Syracuse University and Le Moyne College Select 2015 Faculty Sustainability Fellows

The 2015 Faculty Sustainability Fellows will gather for a series of learning opportunities and discussions this fall concentrating on the connections between climate change and social justice.

Sherburne Abbott, vice president for sustainability initiatives at Syracuse University, and Steven Affeldt, director of the McDevitt Center at Le Moyne College, have announced the 2015 Faculty Sustainability Fellows. The fellows from each institution will gather for a series of learning opportunities and discussions this fall, concentrating on the connections between climate change and social justice. It will be an opportunity for faculty from a wide variety of disciplines to share their perspectives and brainstorm collectively about how to bring these issues into classroom lessons and student research.

The 2015 Faculty Sustainability Fellows are:

• Kishi Animashaun Ducre, African-American studies (College of Arts & Sciences), who will use the fellowship to enhance her course on Hurricane Katrina and to develop opportunities for students to study climate change and climate justice campaigns on the Gulf Coast;
• Adelmo Dunghe and Gwendolyn Morgan, communication, film  and religious studies (Le Moyne Arts and Sciences, shared award), to expand a course on “Eco Theology and World Cinema”;
• Doug Frank, biology (College of Arts & Sciences), to incorporate into his course on the biophysical impacts of climate change an understanding of its social and ethical implications;
• James Hannan, English (Le Moyne Arts and Sciences), for developing an interdisciplinary upper-division Core course on “Climate Culture”;
• Evan Weissman, food studies (Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics), to develop a course on “Climate Change and the Food System”;
• Ronald Wright, business administration (Le Moyne Madden School of Business), to develop a new case for an upper-level class, focusing on the decision-making process of an electric utility in response to environmental legislation.

2015 Faculty Sustainability Fellows, from left: Adelmo Dunghe, Gwendolyn Morgan, Doug Frank, Jim Hannan, Kishi Ducre and Evan Weissman. Not pictured: Ronald Wright.

Each fellow will receive a small stipend and the opportunity to apply for some additional funding to advance a teaching project. All fellows will attend three events this fall: a roundtable at Le Moyne devoted to Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate that was issued over the summer; a lecture at Le Moyne by renowned climate scientist Michael Mann and the University Lecture at the University by Naomi Klein, author of “This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate” (2014).

This is the first time either Syracuse Univeristy or Le Moyne has offered such fellowships, and the first collaboration on sustainability education between the two schools. “The current semester offered an exceptional opportunity for such collaboration, bracketed as it is by Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si’,” issued over the summer, his September visit to the United States and Congressional address, as well as the global climate talks slated to begin in Paris at the end of November.” says Donald McCrimmon, McDevitt Research Associate at Le Moyne. “We were delighted with the response to the call for applications, which fielded six applications from six different disciplines, and the opportunity for LMC faculty to share ideas and actions with colleagues at SU.”

“It has been gratifying to see the breadth of faculty interest in global environmental change and social justice,” says Rachel May, coordinator of sustainability education in the Office of Sustainability Initiatives at SU. “We heard from professors from 13 departments and eight different schools and colleges. All these people have courses and projects that relate to our themes, they have great ideas for pedagogy and student engagement, and they want to meet and work with colleagues across the university and across town at Le Moyne. We couldn’t give them all fellowships, but we certainly plan to bring them together and promote collaborations on the essentially interdisciplinary issue of how climate change affects us all.”