Carissa Aoki serves as the Area Head for Ecosystems, Sustainability, and Justice, MICA’s interdisciplinary major preparing students to address today’s most pressing social and environmental challenges through the lens of their creative practice. She is an applied ecologist, with a particular interest in the ways in which social justice concerns are interwoven with ecological questions.
Degrees in both the humanities and the sciences drive Carissa’s interests in interdisciplinary work, and engage her in stakeholder-driven projects that are can translate research into usable tools for natural resource managers and the general public. Carissa is affiliated with MICA’s Center for Creative Impact, through which she hopes to increase co-curricular opportunities for students to investigate the connections between their creative practice and real-world experience with environmental justice issues.