Left: Climate Futures: Re-Imagining Global Climate Justice, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya A. Kurian, Debashish Munshi.
Center: Human Flow, by Ai Weiwei
Right: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Let’s Talk About Climate Change
Fall 2023
Mondays 5-7:30 p.m.
French Science 2231
EI, STS, NS
Catered Dinner
Students who enroll in Let’s Talk About Climate Change! will have the opportunity to engage in robust and far-ranging discussions about climate change—and potential solutions to it—with 10 faculty scholars representing fields from energy policy to environmental justice and geology to global health.
The course will begin with an overview of how Earth’s climate has changed since the Industrial Revolution and what experts predict will happen over the next century. Each week after that, a different Climate Change Faculty Fellow will help lead an hour-long class discussion investigating climate change from a different perspective—from the role language plays in policy making to how social psychologists are working to give us smarter ways to calculate and reduce our carbon footprints. Students and faculty will continue their talk over a catered dinner and in small breakout groups after dinner.
Our goal is to expose students to thought-provoking possibilities about our path forward and help them explore how they can use their talents and voices to bring about positive change and help forge a more sustainable and equitable future for us all.
In the News
A few months ago, a biogeochemist and a theologian took a walk in Duke Gardens to talk about climate change. By the end of the walk, the two had created the framework for a new university course that will draw upon expertise from across Duke’s schools to build climate literacy among students and give them the hope and the ability to take action.
“Let’s Talk About Climate Change: Conversations to Build Climate Literacy Among Students,” Duke today
The prompt, which students will be a given a week in advance, could be a Nobel Laureate’s paper on the economic consequences of climate change, a Potawatomi scholar’s essay on global warming’s impacts on Indigenous communities, or a marketing assignment to use psychology to create a clearer and more informative way to label the carbon footprint of food. It could even be an artwork or musical composition.
“FACULTY FELLOWS AIM TO MAKE NEW UNIVERSITY COURSE ON CLIMATE CHANGE ‘A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE’ FOR STUDENTS,” Duke today
What it won’t be, is boring. Or easy.
Faculty Participation
Dr. Emily Bernhardt and Dr. Norman Wirzba are the lead instructors for UNIV 102: Let’s Talk About Climate Change. Twelve additional scholars, the Climate Change Faculty Fellows, will participate in the course. Additional opportunities for faculty to engage with the course are also available.
