When the City of Atlanta relaunched its Clean Energy Advisory Board this year, Georgia State University was well represented in Urban Studies Institute (USI) master’s student Avery Evans, who has joined 25 civic leaders from the public, nonprofit and private sectors to help build public support for the city’s Clean Energy Atlanta plan.

The board will work to provide recommendations that will help the City of Atlanta reach 100-percent clean energy by 2035 while ensuring its plans and policies are centered on equity, advance environmental justice and support data transparency. Working groups will address climate impacts, affordable housing, energy affordability, sustainable transportation and youth climate action — all through a community-driven approach.

During the board’s first meeting, Evans was named to the sustainable transportation group.

“Avery’s research interests in urban greenspace and agriculture, and their relationship to housing affordability and gentrification, align with the Clean Energy Advisory Board’s focus on sustainable justice and transformation,” said Michael Black, who nominated Evans to the board. Black, a principal senior lecturer in the Neuroscience Institute, is an affiliate of the USI, sits on the executive management team of the Center for Urban Transformations and chairs the Higher Education Learning Community of the Greater Atlanta United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development.

“We wanted to have multiples of our students on the board, but ultimately there could only be one from the university,” he said. “The city’s Clean Energy Advisory Board will be well served by Avery Evans.”

Evans entered Georgia State’s Urban Studies graduate program after working as a preschool teacher, urban farmer and session assistant for the Office of the Secretary of the Georgia Senate. She holds undergraduate degrees in international affairs and sociology and a minor in philosophy from the University of Georgia.

“I had friends involved in horticulture, ecology and plant biology, but I was always more interested in social and policy-oriented ideas,” she said. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent more time outdoors, which renewed my love for nature.”

In the summer of 2020, she moved to the Mozley Park neighborhood in Atlanta’s West End community. She started a vegetable garden in her front yard, sharing the produce with her neighbors, and began teaching at a preschool that practiced student-centered, nature-based learning.

“We spent a lot of time outdoors and let them explore, and I saw the natural world through their eyes,” Evans said. “These experiences made me realize the importance of our connections with nature and nature’s importance to childhood and adult emotional health.”

After teaching for a year, Evans joined an organic urban vegetable farm in Douglasville, working part time harvesting produce and selling it at farmers markets for two seasons. The winter season reduced her work hours and led her to the session assistant position at the Georgia Senate secretary’s office, which further renewed her passion for public policy. So, she entered the Urban Studies graduate program in Georgia State’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.

“I realized the connection between policy and farming and went back to school to figure out how to advocate for greenspace development, urban agriculture and sustainable transitions more generally,” Evans said. “Also, I live close to Cascade Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where the city is making the roads safer and more walkable, but rents are going up and neighbors are being displaced. I’m really interested in how to improve sustainability in infrastructure while not displacing people in the process.”

Evans is president of the Urban Studies Society at Georgia State and holds an Urban Transformations Fellowship from the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Urban Transformations (Award #2203718) and an Andrew J. Swope Equity and Justice Scholarship, a financial award for students who have proven a commitment to promoting equity in their studies and actions. As a graduate research assistant for Assistant Professor Rea Zaimi, she is conducting community participatory research with the Dixie Hills Community Civic Club to help create an archive for the historically Black Dixie Hills neighborhood in west Atlanta. This summer she will support community gardens across the city as an intern at the Food Well Alliance.

Even on her schedule, Evans is eager to contribute to the Clean Energy Advisory Board as one of three student members from local universities. And as a student, she feels she adds a different perspective to the board.

“I’m not bound to thinking in the same way others may be bound,” she said. “I have a youth mindset with creative ideas, so that’s something I can bring to the table. In terms of transportation infrastructure, for example, there is a lot of interest in electric vehicles. As someone who bikes and uses public transportation, I want to give more voice to those aspects.”

She’s also grateful for the opportunity to learn in real-time while she serves.

“It is cool to be learning about community participation and decision-making processes and to be on an actual advisory board with community stakeholders,” she said. “I’m not only learning in the classroom; I’m also actively learning and seeing how processes function at the municipal level. Georgia State is a great place for opportunities and is really well connected to things going on in the city and around the state.”

“Avery is dedicated to equity,” Black said. “As a resident of Atlanta who is vested in her city and its people, she will work hard and serve well in her two-year term on the Clean Energy Advisory Board.”

According to Black, the city can expect even more support from Georgia State students.

“Some of our other capable Center for Urban Transformations fellows and students will be serving on working groups to help Atlanta transition to clean energy in an equitable way,” he said. “We are so proud of all our fellows and their work in our new National Science Foundation-funded Center for Urban Transformations. Look for good things from these students in the future.”