UNIV102

Let’s Talk About Climate Change

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

I’ve loved the breakout sessions; I feel very close with my small group, and I just feel like the format of the small group breakout discussions after the conversations has been very conducive to interdisciplinary learning,” 

Ali Thursland, a Trinity senior studying Computer Science. Duke today

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.
What it won’t be, is boring. Or easy.

“FACULTY FELLOWS AIM TO MAKE NEW UNIVERSITY COURSE ON CLIMATE CHANGE ‘A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE’ FOR STUDENTS,” Duke today

Climate change is not just an environmental problem or policy debate; it changes everything about how we live, how we organize our politics and economies, and how we interact with the natural and social worlds…By bringing together a diverse range of scholars and students, we have a unique opportunity to think deeply about the emerging realities of a climate changed world, and how to live well in it. This is an ideal environment to free us from denial and overwhelm, and to mobilize us to rise together to the climate challenge.

“‘Let’s talk about climate change’ returns for a second offering in fall 2023,” duke today

Faculty Participation