The late University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Professor Emeritus Bunyan Bryant was hailed as a visionary and a man of “humility and humanity” who brought people together as an impassioned organizer. 

The SEAS community gathered January 27 to honor Bryant’s life and environmental justice legacy when it dedicated the Bunyan Bryant Memorial Room in the Dana Building. 

Bryant, who died in March 2024, taught at SEAS for 40 years before retiring in 2012. He helped to start the school’s environmental justice program, the first in the nation. 

The ceremony included remarks from current SEAS faculty who teach in the Environmental Justice specialization and who knew Bryant well and considered him a mentor.

“There are three kinds of cascading pools of practice into which I feel Bunyan invited me as a mentor and a colleague when I first arrived at this school. And they still are ones I drink from and try to contribute to the health of even today in my work,” said SEAS Professor Rebecca Hardin, who was the first to speak.

“The first pool was his righteous analytical clarity, and the second pool was humility about his imperfections and the imperfections of the world in which we all live and work. He created points of connection, points of common experience that brought us together and created an institutional culture of EJ here at SEAS that was founded on the potluck, on the fireside chat, on the ability to sit around in a circle and be honest about what we were struggling with.

“And the final pool that mattered so much to me flowed from the other two, and that was his generosity of vision and spirit institutionally, inter-institutionally and inter-culturally. Bunyan created ecosystems of flow of energy and ideas in which there was and is and will be room for everyone. I miss him so much and I’m so grateful for all that he gave me.”

SEAS Professor Paul Mohai, a decades-long friend and collaborator of Bryant, called him a “big thinker” who always thought outside of the box. “He also had an ability to make people think about things in ways they didn’t think of before,” Mohai said. 

Those qualities made Bryant an “engaging teacher and an effective leader outside the classroom,” he added. “He was very approachable, very charismatic and one of the best listeners I've ever come to know, and those qualities are very well evidenced by the impacts he’s had in raising awareness about environmental racism and injustice around the country and around the world.”

Michelle Martinez (MS ’08), a SEAS lecturer and one of Bryant’s former students, closed the ceremony by showing attendees the course book for the environmental justice advocacy class that Bryant taught. Referencing the book’s contents, which includes a history of the EJ movement, Martinez said its lessons are more fitting than ever given that “environmental justice has been characterized as radical and wasteful when we know that it’s so much more than that.”

Martinez teaches in the room that was dedicated to Bryant, and the ceremony coincided with her class time, giving her environmental justice students an opportunity to learn more about Bryant and his influence.

“Organizing was the thing that he brought to us,” Martinez said. “Organizing and togetherness—group work, friends, teams of four people getting together with a good idea and really listening to each other, empowering each other, learning together, and having difficult dialogues. He had a dogged conviction toward building the agency of the learning community.”

Following the remarks, Martinez unveiled the room dedication plaque, which immortalizes Bryant’s final words of wisdom to students: 

“Always be hopeful, because that is a source of energy that will enable and inspire your work and your vision for the future. With hope comes new visions and possibilities of social and environmental justice. Use the scientific and/or evidence-based knowledge that you have accumulated during your stay with us humbly and in concert with the people you are serving.” 

Read more: In memoriam: Bunyan Bryant’s life and legacy

Read more: Reflections from Bunyan Bryant’s former students

Read more: Arbordale Apartments in Ann Arbor renamed in honor of Bunyan Bryant