The 2025–26 academic year brought a series of recognitions across the Center for Sustainable Futures community, highlighting work in sustainability education, civic engagement, climate justice, and youth activism. This year’s awardees included Neil Potnis, recipient of the ITS Summer Research Grant from the Department of International and Transcultural Studies; Darren Rabinowitz, recipient of the 2026 Emerging Scholar Award from the Center for Sustainable Futures; Renda Sun, recipient of the Community Impact Award; and Christina Torres, recipient of the Matilda Levy Paper Award on Environmental Sustainability. Together, their work reflects the interdisciplinary and public-facing research shaping the Center’s growing community of scholars and practitioners.

Neil Potnis

Neil Potnis was selected as a recipient of the ITS Summer Research Grant from the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University for his dissertation pilot study. His research examines youth climate activist organizations as sites of informal civic learning, exploring how political knowledge and climate engagement are produced across different levels of organizational participation. As a Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate at the Center for Sustainable Futures, Potnis contributes to the Center’s research and communications initiatives across sustainability education projects. His work draws on ethnographic observation, qualitative interviewing, and mixed methods research to study how political participation shapes civic understanding within international contexts. His research has been presented at major conferences including the Comparative and International Education Society, American Educational Research Association, and has published participatory and civic education work in the Association for Computing Machinery and International Journal of Interaction Design & Architecture(s).

Darren Rabinowitz

Darren Rabinowitz received the 2026 Emerging Scholar Award from the Center for Sustainable Futures in recognition of his contributions to sustainability education research, environmental education, and civic engagement. Selected unanimously by the committee, the award highlighted the impact of Rabinowitz’s dissertation research examining the relationship between Environmental Provisions in Constitutions (EPICs) and student environmental education and civic outcomes across 22 countries. Combining comparative quantitative analysis with interviews, document analysis, and case study research in Norway, his work explored how constitutional environmental rights shape educational policy, public norms, and youth climate activism over time. By tracing how environmental values move through institutions, policy, and social movements, Rabinowitz’s research offers a broader understanding of how constitutional frameworks can influence climate education and civic participation.

Renda Sun

Renda Sun received the Community Impact Award from the Center for Sustainable Futures in recognition of his contributions to sustainability education research and student community engagement at Teachers College, Columbia University. As a Research Associate at the Center, Sun’s work focuses on climate change education, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and the role of generative AI in education and global governance, with particular attention to how teachers and students engage climate change through approaches that connect scientific understanding, emotional engagement, and meaningful action. His research has been presented at major conferences including the Comparative and International Education Society, American Educational Research Association, and North American Association for Environmental Education. Beyond his research, Sun has played an active role in strengthening student life and collaboration across the college through his leadership as Vice President of the Teachers College Chinese Students Association and as a former student senator representing the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology.

Christina Torres

Receiving the Matilda Levy Paper Award on Environmental Sustainability, Christina Torres was recognized for her dissertation, Bridging Science and Activism: Investigating the Intersection of Science Education and the Youth-Led Climate Movement. The award honors the best paper by a current Teachers College, Columbia University student exploring the intersection of environmental sustainability with education, psychology, or health. Torres’s research examines what science education can learn from youth climate activists in New York City. Her dissertation explores how identity shapes the forms of climate action young people pursue and how youth come to understand climate change through multiple ways of knowing. Rather than framing participation only as civic engagement, the study positions youth activism as a formative process through which young people become particular kinds of climate knowers and actors. By centering youth climate activists as knowledge builders, the work offers a more action-oriented and justice-centered approach to climate change education across schools, communities, and youth programs.