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Recent efforts to make undergraduate biology more inclusive include developing content that explores how human values and priorities impact science, and previous work documents how instructors value an “ideologically aware” biology curriculum that highlights these themes. Here, we surveyed a national sample of undergraduate students in biology classes to explore student perceptions of Ideological Awareness via a mixed-methods investigation. Through quantitative analyses, we found that women students, transgender or gender nonconforming students, and students majoring in biology or another science field were more likely to support the inclusion of Ideological Awareness in the biology classroom. We used expectancy value theory to guide our qualitative interpretations of student survey responses. Specifically, students’ expectancy of success and the intrinsic value they attach to ideologically aware content influenced their overall acceptance and advocacy for its integration into the curriculum. Students reported valuing Ideological Awareness because it can increase awareness and decrease biases. The most frequently cited cost was the potential for Ideological Awareness to elicit negative emotions. We compared results with similar or identical questions on a national survey distributed to biology instructors, which showed general alignment between students and instructors. These results support the incorporation of Ideological Awareness in biology education, emphasizing the need for more research on the implementation of inclusive content to address potential challenges. 

Environmental pollution is a global threat that is especially prevalent in heavily industrialized and urbanized areas. Pollution can be found in many forms, such as natural and synthetic pollutants from natural and anthropogenic processes. These impact individual, population, and ecosystem health. Additionally, urbanization and industrialization create landscape heterogeneity, which alters socioecological dynamics within environments—often through intentional and systematic processes. For humans, the subjection to and impacts of both pollution and land distribution have disproportionate effects on members of low-income and marginalized communities. Environmental injustice occurs when systemic biases like racism and classism fuel inequalities and inequities among individuals and their communities. The current activity combines predictive graphing and group discussions to help reinforce basic principles of environmental pollution and the sociocultural underpinnings that increase risks of exposure and impacts, using real-life examples of environmental injustice such as the Flint Water Crisis and Cancer Alley Louisiana. Utilizing the “Mapping for Environmental Justice” website, students will predict the cumulative environmental injustice burden across the State of Virginia, resulting from imbalanced land distribution, and compare public health data to examine those to be considered “at risk” based on various demographic characteristics. Students will then think critically and discuss the decision-making behind societal pollution and land management, which influence the presence and intensity of environmental injustices.