Professor details ERA Academy work with Dearborn youth on air quality and environmental justice
May 22, 2026 | Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents, Boards and Commissions, Organizations , Executive, Michigan
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Professor Cornell Price, an associate professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Michigan‑Dearborn, told the Board of Regents about a decade of community research and youth programming in Dearborn’s Salina neighborhood.
Price described the ERA (Environmental Health, Research to Action) Academy, launched in 2018 as a youth summer program to teach students about air pollution, water quality, energy justice, community‑led science and policy advocacy. She said the Salina neighborhood sits near a steel mill and heavily used rail lines, producing elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, and that Michigan lacks cumulative‑impact legislation so individual polluters may be in compliance while the combined effect remains harmful to nearby communities.
“Cumulatively, the impact of so many polluting facilities located next to neighborhoods and schools is devastating,” Price told the board, citing regional childhood asthma rates she said are 15.9% in the greater Detroit area compared with 8.4% nationally.
Price said the ERA Academy has served more than 125 alumni, many from the Salina neighborhood, and that participants have measured local air quality with handheld monitors, developed lesson plans mapped to K–12 standards and led community projects on stormwater runoff and green spaces. She listed funders and partners that have supported the work, including the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan and the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and described internal university centers and campus programs that sustained the initiative.
Price also described curriculum adaptations for middle‑school students, the Safe Routes to School collaboration that brought biking and walking investments (bike racks and a repair station), and a planned ecological sound wall envisioned by a local coalition.
Board members asked no substantive questions during the presentation; Price offered to follow up with interested regents after the meeting.
Price described the ERA (Environmental Health, Research to Action) Academy, launched in 2018 as a youth summer program to teach students about air pollution, water quality, energy justice, community‑led science and policy advocacy. She said the Salina neighborhood sits near a steel mill and heavily used rail lines, producing elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, and that Michigan lacks cumulative‑impact legislation so individual polluters may be in compliance while the combined effect remains harmful to nearby communities.
“Cumulatively, the impact of so many polluting facilities located next to neighborhoods and schools is devastating,” Price told the board, citing regional childhood asthma rates she said are 15.9% in the greater Detroit area compared with 8.4% nationally.
Price said the ERA Academy has served more than 125 alumni, many from the Salina neighborhood, and that participants have measured local air quality with handheld monitors, developed lesson plans mapped to K–12 standards and led community projects on stormwater runoff and green spaces. She listed funders and partners that have supported the work, including the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan and the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and described internal university centers and campus programs that sustained the initiative.
Price also described curriculum adaptations for middle‑school students, the Safe Routes to School collaboration that brought biking and walking investments (bike racks and a repair station), and a planned ecological sound wall envisioned by a local coalition.
Board members asked no substantive questions during the presentation; Price offered to follow up with interested regents after the meeting.
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