Last May I moderated a panel at a 2-day event hosted by Duke University focused on climate change and higher education. The conference was called All In: Higher Education, Interdisciplinarity and Our Collective Climate Challenge and brought together faculty and administrators from 2- and 4- year institutions from across the US to engage in deep conversations about higher ed's role in addressing the climate challenge. We formed workgroups and wrestled with a broad array of topics, including integrating climate education with racial and social equity education, using college campuses as testbeds for experiential and applied learning approaches, creating turnkey resources for instructor development and to facilitate inclusion of climate and sustainability into curricula, and training the green workforce of tomorrow.

The All In conference is where I met today's guest, Dr. Toddi Steelman, Vice President & Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability at Duke University, the person behind the conference and also driving Duke’s ambitious Climate Commitment.  We talked about what Duke’s climate commitment entails, how the college was able to take such a bold step when many other colleges struggle to even acknowledge climate change, and how Duke can be a model for other institutions of higher education.

Guest bio
Dr. Toddi Steelman is currently Duke's new Vice President and Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability in 2023. She had previously served as the Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University where, during her initial term, she oversaw the launch of two new majors to help advance climate, earth science, and environmental literacy among undergraduate students; invested in efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion within the school; secured philanthropic support for new faculty hiring; expanded the school’s engagement with other schools and units at Duke and external partners; and oversaw changes to the school’s research and business management infrastructure to better support research activities.  She also played a leading role in the planning and development of the Duke Climate Commitment.

Prior to being named dean of the Nicholas School in 2018, Dr. Steelman served as the first permanent executive director of the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Environment and Sustainability, after serving 11 years on the faculty in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. She also was a faculty member in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado a Denver from 1997 to 2001.

She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Studies from West Virginia University.

Resources and links
Terra.do's Learning for Action course
The Duke Climate Commitment
Aspen's This is Planet Ed Higher Ed Action Plan

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.

For the average person, the complexity of climate change and lack of clarity on impactful solutions can be paralyzing. For government leaders and decision-makers, it can help drive misguided investment in pie-in-the sky solutions that avoid more impactful policy decisions. En-Roads, a free, easy-to-use online dashboard and modeling tool co-developed by today’s guest, Andrew Jones, Executive Director of Climate Interactive, and a team at MIT’s Sloan Sustainability Initiative, allows anyone, from my mom to President Biden, to test out and explore the real-world impact of various climate solutions, generating outcomes based on systems thinking, dynamic systems modeling, and the latest climate data. 

En-Roads is a great example of how the research activity, intellectual heft, innovative culture, and educational mission of an institution like MIT can be operationalized to meaningfully address climate change. Since its release in 2019, En-roads has influenced world leaders, policy-makers, and CEOS,  been a centerpiece of  high stakes climate talks, and used to train almost 800 Climate Ambassadors, who are scaling the use of the tool in the workplace,  communities, schools, and on college campuses.

On this episode I talk to Drew about the origin of En-Roads, how the tool has influenced smart climate policies, its use as an educational tool, and his vision for En-Roads’s future. 

Guest Bio

Andrew Jones is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive and a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan. He is an expert on international climate and energy policy and a system dynamics modeler.

Drew led the teams that developed En-ROADS. He now teaches systems thinking and climate policy at MIT Sloan, Stanford, and UNC-Chapel Hill. He lives with his family in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.

Resources & Links
Climate Interactive website
En-Roads Climate Simulator
En-Roads Climate Ambassador Program

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.

 The nature of the climate crisis, and the unprecedented speed with which the world needs to address it, requires global, national, and local actions that are informed by the latest research from multiple disciplines. However, like a lot of academic research, the majority of climate change research is locked behind the paywall of one a handful of big academic publishers, often limiting how it can be applied to the wicked problem of climate change.  

My guest today is working to change this. For the past several years, Dr. Monica Granados has been leading the Open Climate Campaign, a global effort by the nonprofit Creative Commons,  to promote open access to climate research in order to "accelerate progress towards solving the climate crisis and preserving global biodiversity. " According to the Open Climate Campaign, to solve the global challenge of climate change, “ knowledge about climate--research, data, educational resources, software--  must be open.”

Monica and I discuss what open access is, the truly messed up grift that is academic publishing, resources faculty who are interested in sharing their research can use to make their work openly accessible, and future directions for the open climate campaign.

Guest Bio
Dr. Monica Granados has a PhD in ecology from McGill University. While working on her PhD, Monica discovered incentives in academia promote practices that make knowledge less accessible and has since devoted her career to working in the open science space in pursuit of making knowledge more equitable and accessible. She has worked on open knowledge initiatives with Mozilla, PREreview and the Government of Canada. Monica is now an Assistant Director at Creative Commons working on the Open Climate Campaign promoting open access of climate and biodiversity research.

Show Notes
Creative Commons website
Open Climate Campaign website
Nelson Memo
Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (Helios)

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education has been helping higher education institutions not only think about climate change and sustainability in regard to their own campuses but also connecting and coordinating these individual campus efforts across its global member network of 900 colleges and universities. Established in 2005, AASHE’s goal is  to “inspire and catalyze higher education to lead the global sustainability transformation.” It does this by offering professional learning, mentorship programs, conferences and events, and other sustainability-related services to the faculty, administrators, staff and students who are trying to drive sustainability innovation on the campuses of AASHE’s member institutions.

My guest on this episode is AASHE’s Director of Programs, Julian Dautremont, a long-time leader in the higher education sustainability community and one of AASHE’s co-founders. Julian and I discuss the history of AASHE, some of the work the organization is helping facilitate among its global network of colleges, and how higher education is doing in leading the global sustainability transformation.

Guest Bio
Julian Dautremont  served as Associate Director of AASHE from 2004 until 2009, when he left  to pursue graduate studies. He rejoined AASHE in 2015 as the Director of Programs. In his work with AASHE, Julian played leadership roles in creating the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) as well as the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. Outside of AASHE, Julian served for two years as the Chief Sustainability Officer of Alfred State College and spent another year as Senior Program Manager with GreenerU. Julian has an MBA and an MS in Natural Resources and the Environment from the University of Michigan and a BA in Environmental Studies from Lewis & Clark College.

Show Notes
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education
Second Nature
American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.

We can’t meet our climate goals without building, as fast as we can, a robust, diverse pipeline of well-trained workers. Unfortunately, here in the US, there is no real workforce education and training SYSTEM, per se. Short-term programs, apprenticeships, and non-credit credentials are delivered by a patchwork of community-based organizations, for-profit training providers, industry associations, unions, and community and technical colleges, And the models and funding streams differ region to region and state by state. One reason we lack the clean energy workers we need just might be this fragmented, piecemeal workforce system which is confusing and difficult to navigate.

One organization that is trying to address this is the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC. IREC wants to make it easy for anyone who wants to to move into a clean energy job. Here to talk about how is Dr. Cynthia Finley, IREC’s Vice President of Workforce Programs. We discuss the incredible demand for clean energy jobs, the urgent need to train skilled workers to fill these jobs, the essential role colleges play in the US workforce pipeline, and how IREC is leading the way in building a clean energy workforce here in the US.

Guest Bio
Dr. Cynthia Finley serves as Vice President of IREC’s Workforce program, creating strategic initiatives helping to expand workforce development in clean energy. Cynthia comes to IREC from the Virginia Community College System as the Director of Workforce Development Programs and Partnerships. Her background includes experience in higher education, workforce development, adult education, fiscal management, programs for justice-impacted individuals, and research in building social capital for underserved communities. Cynthia is passionate about developing sustainable and equitable career opportunities and pathways for underrepresented populations in the clean energy workforce. 

Cynthia holds a PhD in Higher Education Leadership from Old Dominion University, a Master’s Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Virginia Tech. She lives near Richmond, Virginia with her husband, two children, and two dogs.

Show Notes
Interstate Renewable Energy Council website
Green Jobs Connect website
EverBlue Training website

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.

Today's guest on Climate.edu is Dr Bryan Alexander, author of the  book Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis. Universities on Fire is one of the first books that I've seen focused on how climate change is impacting higher education.

The futures he describes for higher ed, even the best scenarios, are unsettling, and he makes clear that across the globe, but most notably in the US, our educational leaders and institutions aren’t doing enough. But his book also documents the great work being done by both faculty and students at institutions around the world, work that collectively can serve to point the way forward for other institutions and for the higher ed sector as whole. 

The questions that drive Bryan’s important book--how could climate change impact higher education and what does academia have to offer the rest of the world as civilization grapples with the developing climate crisis--are in many ways the same ones I am eager to explore on this podcast, which makes Bryan an ideal guest to kick off the inaugural episode of Climate.edu.

Guest Bio
Besides Universities on Fire, Bryan is the author of 3 other books, including Academia Next, named one of Forbes Magazine's Best Higher Education Books of 2020. He is  a thought leader, educational consultant and, despite looking like an off-the-grid prepper with his long, overgrown beard, is an educational futurist, sharing his insights and ideas in his monthly report, Future Trends in Technology and Education, through his weekly webinars, on his blog, in published articles, through presentations, I could go on. He is a very busy man.

Show Notes
Below are links to Bryan's personal websites, social media, and books

• Bryan Alexander's website
• Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis
• Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education
• The Future of Education Observatory
• Future Trends Forum
• Find Bryan on X, formerly known as Twitter

Climate.edu is written and produced by Richard Sebastian. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. The Climate.edu theme song "Serious Business (CC-BY- NC) was written, performed, and openly licensed by Serge Quadrado. Check out all of his music on his page on the Free Music Archive.

You can go to the show website at http://www.climatedotedu.com to find details about this and other episodes of the podcast, get news and updates related to climate change and higher ed, or to get in touch.