Bittersweet Q&A with Lexis

This past May, Earth Grant’s Program Assistant, Lexis, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and is moving on to the ‘real world’. During their freshman year, Lexis was in the inaugural Earth Grant cohort in 2021 and was then hired as the first Program Assistant where they supported the program for three years. They have been a crucial part of Earth Grant’s development along with AIR staff and internship mentors. We have been incredibly lucky to have been a part of Lexis’ college years and experience their passion for community, relationships and storytelling. One of Lexis’ many tasks was to co-facilitate the Earth Grant class and they did an amazing job asking thought-provoking questions and guiding conversation in a meaningful manner. This is a bittersweet farewell, but we are excited for Lexis to share their skills and passions with others.

We asked Lexis some parting questions to celebrate their participation in Earth Grant during their college career.

1. Tell us about your internship with the Sierra Club during the first Earth Grant cohort in 2021-22.

For my internship, I worked with Sergio Avila, a Local Outings Program Coordinator with the Sierra Club, and also just an incredibly multifaceted and energetic person! One of my favorite parts of my internship was helping the local volunteer-led chapter of Sierra Club’s ICO, a group that organizes and leads hikes and outdoor activities for a wide range of audiences. Sergio helped me build connections with so many wonderful organizations and community members here in Tucson, like Las Milpitas community farm, and his mentorship was really instrumental in me learning all of the reasons to love a place as rich with community and history and culture as Tucson.

2. What made you interested in continuing to work with Earth Grant as the program assistant?

I have always been really interested in education, but I hadn’t seen what it could look like outside of the traditional public-school classroom until Earth Grant. Some of our most transformative moments and most valuable knowledge is gained through life experiences, through interactions, conversations, and moments of exploration that are made possible in programs like Earth Grant. I wanted to learn more about this kind of experiential learning, so that one day I could design and offer these experiences to communities that experience more difficulty accessing them. If I hadn’t become the first person in my family to graduate from a four-year university, I might have never known that programs like this even existed. I didn’t want that to be the case for the generations who will come after me, so learning all of the hard work that happens behind the scenes to create these experiences was really important to me.

3. What is something that you have learned during your participation in the Earth Grant program?

I’ve learned a lot about the power of relationships and the impact that we each have on each other. Through Earth Grant, I have had the privilege of working with incredibly passionate and inspiring people, both students and mentors, and I get to watch people grow together. It’s a beautiful thing, that gives me hope for a better world, but it also reminds me of how important it is for us to believe in each other. Many of us know what it’s like to feel like you’re fighting against all the odds to accomplish something, but it’s unfortunately much rarer to feel as though you have a support system of loving people behind you, rooting for you and caring for you because they see your worth and acknowledge your power. That sense of faith and trust, when cultivated with intention and love, can mean all the difference in someone’s capacity to be a good community member, and also in a community’s capacity to care for its members. It’s incredible to see the things we can do when we believe in each other.

4. Tell us about a favorite memory of your time in the Earth Grant program.

Most of my favorite times working with Earth Grant were when I was facilitating the weekly class that students take on professional and personal development. We all have so much to learn from each other, and getting to guide those conversations and journeys has been a deeply fulfilling experience for me. I especially love facilitating our unit on storytelling because I get to learn about the lands and waters that our students love and how that love drives them. Storytelling is such a powerful art, and I always feel so lucky that our students want to share their stories with me!

5. I know it's a big question, but what is next for you? What do you hope to contribute during your professional career?

Well, I think a lot about human relationships with the rest of the natural world, and how the state of that relationship shapes our worldview and influences the decisions we make, both as individuals and as a society. As someone raised by immigrant parents who had to leave their homelands, I have seen and experienced how a rupture in that relationship to place, to our natural world, can weaken or harm a community. Professionally, I hope to contribute towards efforts to remedy these relationships, to (re)learn and remember our place within a social and ecological world by designing and coordinating culturally responsive educational programming and experiences grounded in place and community. I will always have a lot to learn though, so I’m excited to see how the next phase of my lifelong education takes shape!