Preparing Future Researchers

Our research team mentors students – from high school to the graduate level. On the Illinois Coal Workers & Communities Listening Project, students play an instrumental role in collecting, processing, and disseminating data. Through community-engaged fieldwork, students gain more than just research skills. They learn project management, time management, teamwork, and communication. Students produce their own independent projects, contributing to the larger research initiative.  

Many Illinois coal communities express how young people need to leave where they grow up to find work. This often aligns with the decline of coal and related industries. Through student engagement, we bring young people into conversation with elders who have seen changes in their community and speak to what they need. These conversations inspire the students and change their perspectives. The cycle continues as students learn how to become storytellers and researchers who share their learning with the broader public. Young people are advocates with bright ideas about how to shape the future when faced with the pressing issues of our time.

For our student engagement, the Climate Jobs Institute developed two key partnerships.

Harlem High School Documentary Project

We’ve partnered with the Harlem High School Documentary Project (Machesney Park, Illinois) to record and edit oral histories and documentary films for the Listening Project. A long-standing high school program, the Harlem Documentary Project offers media studies classes for students. On the Illinois Coal Workers & Communities Listening Project, students learn how to ask meaningful questions and respectfully document the stories of people most impacted by the decline of the coal industry. They lead oral history interviews, take field notes, and operate camera and audio equipment across Illinois.

Harlem High School student Kennedie Meyers operates camera equipment for an oral history. 2025. Photo by Emily Guske.

Our students share what they’ve learned through short documentaries and photojournalism projects.

View Harlem High School student projects

• Kai Borgetti (2026 graduate) directed Black Christmas — a short documentary featuring the oral histories of John Smith and Denzile Stubblefield, two West Frankfort miners whose fathers were both killed in the 1951 Orient #2 mine explosion
• Kennedie Meyers (2026 graduate) wrote two articles for the project: A Day in the Life at the Marissa Coal Festival, a photo essay of life in and around a southern Illinois coal community; and Heart and Coal, a profile of two brothers, Scotty and Tony Maynard, who worked together in coal mines in southern Illinois.

University of Illinois Department of Urban & Regional Planning 

Through our partnership with the Department of Urban & Regional Planning, the Climate Jobs Institute sponsors UP 510 Plan Making, a workshop course for graduate students that aims to give them real world planning and research experience. Taught by CJI Research Specialist and University of Illinois Urban Planning alum Emily Guske, the inaugural course directed eight students to spend a full semester exploring coal’s impact on nearby Vermilion County – its long history of mining and coal-fired power plant closure in 2011. 

Graduate students visit the Vermilion County Museum to learn about coal history in Eastern Illinois. 2025. Photo by Emily Guske.

The students used Listening Project oral histories, historical archives, and community engagement to map key sites across Vermilion County, proposing a plan for an ecological and cultural heritage trail. Their work highlights locations like local museums preserving miners’ stories, fossil-rich formations in an underground petrified rainforest, and areas affected by coal ash contamination along the Middle Fork River. The students produced a StoryMap “Exploring Coal’s Legacy: Heritage Trail Creation in Vermilion County” and presented their work to the public at the Vermilion County Museum.