The Center For Sustainable Futures engages TC students working on climate change from research, action, and student organization perspectives. Two initiatives associated with the Center that we are part of are Youth At The Center (YATC) and the Sustainability Task Force (STF). We created the YATC program in Fall 2020 as part of the Arthur Zankel Fellowship. The purpose of the initiative is to ensure all youth, regardless of background, have the opportunity to engage with one of the most pressing issues of our time: climate change. To realize this purpose, we partner with New York City youth climate activists to empower, support, and amplify their activities. We have also been thinking about how to grow a more sustainable culture here at TC through the STF, a student organization we run on campus.
Back in January we received an email about the Columbia Student Climate Symposium; this virtual event, facilitated by the Columbia Business School's Green Business Club and Columbia Climate School, was open to all student across Columbia University and had two main objectives: “promote interdisciplinary, University-wide collaboration around climate change research and solutions; gather feedback from students on how best to facilitate and connect student research related to climate across the University.” We were thrilled to hear about an event that wanted to facilitate this form of collaboration, and we immediately registered as student presenters. Our work at YATC and STF calls for more open lines of collaboration on issues of climate and sustainability within TC and the larger Columbia ecosystem. This was finally an opportunity to bring our work to students outside our networks and learn about how to work with other members of the Columbia community.
This event had an impressive turnout: there were close to 100 student, faculty, and staff attendees and 17 student presentations from undergraduate and graduate researchers. Attendees represented nine schools at Columbia: Teachers College, Business School, Climate School, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia College, Barnard College, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, GSAS, and SEAS. Student presentations fell into one of eight areas of research relating to climate change: circular economy, education and civic engagement, carbon pricing and direct air capture, pollution and waste, climate and the consumer, energy, and climate data and data visualization. This two hour event started with a brief presentation from the Columbia Climate School about their future plans, and the importance of cross-university collaboration on climate change. The facilitators then opened eight breakout rooms, one room for each research area for people to go into. We went into the “education and civic engagement” breakout room to give our presentations, and remained in this room for the duration of the event.
There were three presentations in the ‘education and civic engagement’ breakout room. Erika Kessler, a doctoral candidate in the International and Comparative Education Program, presented her dissertation work on youth activism and climate change. Christina Torres and Lyndsay Gehring, respectively, a doctoral candidate in the Science Education Program and MA student in the International Education Development Program, presented on YATC programming. Additionally, Rendabel “Abel” Radian, an undergraduate student at Columbia College, presented on the effects of climate change on the homeless population in New York City.
Those that attended our presentations were gracious and interested in our work. They commented on the passion that we had for our kids in addition to the importance of engaging the next generation in the most pressing existential issue of our time. There were a few, who attend colleges outside of TC, that reached out to collaborate with the YATC Program or offered resources for our kids to utilize. This gave us hope for the transdisciplinary collaboration that is so important in the fight against climate change.
However, while those that attended our presentations were engaged with our programming, it is worth noting that the ‘education and civic engagement’ breakout session was the least populated room in the symposium. This, to us, begs the questions, how do we stress the importance of education, and transdisciplinary collaboration, in the fight against climate change? And how do we create spaces where climate crisis solutioning does not happen in a discipline dependent vacuum? The entirety of the climate crisis does not fall on the shoulders of scientists and science educators. Climate justice transcends education, sociology, and urban planning; climate anxiety reaches educators and psychologists; and climate health affects both climate scientists and medical professionals. Climate change knows no disciplinary boundaries, and education is not an exception.
What we hope to see next is to build on the progress that has been made. We would love to integrate presentations in symposiums like these rather than silo them into different disciplines. We want to hear about what other students, faculty, and staff are working on in their own classrooms, in their own schools, outside of Teachers College. We would love to see a symposium that is a mixed bag of academics and practitioners gleaning advice and vantage points from each other. We feel that the future of climate action is transdisciplinary collaboration: how can we make it clear that education is a part of the solution of the climate crisis?