Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but there are ways to make it better. While completing her master’s with UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group (ERG), Nia Novella Jones M.S. ’22 saw students at Skyline High School participating in green energy. It inspired her to bring more people into a field that she has grown to love.
While attending the ERG program and working in environmental spaces, Jones found herself adding to the small population of Black students in the ERG Master’s Program. This experience inspired the title of her Master’s thesis, “Dear White People: Recommendations to successfully attract, recruit and retain minority students in green energy.”
For her thesis, Jones did a comparative demographics analysis of Asian and White students at Skyline High School who had more retention in environmental and energy fields, to Latino and Black students who didn’t think of energy and environment as a long term career.
“Students that do not see themselves or do not have a strong family tie to the topic they’re just doing something just to do it,” Jones said. “They do not feel connected to the field, and that was what I wanted to research.”
Jones was once one of the students who didn’t feel connected to creating a healthier environment through clean energy. As a child in the nation’s capital, she never had the language for what was happening around her, but she realized she was living in a food desert, like 5.6 percent of the U.S. population, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service.
As a young adult she gained language for what many Americans were experiencing, and she wanted to share that information the best way she could. Sharing began with her Instagram, @EnergyQueen19 which became the information channel for her short form video series, “The ABCs of Energy.”
“I started to go down the list, A was air pollution,” Jones said, going through the alphabet. “B was biomass, a form of renewable energy. C was climate change, and then D was dinosaur poop, which is also known as fossil fuels. E was energy efficiency, and then it just started just flowing, all the way to Z.”
Her passion in energy education also led to writing the interactive children’s book, The Adventures of Energy Queen and King Cole. The book allows Jones to move forward with her mission of environmental education, while also teaching the children reading the book about influential figures that have paved the way in the field of renewable energy and environmental justice.
Another experience Jones had that opened her eyes to the ways renewable justice can be more equitable was a trip to a college in India that helped women, known as the Earth Mamas from all over the world, provide power through solar engineering. It allowed Jones to see that no matter where you come from, your level of education or any other circumstances, you can make a difference in the world.
“That was the first time that I was in an educational setting at a college where there were non-traditional students that were learning a very innovative skill,” she said. “You could have, like my great grandmother did, an eighth grade education or even less and still be able to achieve something really impactful.”
The impact she saw the Earth Mamas provide to their homes, all over the world, made Jones want to make an impact on her own community. Currently Jones is teaching chemistry at the same high school she attended, Mckinley Tech High School. “I’m trying to give people hope through knowledge,” she said.
As the landscape of the country is changing daily, having people like Jones promote and celebrate diversity and equity in energy fields is more important than ever. However, Jones has been maintaining conversations around environmental education through her personal channels. Her most recent endeavor is starting a newsletter to share updates with her community who care about climate issues and the environment.
Along with those new ventures, Jones is now taking control of molding the minds of the next generation as a high school science teacher. In the future as a science teacher, she hopes to bring the knowledge she’s gained from working on her thesis and seeing how the students at Skyline High School benefited from the STEM program there to a school that has changed her life.
“One of my goals is to implement a sustainability track and influence McKinley Technology STEM Campus to have an environmental focus and develop the next generation of environmental leaders,” she said.
