During the summer of 2023, a team of staff and faculty from Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education, the Nicholas School of the Environment’s Environment+ program, and the Office of Climate and Sustainability issued a call for climate course ideas to be transformed into 10 online, short-format Coursera courses for working professionals and adult learner audiences.
Three courses have thus far been identified and begun to be developed. The first, Climate Science for Everyone, taught by Prasad Kasibhatla, Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Senior Associate Dean of Research and Doctoral Programs in the Nicholas School of the Environment, completed development during the summer of 2024 and has launched on Coursera. Two additional courses – Environmental Leadership, taught by Sam Hanna, Adjunct Faculty in the Nicholas School of the Environment, and Climate Change for Healthcare Professionals, co-taught by Valerie Sabol, Professor of Adult Acute Care & Gerontology at the School of Nursing, and Denise Nepveux, Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery in the School of Medicine – are currently in development. A full-time learning experience designer was hired in Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education to work with instructors to develop these and future courses. Seven more courses are anticipated to be a part of this series.