2023 marked the second iteration of the Project Earth Orientation Program. Sponsored by Sustainable Duke, this week-long program is part of Duke’s new experiential approach to first-year orientation. Through small-group interaction and upper-class student mentorship, the program provided space for 100 first-year students to connect to each other, to Duke, and to the Durham community through the spheres of sustainability; environment, economy, and community. Utilizing interdisciplinary and hands-on experiences, students learned about and interacted with solutions-based sustainability and climate change programming on and off campus. This program allowed students to collaborate and build meaningful connections with each other and the environment.
pillar: Education
To promote infusion of climate and sustainability topics across a broad range of courses campus-wide, the Climate and Sustainability Teaching Fellows Program launched in Spring 2023. This program builds on the model of the Trillium Sustainability Fellows Program.
During May 2023, twelve Duke faculty fellows from across seven of Duke’s ten schools, three faculty co-convenors (Dr. Charlotte Clark, Associate Professor of the Practice Emeritus, Environmental Sciences and Policy; Dr. Alex Glass, Senior Lecturer, Earth and Climate Sciences; and Dr. Priscilla Wald, R. Florence Brinkley Distinguished Professor of English), and staff from Duke Learning Innovation, Sustainable Duke and the NSOE met for a week of workshops introducing them to the intersections between climate, sustainability, and courses the faculty fellows already teach. Following the week of workshops, faculty revised their course syllabi over the summer and updated course materials to reflect these systems connections. Revised courses are being delivered during the 2023-24 academic year. This program is expected to run again in the summer of 2024 with a new cohort of teaching fellows. A call for proposals will be issued in late fall 2023.
Beginning in Fall 2023, the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Pratt School of Engineering jointly launched Design Climate, which guides multidisciplinary student teams through the three phases of innovation to tackle client-identified issues over two semesters. Key constituents of the program include students – primarily undergraduate seniors and master’s-level students from engineering and natural sciences, along with other disciplines such as business and policy; program leaders, who cultivate client relationships, vet prospective clients, and teach the design process; and partners from heavy industry, the tech sector, and local communities, with demonstrated commitment to engage with student teams on a regular basis. Partner relationships are developed so that student teams can visit them on site to allow for observations and conversations to fully assess the design needs of the challenge being explored. Judy Ledlee (Ph.D. ’18), an environmental engineer with experience in sustainability and green technology development, was hired in Spring 2023 to serve as the program’s inaugural director.
Through the generosity of Duke alumna, Cindy Marrs, the Duke Financial Economics Center launched a series of four climate- and sustainability-focused finance courses. These courses cover a wide array of topics, including a deep dive into tradeoffs between corporate profit and sustainable outcomes in business projects, strategies for startups in the climate tech space, financial regulatory structure and its response to climate change, analyzing sustainability practices of individual firms as a component of investment research, and identifying climate-friendly private investment opportunities, among others. DFE plans to offer these or similar courses every year, so that both current and future students receive an opportunity to further integrate climate into their financial and economic studies.
The flagship course of the Duke Climate Commitment’s educational mission, UNIV 102: Let’s Talk About Climate Change, launched in Fall 2022 with support from the Duke Endowment’s $5 million gift. This course, which aims to alleviate students’ feelings of ecological distress and powerlessness, brought together two co-convenors (Emily Bernhardt, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor, and Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology), 12 Climate Change Faculty Fellows from a variety of disciplines, 14 graduate and professional student discussion leaders, and 150 undergraduate students for a weekly conversation. The first hour of each class was devoted to Drs. Bernhardt and Wirzba interviewing a Climate Change Faculty Fellow on the climate or sustainability topic of that faculty member’s choosing. This interview was followed by an hour of small-group discussions. In its inaugural offering, the class met its full enrollment of 150 students and was received very positively.
Now in its second offering this semester, 10 new Climate Change Faculty Fellows and 14 new graduate and professional student discussion leaders join a new cohort of 150 undergraduate students. Additionally, the course convenors hired a postdoctoral fellow for a three-year term to assist with course implementation. This postdoctoral fellow will also teach a climate- and sustainability-related course during Spring semesters, when UNIV 102 is not being taught. Funding for this postdoctoral fellow comes from an anonymous gift meant to advance Presidential strategic priorities for the university.
Meet the 2022 and 2023 UNIV 102 Climate Change Faculty Fellows.
Update: The educational goal of the climate commitment is to prepare all members of Duke University’s learning community with the competencies they need to engage thoughtfully in explorations about climate and sustainability.
Central to the mission of any university is the responsibility to educate and prepare its students for a meaningful and impactful life. The Duke Climate Commitment will educate the next generation of climate and sustainability leaders, instilling within them the knowledge, skills and abilities to become climate changemakers in their professional and personal lives. Our goal is to create an immersive environment that makes climate and sustainability learning an intrinsic part of the Duke experience. We will infuse climate and sustainability learning university-wide, activating every corner of campus life, in Durham, Beaufort and Kunshan. Duke students of all disciplines, majors and programs will recognize the connections of their careers to climate and sustainability and act as agents of change in their careers and in the world. Durable, just, sustainable climate solutions require input from practitioners across many different areas of expertise. Nurses, economists, lawyers, educators, policymakers, software developers, researchers, and doctors must be tapped for their unique perspectives and ideas. Pastors and pediatricians are just as critical to implementing just climate solutions as are policymakers, scientists and engineers. In the educational paradigm of the Duke Climate Commitment, all majors can connect to climate and sustainability; all careers can play a role in climate and sustainability solutions.
To define the framework for climate and sustainability fluency — knowledge, skills and abilities for all Duke students — a working group of faculty, staff and students from across the university convened in Fall 2022 and coalesced around (1) definitions for climate and sustainability and (2) a thematic outline of climate and sustainability knowledge that Duke students should have: science, society and solutions. The working group’s definitions of climate and sustainability and thematic outline are outlined below:
Climate is the average weather, including surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind, in a location over time.i Climate on Earth varies over time and space.
Sustainability is the balanced integration of systems (environmental, social, and economic) to meet the needs of the present for all living beings without compromising the needs of future generations of all living beings.ii,iii
- SCIENCE: What physically governs climate and drives climate change? Earth’s climate system is governed by the balance between net incoming sunlight and outgoing terrestrial radiation. Outgoing terrestrial radiation is affected by the composition of our atmosphere. Increased levels of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere cause an imbalance in the incoming and outgoing radiation, causing Earth’s surface temperature to rise and the climate to change. Life on Earth depends on, is shaped by, and affects climate. Observed changes in the climate system during the 20th and 21st centuries are overwhelmingly attributable to human activities. Among human activities, the largest driver of climate change is the emission of greenhouse gases — especially carbon dioxide — from burning fossil fuels, including coal, petroleum products, and natural gas. The rate of climate change is accelerating as the rate of fossil fuel consumption increases globally.
- SCIENCE: What are the impacts of climate change? Climate change affects multiple aspects of the Earth and biological systems, including human lives. Effects on these systems are compounded by the systems’ interconnections and feedbacks on one another. The vast majority of impacts bring greater damages than benefits, and damages are becoming increasingly severe as warming continues. Physical and biological impacts include sea level rise, more extreme weather, and mass extinctions and dramatic declines in species diversity. Impacts on humans include migration, diseases, conflict, and food and water scarcity. Without intervention from current emissions trajectories, these impacts will become catastrophic. Additionally, abrupt, irreversible, large-scale events called climate system tipping point crossings are already occurring and will continue to occur without intervention.
- SOCIETY: What are the socioeconomic drivers of climate change? Historical emissions have primarily been produced by wealthy, industrialized nations. Fossil fuel reliance in these countries has led to economic growth and increased quality of living (e.g., health outcomes, food security, mobility). As our technologies and knowledge of fossil fuels’ harms have advanced, industrialized countries have begun moving toward renewable energy (e.g., solar, wind, hydropower), but developing countries believe it is fair to rely on fossil fuels to increase their quality of living now.
- SOCIETY: What is climate justice? Climate change disproportionately affects groups from (1) historically marginalized communities within most countries and (2) less developed countries around the world. Within nations, the marginalization of these groups is the result of historic, systemic dynamics of power and oppression. Across nations, those suffering the greatest harm from climate change are typically those least responsible for the emissions driving that change. Without intervention, these communities will continue to be those most impacted by climate change.
- SOLUTIONS: What technological and physical strategies will combat climate change? Solutions for addressing climate change can broadly be categorized as strategies of adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation seeks to cope with the impacts of climate change and manage risks of climate change hazards. Mitigation seeks to reduce the impacts of climate change.iv To combat climate change, societies must dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This involves decarbonizing our energy usage, utilizing renewable energy sources, increasing energy efficiency, and capturing carbon through sequestration.
- SOLUTIONS: What sociocultural and behavioral changes will combat climate change? Behavioral solutions to climate change focus on informing consumers about how their decisions affect emissions. Individual actions and decisions affect the environment and can influence and contribute to broader cultural shifts. By rethinking and reimagining the narratives of how we live our lives, relate to and steward the natural world, and utilize natural resources, our individual actions can contribute to collective, community-based action and solutions on climate change.
The fundamental skills and abilities that students should learn to address climate challenges will vary from discipline to discipline; therefore, each of Duke’s ten schools will identify and build students’ climate- and sustainability-related skills and abilities as appropriate to their specific areas of expertise.
To begin identifying existing Duke courses that include climate and sustainability content and learnings, educational staff under the direction of Climate Commitment leadership collated lists of sustainability-related courses, prior to and during course registration for the Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters. These course lists have been linked from the Duke Climate Commitment’s website to provide students with a resource to help them identify climate and sustainability courses within their disciplines. Work is underway to create a more evergreen database of any courses within the Duke Course Catalog whose course description matches climate and sustainability topics, and updates about this database will be forthcoming when it is ready for student use.
iIPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Minterbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY, USA, 3056 pp., doi:10.1017/9781009325844.
iiRupprecht, C.D.D., et al. (2020). Multispecies sustainability. Global Sustainability 3, e34, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.28
iiiBrundtland, G.H. (1987). Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Geneva, United Nations General Assembly document A/42/427.
ivLaukkonen, J., et al. (2009). Combining climate change adaptation and mitigation measures at the local level. Habitat International 33, 287-292.