At 16 years old, Katya Kondragunta has already experienced two disasters made worse by climate change. First came 2020 California wildfires. Ash and smoke forced his family to stay inside their home in the Bay Area city of Fremont for weeks.
They later moved to Prosper, Texas, where she treated record heat last summer.
“We had horrible heatwaves and they impacted my everyday life,” the high school student said. “I’m running cross country…I must go out and run every day to get my mileage.”
Kondragunta says he didn’t learn at school how climate change is intensifying these events and hopes that will change when he gets to college.
Increasingly, U.S. colleges are creating climate change programs to meet demand from students who want to apply their firsthand experience to what they do after high school and help find solutions.
“Many centers and departments have changed names or been created around these climate issues, in part because they think it will attract students and faculty,” said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona. It was launched a decade ago and connects several school climate programs in Tucson.
Other pioneers who have created programs, majors, minors, and certificates dedicated to climate change include the university of washington, Yale University, Utah State UniversityO University of Montana,Northern Vermont University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Columbia, the private university in New York City, opened its Climate School in 2020 with postgraduate degrees in climate and society, and has related degree programs underway.
In just the last 4 years, the public Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, Iowa StateNashville Ivy League Vanderbilt, Stanford UniversityO Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others began climate-related studies. Hampton University, a private, historically black university in Virginia, is building one nowand the University of Texas at Austin will offer theirs this fall.
The fact that climate change is affecting more people is a factor. The Biden administration Inflation Reduction Actthe largest climate investment in US history, in addition to growth in climate-focused jobs, interest is also increasing, experts say.
In these programs, students learn how the atmosphere is changing as a result of the burning of coal, oil and gas, along with how cultures will change as the planet warms and the role of renewable energy in reducing fuel use. fossils.
They delve into how to communicate about climate with the public, the ethical and environmental justice aspects of climate solutions, and the roles that policymakers and businesses play in reducing greenhouse gases.
Students also cover disaster response and ways communities can prepare and adapt before climate change worsens. Offers require teachers of biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences, among others.
“It’s not just about ‘oh yeah, climate, global warming, environmental issues,’” said Lydia Conger, a senior who enrolled at Utah State University specifically for her climate science studies.
“It has these interesting technical parts in math and physics, but it also has this element of geology,” she said, “and oceanography and ecology.”
When higher education institutions organize their programs, they often draw on existing studies of meteorology and atmospheric sciences. Some house climate in sustainability or environmental science departments. But climate programs need to go beyond that to satisfy some incoming students.
In Kennebunk, Maine, high school student Will Eagleson experienced storms that caused coastal destruction. Sea levels are rising in your hometown. As the 17-year-old considers college, he said, to get his attention, schools should “constrain themselves from environmental sciences and Earth science as a whole, to programs more focused on climate change.”
For Lucia Everist, a senior at Edina High School in Minnesota who is frustrated with her own lack of climate education so far, schools need to delve deeper into the human impact of climate change. She cited the disproportionate impact on Black, Latino, Indigenous and low-income neighborhoods.
“I did a lot of research into the curriculum itself,” the 18-year-old said of her college search. Everywhere she applied, “I made sure there was both the social aspect and the scientific aspect.”
Climate students need to learn everything from health care to how to store clean solar and wind energy, said Megan Latshaw, who directs Johns Hopkins University’s master’s programs in the Environmental Health and Engineering department. The school has graduate degrees in energy and climate policy, and also offers two certificates that include the term climate change.
“It’s the floods. These are heat waves. These are forest fires. It is the air pollution generated when we burn fossil fuels. It’s allergies. It’s water scarcity and people may have to flee to where they’ve lived all their lives,” Latshaw said. She noted that the university intends to integrate climate change into its schools of public health, engineering, education, medicine, nursing and more.
Another factor may be that many colleges across the country face refusal of registration and less public funding, leading them to market new degrees to stay relevant.
Many small, private colleges have I had to turn it off in the last decade, with fewer students completing high school and more opting for career-oriented training. The same pressures are affecting large public university systems, which have cut academic programs and faculty to fill gaps in budgets.
“There is definitely a part of academia that is simply responding to consumer demand,” said John Knox, undergraduate coordinator of the Atmospheric Sciences program at the University of Georgia, who is considering whether the school should offer a climate certificate. “Ultimately, I’m more concerned about the success of our students than marketing something to someone.”
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Associated Press news editor Michael Melia in Connecticut contributed to this story.
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Alexa St. John is a climate solutions reporter for the Associated Press. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Contact her at ast.john@ap.org.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and areas of coverage funded in AP.org.
