The Brief

According to California Community Colleges chancellor Sonya Christian, this is an urgent time for community colleges to respond to the climate crisis, coinciding with investments at the federal and state level.

Much of the strategy for that response revolves around one community college in particular: West Los Angeles College, in Culver City.

In 2022, the California legislature established the California Center for Climate Change Education at West, providing $5 million to promote climate change education and establish internships and other learning-on-the-job opportunities for its students, among other goals. The federal government kicked in another $1.3 million.

“This is the beginning of the involvement of community colleges,” Christian says about West’s new climate center and existing climate change studies program.

This June, under Christian’s leadership, West hosted the climate action summit for California Community Colleges to organize their climate response.

“President Biden has a very ambitious infrastructure agenda that the administration is investing in and so is the governor [of California],” Christian says. That agenda includes incentivizing private investments in clean energy production, such as wind and solar, and investing in infrastructure, such as electric vehicle charging.

“Community colleges to me are really the vehicles for these leaders to be able to realize their goals,” Christian says. “You’re going to be seeing immediately community colleges playing a much more active and cohesive role in the infrastructure rollout.”

The inaugural climate action summit for California community colleges covered the reduction of carbon emissions from campus facilities and operations, training and educating the workforce for climate careers, supporting local communities, and funding resources for climate work.

“There is a lot of momentum here. Now we’ll stop working in our separate silos and this is the start of collaboration,” says Vered Mirmovitch, an associate professor of the biological sciences at West.

Modeling climate change curriculum

West was already the first community college in California to offer an associate’s degree in climate change studies, beginning in 2018, with coursework on environmental science and statistics, but also philosophy, which challenges the assumptions behind how humans relate to the environment.

From left to right: JB Baum, graduate of WLAC's climate studies program, Marilyn Chavez, student, Vered Mirmovitch, associate professor of biological sciences, and Keon Hendrickson, graduate of WLAC's climate studies program.

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“It’s just given me an avenue to learn about something that I'm really interested in that I haven't had the opportunity to learn about on an educational level before,” says Keon Hendrickson, a recent graduate of the climate change studies program.

To Hendrickson, the most interesting course in the program was the philosophy class on environmental ethics. Rick Mayock, the instructor, asks why people assume “a certain amount of pollution is acceptable, a certain amount of species will die of extinction because of human ‘progress.’”

Through challenging these assumptions, Mayock says, “that's the way we began to change our thinking about our place in nature and our relationship with the planet and our relationship with ecosystems and other species and so forth."

Through its new climate center, West is developing more climate change curriculum for community colleges in California to adapt to their own campuses.

Eventually, the plan is for West to educate students of all disciplines on climate change, not just what people might expect of those studying environmental science.

For students studying math, they might learn statistics related to climate change; for students studying psychology, they might learn the concept of “climate change anxiety” — the feeling of powerlessness one might experience if overwhelmed by concerns about climate change.

Marilyn Chavez is a student at West learning about climate change while focusing on the health sciences. She took a biological sciences elective in the climate change studies program.

“What I've learned recently here is that despite what career path you take, environmental education is so important because it's something you can apply to every field,” Chavez says. “Sustainability is so important and we can all do our part no matter what field and what path we take in life.”

Originally from Guatemala, Chavez says her Indigenous background shapes how she relates to the environment. For her, she considers humans part of the environment, which is to be shared with other species, not a separate entity for humans to control.

Teaching in the climate change program at West, Mirmovitch sees the value of teaching climate change to students in all disciplines.

“(Climate change is the) major crisis of our time. It’s not something that we can ignore anymore and we need as many people to be on board and to be part of the solution,” Mirmovitch says.

Mirmovitch adds that for change to happen, it is most effective when there’s a critical mass of people involved.

Preparing the climate change workforce

A similar approach of incorporating climate change across disciplines is also taking place at the California State University system.

And other community colleges in California have not sat idle on climate-related education. For example, Long Beach City College has an underwater robotics program which can support monitoring ocean health. Colleges in the Central Valley are developing an Agricultural Technology program for farmers to adapt to climate change and water availability.

At West, president Jim Limbaugh wants to prepare students for high-paying careers in clean energy and climate technology, and not only related to solar energy.

WLAC President Jim Limbaugh outside the West Los Angeles Climate Center.

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Solar energy has already reached a level of maturity in the state, according to an analysis from the University of California Riverside projecting the future of green jobs in California. That report finds that there is room for other green sectors to grow, including the zero emission vehicles industry, which already has a strong presence in Southern California.

“There's all this interest in electric vehicle charging stations,” Limbaugh says. “There's not enough training out there, not enough people out there to actually install them and work on them.”

Through the center at West, Limbaugh says in October community colleges will meet with industry representatives to determine their training needs. In the Los Angeles region, employers and community colleges have already been identifying emerging climate-related sector needs, such as marine aquaculture for domestic fisheries production.

The center is also to partner with local and regional entities to support training to modernize the electric grid, Limbaugh says. He foresees that students can work in a range of climate-related fields, from conducting research or working as a sustainably-oriented park ranger in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Ethics and ambition

JB Baum just graduated from West’s climate studies program this spring and attended the climate action summit. Baum says the speakers at the summit could have been more ambitious, instead of focusing so much on preparing students to meet industry demands or partnering with certain industries.

“Not all private industry should be treated the same, nor all jobs universally good,” Baum says.

Baum suggests that community colleges be intentional about which companies to link students to, particularly not oil or utility companies that have contributed to the climate problem.

For example, Kern Community College is partnering with industries that employ direct air capture technology to manage carbon emissions, a technology that has been considered controversial in its effectiveness.

When asked about the scalability of air capture technology, Christian said that the approach by community colleges will be dependent on regional attributes and community colleges need to have a seat at the table at the start of technological revolutions before they become commercial.

Can community colleges move quickly enough? 

As recent wildfires in Canada severely reduce the air quality in the Midwest and Northeast; as extreme temperatures have blanketed California; and a heat dome covers regions in the South, it’s uncertain whether community colleges' efforts are moving quickly enough.

“I think some of these solutions (from the summit) aren't really tackling the immediate effects of climate change on students and talking about adjusting the academic schedule to account for the possibility of a heat dome every single September,” Baum says.

“What are we going to do when power doesn't exist on the campus anymore because of rolling blackouts?” he adds.

Santa Rosa Junior College, north of San Francisco, officially installed a microgrid system in 2022 to power priority buildings with solar energy and battery storage, and even support the existing utility grid. A microgrid, however, is a rarity among community colleges.

According to David Liebman, the manager of this project, other community colleges may not be as quick to adopt their own microgrid due to caution about the maturity of the technology, upfront costs, and available campus space.

On the community college level, actions being taken are deliberate, but results won’t be immediate. At West, the new climate center’s director, Jo Tavares, says they’re learning about their campus needs and what other community colleges are doing around climate change.

President Limbaugh expects that the first batch of courses with a climate change curriculum will be approved in the next year. He says 17 West faculty members are working on developing climate-change centered curriculum.

Chancellor Christian envisions “convening educators to come together is going to be something that we can count on on a recurring basis.”

Meanwhile, students from or in the climate program at West are making moves. Baum and Hendrickson are continuing their studies in Geography and Environmental Studies at UCLA. Students at West like Chavez are getting ready to take climate change classes in the fall.

Chavez plans to sign up for the environmental ethics class next. Speaking about her future plans, Chavez says she “would love to take more classes about environmental science” and “you know, just contribute as much as I can to the cause.”

As a parent, Chavez says she is teaching her children to help the environment, such as reducing the number of toys they purchase. “They'll see a toy, they'll want a toy, and we're like, you know, we have so many toys at home, we don't need to buy new toys,” Chavez says.

She hopes her children will learn to be self-reliant and sustainable, and that they pass these practices on.

“I feel like if I can teach them, they'll teach their children, if they plan to have children, or friends or just anybody that they come across.”

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo.

"Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different."

Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none.

Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect.

"It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are."

U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.

Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment."

Boyer and Hoy work on some last-minute adjustments to his AI-powered SkoBot before presenting at his school's end-of-year showcase, called the STEAM Museum.

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That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.

"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"

SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.

Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."

Hoy, a rising seventh-grader, showed off his design at an end-of-the-year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.

He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"

Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.

His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.

"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."

Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.

Hoy's Sabe, or Bigfoot, SkoBot on display (right), alongside three other SkoBots that Boyer brought with her to show off at the STEAM Museum. Each represents a specific animal: a wolf, turtle and bear. Hoy's SkoBot is 3D printed in light gray, and its face is adorned with a footprint surrounded by floral designs.

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"Basically, when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."

That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."

Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.

"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."

And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."

Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.

"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."

Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"

He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."

Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Murals depicting Korean drummers, dancers and historical figures were a large part of Dave Young Kim’s childhood in Koreatown.

At the time, the Korean American artist didn’t know what all of the imagery meant, but it left a lasting impression on him.

“We don’t learn culture via formal education. It’s all gleaned,” Kim said. “It’s just what we sense, and we feel a connection to it without actually knowing anything about it. It belongs to us, and it feels very familiar.”

Many of the murals Kim remembers from his childhood have since disappeared. With his latest mural at the Korean Resource Center, Kim hopes to bring some of that visual imagery back to the neighborhood.

Completed this summer, the mural is Kim’s first in Koreatown.

The mural shows a group of traditional Korean drummers moving beneath sweeping ribbons of color, with plum blossoms blooming across the bottom of the wall. Faint outlines of traditional Korean architecture appear in the background.

At the center of the mural is 풍물놀이 (pungmulnori), a traditional Korean folk performance that combines drumming, dance and acrobatics and has long been part of village festivals and celebrations.

A close-up view of artist Dave Young Kim’s mural at the Korean Resource Center in Koreatown. The work depicts traditional Korean drummers.

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For Kim, the project was a chance to reconnect the neighborhood with the kind of cultural imagery he says shaped his own understanding of identity growing up.

“It was important to me growing up, and for me to see myself through very purposeful art, very intentional art,” he said. “For my own formation and identity, I think it was very important. I’d like to do that for future generations.”

Kim, 46, who was born and raised in Koreatown, said the project felt different from his other murals because it was rooted in the community where he spent his childhood.

“The formative years of my life are here,” he said.

The project grew out of the Abbey Mural Prize, a national grant program that supports community-based public mural projects.

As part of the project, Kim partnered with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, which trains youth to interview community elders. Students interviewed residents at Durae Crenshaw House, an affordable senior housing complex and home to the Korean Resource Center, and shared transcripts with Kim as he developed the mural.

The architecture in the mural reflects the idea of home that emerged repeatedly in interviews with elders, Kim said.

“There were a lot of iterations of the mockups. The very initial ones were very, very, very rooted in the stories, the narratives from the elders,” Kim said.

The interviews also left an impression on Daisy Yeon, 17, one of the students who conducted them. She said participating in the project changed the way she thinks about Koreatown and its history.

Yeon said she believes traditional Korean imagery still has a place in a neighborhood that has changed rapidly in recent years.

“Personally, the way Koreatown has evolved in these few last years from the pandemic and the shift where people move into other Korean enclaves like Buena Park and Torrance, Koreatown is partly becoming a place of pop-up matcha spots, for example,” she said. “So I think it’s important for tradition to still be here.”

Seeing the finished mural was “a full-circle moment,” she said, after spending months interviewing elders whose stories became part of the artwork.

While researching Koreatown’s public art history, Kim learned many of the murals he saw as a kid grew out of cultural initiatives and public funding that no longer exist. He also discovered an earlier generation of Korean American muralists whose work once covered parts of Koreatown.

In 1993, artist Dong-In Park completed a mural of traditional Korean farmers’ dance in the Korean Community Center at 981 S. Western Ave.

He told the Los Angeles Times he hoped “the 1.5- and second-generation Korean kids” would not forget their language and history. Park, along with artists including Sonia Hahn and Kuk Chol Han, helped establish a tradition of public art celebrating Korean culture during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

An undated photo of Dong-In Park’s mural depicting a farmers band playing music and dancing to provide entertainment for Korea’s largely agricultural population. The mural was previously located at 981 Western Avenue in Koreatown.

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Kim wants his mural to carry that tradition forward while also reflecting the history of the community it was created for.

The Korean Resource Center, founded by South Korean democracy activist Yoon Han-bong, has long organized around immigrant rights, workers’ rights and civic engagement. During the project, Kim learned that traditional Korean drumming has long played a role in the organization’s activism.

In the mural, an older drummer who immigrated from Korea leads the group, followed by a middle-aged performer who learned from him and younger drummers wearing sneakers, modeled after college students who continue the tradition today.

“Where we landed was very much to the core of what KRC is,” Kim said. “They are very activist and progressive.”

The Koreatown of today is filled with Korean-owned businesses and Korean-language signs, Kim said, but far fewer public murals reflecting Korean culture.

His latest mural isn’t about recreating the past so much as restoring something he believes has faded from the neighborhood.

As an artist, Kim said, public art has the power to shape how people experience a place.

“There’s something about the everyday landscape that you kind of are forced to take in,” he said, “and then as an artist, having the ability to shape what that might be.”

Lineage Logistics, the company that operates the burned cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, announced yesterday it's removed “nearly half” of the food waste there.

The waste, the company said, has been sealed in deodorized containers and is being transported off-site.

Lineage estimated that demolition and cleanup of the rest of the burned structure should be largely completed in the “coming days.”

Before the weeklong fire that began on June 17, the warehouse stored approximately 44,000 tons, or 88 million pounds, of food.

The company said it has started removing the wall separating the burned and unburned sections of the building this weekend to speed up the cleaning of the unburned structure.

The process includes installing plastic sheeting where the wall used to be to help tamp down odors

That part could take up to three days and may temporarily increase odors. To mitigate the smell, the company said three carbon filters will be added on the Union Pacific side of the warehouse.

The company is trying to meet a 45-day deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to complete the cleanup. Lineage has faced citations and warnings from L.A. County and the South Coast Air Quality Management District for "an ongoing odor nuisance" and “unsanitary and nuisance conditions.”

A slate of popular peptide therapies has won the backing of a key advisory panel to the federal government — a step that could eventually open up broader access to the experimental drugs.

In a marathon two-day meeting last week, the panel of doctors, academics and pharmacists recommended the Food and Drug Administration reclassify almost all of the compounds under consideration so that specialized pharmacies in the U.S. could begin offering them.

Seven different peptide therapies — none of which are FDA-approved drugs — were under consideration.

Currently, these peptides can't be made in the U.S., except for research purposes, leading many peptide users to buy unvetted substances sold online, with disclaimers such as "for research use only" and "not for human consumption."

By narrow margins, the panel voted in favor of all but one. The FDA isn't required to follow advisory committee recommendations but typically does.

The outcome represents a win for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly supported peptide therapies, and the broader wellness and longevity industry, which stands to profit substantially.

These peptides are promoted for a wide range of uses and are often taken together, including for injury recovery, muscle growth and fat loss, improving athletic performance, enhancing metabolism and more.

If the agency takes the panel's recommendations, clinicians could have the ability to prescribe six peptide therapies: BPC-157, MOTS-c, KPV, TB-500, Epitalon and Semax.

A compound called Emideltide, sometimes used for insomnia, was the only one to receive a down vote.

The panel's endorsement of peptides was a striking rejection of the FDA's stance against them.

While the level of evidence for each compound varies, all of them lack the kind of large, well-controlled trials in humans that are necessary to establish safety and effectiveness, which is required for drug approvals. Peptides are strings of amino acids — smaller than a protein — that often act as signaling molecules in our bodies and carry out many critical functions.

They can be synthesized and delivered as drugs, often by injection. Some of those, like insulin, are naturally occurring in the body. Others are modified versions, as with the blockbuster GLP-1 obesity drugs.

Scientists for the agency spoke extensively about the lack of reliable data for any of the seven peptides before the committee. They advised the panel to vote no.

In some cases, they couldn't find any published clinical studies in humans — and there were safety concerns like the potential to encourage cancer growth or to trigger a massive immune response.

A "foundational challenge" was simply defining the substances, because the chemical composition for peptides labeled with the same name varied considerably, explained FDA official Russell Wesdyk.

"You will see many, many different forms," he said. "We can't create quality standards until we actually know what it is."

The divide among the experts on the panel was a study in contrasts.

Ahead of the meeting, eight new members were appointed. Most have ties to the peptide industry and include physicians who work for medical practices and companies that promote them.

In almost all cases, they voted in favor of lifting restrictions.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services pushed back on criticism about potential conflicts of interest and said all underwent the standard ethics and vetting process.

"I think it's about patient access," said Dr. Asare Christian, one of the panel members who runs a Pennsylvania-based clinic that advertises peptide protocols and hormone optimization.

That sentiment was echoed throughout the many hours of public comment.

Compounding pharmacies, large telehealth providers and others from the industry underscored the perils of the unregulated marketplace, with some offering anecdotes of patients obtaining unmarked vials from sketchy suppliers.

"What we are advocating for is not the Wild West," said Brigham Buhler, who runs a telehealth company that offers hormone optimization and peptides and is an ally of Secretary Kennedy.

"What we are advocating for is to slow down or shut down the gray and black market and to allow patients to have a safe and effective manufacturing process," he told the panel.

But some panelists were skeptical of that argument.

"I'm concerned that we are responding to market-induced demand rather than a decision based in solid science," Dr. Elizabeth Rebello, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, commented after casting a no vote.

The FDA committee was tasked with reviewing data that supports using these peptides to treat a variety of specific conditions, such as BPC-157 for treating ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease.

However, if the FDA ultimately reclassifies them and they are produced by compounding pharmacies in the U.S., clinicians would have discretion to write prescriptions outside of those narrow indications.

During the meeting, industry groups — and some on the panel — repeatedly criticized the FDA presentations for not reflecting more recent scientific data on the substances, including results from other human studies that had been submitted ahead of time.

FDA staff said they had considered everything submitted by the meeting deadline and would still take new information into account as they weigh next steps.

The decision to place the products on the FDA's official list for compounding doesn't come close to the standards for drug approval, but some worry that nuance will not be clear to the public, which may not be aware of the limited data for humans.

"I think this endorsement can be potentially harmful and I cannot in good conscience vote yes," said Dr. Brian Lee, a member of the panel and an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

If the FDA moves to reclassify the peptides so that compounding pharmacies can make them, it will be through a formal rulemaking process that could stretch into next year or 2028. There is a possibility that Kennedy could invoke special authority to make them available sooner.

The panel is scheduled to meet again in February to consider additional peptide therapies.
Copyright 2026 NPR