1) Of all places, what motivates you to undertake climate action work through Teachers College? What is significant about doing it here?

Both of us come from backgrounds in the sciences, and both of us recognize that science communication is extremely important in this fight against climate change. As co-presidents of Sustainability Task Force (STF) and Co-Managers of the Youth at the Center (YATC) program, we see the value in climate action from multiple vantage points. We feel that education is particularly important in that we need to prepare this current and next generation for the present crisis and the challenges it poses ahead. Climate change is here now and is an issue that will drastically affect the youth of today, no matter what path they take. We feel a responsibility to prepare them for that. 

2) Climate action work requires an interdisciplinary approach to address our world's most urgent challenge. Can you describe the advantages of working with students from different departments?

In the Fall 2021 semester, we took an Education for Sustainable Development course with Dr. Pizmony-Levy; most of our action at STF grew out of working with our classmates from this class. We looked at climate change education from indigenous, social science, and pure science perspectives, and how climate change education is being addressed in New York City public schools. These class discussions sparked conversations around how we can rethink climate action at TC, and these conversations spilled over into our work at STF. We started to think about the main ways we can build a more sustainable TC: divestment from fossil fuels and private prisons, emphasize climate change and sustainability in all TC coursework, and invest in green infrastructure on our campus. We built a petition around these three demands, and got close to 700 signatures from students, faculty, and staff in two weeks.

Our group of classmates from this course working on STF climate action represents a diversity of departments at TC, and the broader Columbia University ecosystem. This gave us a unique advantage for spreading the message of our petition to people throughout the college. It also allowed us to think about the interdisciplinary nature of climate action, and how this mission spans education, psychology, and health. 

3) You have recently had to interact with Teachers College administration on some high-level climate-related issues. Can you describe this, and explain what kind of preparation was involved?

Interdisciplinary teamwork and coalition building! We have probably made over ten variations on presentations at this point for various audiences to communicate our action to different groups in ways that make our message more palatable to them. In the end, we all want the same thing at TC: a more sustainable, equitable, and healthier future for the world. It’s all about communicating in a language that people relate to. For example - in our meeting with the President Bailey and Provost Rowley, we needed to stress that climate change is an issue that transcends TC’s core subjects: health, education and psychology. Doing the research to help people understand the ways that climate change affects them is huge in our work.

4) What are STF's next steps for climate action at Teachers College? How do they connect with STF's long-term aspirations?

We are excited to continue pushing for our petition demands this semester with the entire TC community behind us. We want to engage all students in conversations around climate change and sustainability through campus events. We also want to continue to interface with faculty and discuss the creation of an interdepartmental working group on climate change, which is the first step of our petition demands. We took a massive step forward in creating this working group last week when we presented our petition demands to faculty members at their all hands meeting. Out of this meeting we gained interested faculty members that are willing to work with us on our efforts to create an interdepartmental working group on climate change. 

5) Speaking of aspirations, what is your vision for wider engagement in climate action? Specifically, what can students, faculty, and staff do to get more involved with STF?

Transdisciplinary action for solutioning climate change across all disciplines at Columbia. Again, it’s really important to stress that climate change is an issue that requires transdisciplinary action.

Students can get involved with STF and ask questions to their professors about how climate change will impact their chosen profession (we promise, it will!). Additionally, students, faculty, and staff can attend TC’s Climate Teach-in, happening March 31st. Faculty can also reach out to STF leadership and Dr. Pizmony-Levy on ways to integrate climate change into their lesson plans, or join the forthcoming interdepartmental working group on climate change. Lastly, everyone can sign our petition demanding climate action at TC. Many of our demands are being negotiated, but we are still looking for administrators to act on our divestment campaign.