Jaime González will lead the University of Houston’s Institute for Ecological Resilience into the future as its new director.
Like many children, Jaime González spent most of his childhood outside, having grown up in the Aldine area where a forest rested behind his home.
That forest was filled with fond memories for González, a University of Houston alumnus who was recently named the new director of the Institute for Ecological Resilience. It’s where he played with his dog, hung out with friends and built forts.
González left that forest behind when he moved to Philadelphia in high school. But when he returned to the Houston area after graduation, he said he found his forest had been cut down and turned into a junkyard.
“I wanted to protect this playground, this wonderful place of peace and joy that had been destroyed.”
—Jaime González, director of the Institute for Ecological Resilience, University of Houston
“That’s when I decided I want to work in conservation,” González said. “I wanted to protect this playground, this wonderful place of peace and joy that had been destroyed.”
González has since earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from UH, focusing primarily on ecology, zoology, evolutionary biology and science education, and elevated his status within the conservation industry.
He currently serves as board chair for the North American Association for Environmental Education, as climate adaptation and justice adviser to the city of Houston and Harris County, and as Community Fellow for the Rice University Center for Environmental studies.
He also earned the Distinguished Alumni Award for UH’s College of Natural Sciences. He has been the recipient of the Prairie Champion Award from the Coastal Prairie Conservancy, Alban-Heiser Award from the Houston Zoo, and the Elizabeth Hull Abernathy Award from the Garden Club of America.
González recently spoke with UH about how he got to where he is today and the importance of preserving nature.
Q: What brought you to the University of Houston?
A: The first time I became of the University of Houston is through athletics – as many other Houstonians did growing up, I watched “Phi Slama Jama” basketball. I just loved it. I didn’t have any family connections to UH; I’m a first-generation college graduate.
I didn’t start at UH, but when I moved back to Houston, I was really looking to get into ecology and biology and the University had always positioned itself as a school for working class students. There’s something powerful about that mission that connected with me.
It was affordable and I was working full-time while going through school. Like many folks who attend UH, I knew I could get a quality education. That’s where it came through for me and changed my life.
Q: How did you find your way into the industry?
A: I was one of those students who didn’t do internships because I was working full-time to pay for school. So, instead, I started volunteering at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center.
I was working at a biotech lab doing some rudimentary lab work. I fell in love with the place, so I started doing little projects for them. I found not just a love for the place, but also a love for talking to people about nature.
Eventually, a position came available for an interpretive naturalist, and the executive director at the time asked me to take it on and I stayed there for seven years.
I became absolutely enthralled with not just the restoration of nature, but also the teaching of nature. I taught everyone from kindergarteners through retirees.
Q: What is the significance of the University of Houston Coastal Center?
A: There’s a little bit of a cultural aspect to nature as well. One of the things we’re gifted with here is the UH Coastal Center, which is home to an old growth coastal prairie.
That’s a very rare environment now, but it used to cover most of Houston and prairies used to cover a great majority of Texas. Grasslands were spread throughout the state, and it was from that ecosystem that so much of what we tell the world we’re about in terms of being from Texas started there.
Some examples would be barbecue, bluebonnets and the rodeo – all of that stuff rose from the prairie.
I think a fun part of bringing prairie back into the city, using seed sources from the coastal center and other prairies that are a little bit on the periphery of the city, is you’re bringing a piece of Texas back to Texans.
Q: What does the Institute of Ecological Research mean for UH?
A: We sit in one of the most diverse and vibrant cities in the world. A lot of people don’t fully realize that we’re also in one of the most ecologically diverse places in the United States.
We’re also in a place seeing increasing temperatures, we’ve obviously had a lot of flooding events, and we also sometimes suffer from poor air quality, so I think the hope of IER is that we can be part of the solutions that make Houston more livable.
If Houston is going to be a destination for new talent in the future, it must be more resilient and become greener and healthier. I think using nature-based solutions and deploying them at an even greater scale than we have is going to be important to helping that.
My hope is that UH is going to be a key player in that space, working alongside the government and nonprofits to create a greener, healthier place so we can attract talent and provide a better quality of life for the people living here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.