the Bren Emerging Environmental Scholars (BEES) contact:
Dr. Lotus Vermeer, Assistant Dean of Partnerships and Development, lvermeer@bren.ucsb.edu
