Harvard Alumni - Class of 1961

News for Alumni Who Wish to Help Harvard’s New Climate and Sustainability Project – October 19, 2022

Authors Sam Hopkins and Spencer Jourdain, Editor Henry Godfrey

Dear Classmates,

Please see the very special Newsletter below.  

Here at last is the long awaited information regarding how we can respond to VP Stock’s call for Harvard University alumni to engage with and support Harvard’s Climate and Sustainability Education initiative that he described to us at our 60^th Reunion.  

Here is a link to the September report, The Future of Climate Change at Harvard University.  https://www.harvard.edu/climate-and-sustainability/climate-education/

Please call or email us with any comments or questions.
Best wishes, 

The main body of the report is 31 pages, and there is an Executive Summary.  Most importantly, look at page 12 and see the weight the report gives to engaging us alumni in this Climate Change and Sustainability project.  

…Alumni are critical to shaping the future of climate education and research
at Harvard, whether as donors, practitioners, mentors, and more Excellence
in climate change education requires both cultivating students’ expertise in
their disciplines and connecting students and alumni across disciplines and 
generations to learn how to drive more effective and urgent climate action together….

Then, download the pdf of the 84-page Online Appendix to the report  and look at it.  You reach it by using the above link to the full report.

Most of the report’s recommendations are, of course, for students and faculty.  These are presented for various subdivisions of Harvard, including Schools, Departments, areas of study, and more.  The Table of Contents of the Appendix lists all these ways of subdividing the work and findings of the Harvard Climate and Sustainability Committee’s Report and its recommended implementation process.

But in some of these report sections, there are very specific suggestions for how we as alumni can help.  To save you time finding at least most of these suggestions (we may have missed a few), we have put them in an Addendum to this newsletter.  This Addendum presents excerpts from the 84 page Appendix with page numbers, so that you can quickly find the full text.  And we highlight the word “alumni” in red wherever it appears in these excerpts. We also highlight in red references to persons outside Harvard that can also be interpreted as invitations to alumni.

We have included the names of the authors of each subdivision of the report in the excerpts.  You can then simply contact these authors to ask for their help in your joining the alumni activity they describe or at least recommend. You should be able to find author contact information on the Harvard website.

We have also included the title of each subdivision in the Table of Contents in our Addendum, even if the report for it does not mention “alumni.”

The subdivision report that is most full of suggestions for alumni involvement begins on page 76.  It is entitled “Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment SIG (HACE).”  We give most of the text from this section on page 10 of this newsletter below.  Spencer is an advisory member of HACE and urges you to join.  Here’s the link to info about HACE on the Harvard website.  You can use it to become a member and register to attend the Annual Meeting on Nov. 5.  https://www.harvardclimate.com/ 

One example of the offerings of HACE is a very substantive five-part online course, “Harvard Climate Action Training,” that startes October 21, 2022.  For more information, contact the Harvard Alumni Association right away or use the link below to "pre-register" for the course https://harvardclimatetraining.org/

Spencer also urges you to join with him in creating interdisciplinary education that includes disadvantaged students and communities across the spectrum of Harvard’s new climate and sustainability courses.  This goal is emphasized by Harvard’s President Bacow and Vice Provost Stock, numerous members on the Climate and Sustainability Committee, and HACE.

Spencer has spent the last 33 years since the Brundtland Report pioneering the creation and implementation of interdisciplinary, experiential, and multiculturally inclusive, Education for a Sustainable World/Future, modules connecting all levels of education (including graduate studies) with “real world” operating initiatives that apply academic course learning to actual creation of sustainable local and global solutions.

 Spencer spoke to our class about these in his Pre-Reunion event Zoom presentation on May 8, 2021.  It was entitled “Can We Achieve a Sustainable Future?” Ask Sam Hopkins (410-935-8540) or the alumni office for a link to the Zoom recording of this two-hour May 8th event.  

Addendum to Newsletter

Excerpts from Committee on Climate Education Sub-Committee Report

[page numbers in full 84 page “Online Appendix” to the 31 page Report]

PAGE 6. 

Harvard Business School Authors: Bharat Anand, Shawn Cole, Forest Reinhart, Gunnar Trumbull, Lynn Schenk

PAGE 7.

Student and Alumni Engagement 

●   100+ Student Alumni Connections through mentorship programs, annually

●   50+ Alumni actively participating as webinar, conference, or career panelists, or as case protagonists or class guests on climate- related topics.

●   8,000+ Alumni reached through BEI blog, newsletter and/or LinkedIn and alumni programming. While the numbers reached are large, given the complexity and magnitude of the climate problem, the School…

PAGE 11.

Harvard Chan School of Public Health Authors: Erin Driver-Linn, James K. Hammitt

PAGE 13.

Work with our Career and Professional Development and Alumni offices to develop networking and mentoring opportunities

PAGE 14.

Harvard Graduate School of Design  Authors: Jerold S. Kayden, Amanda McMahan
Background

This memorandum is based on multiple group and individual meetings with Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty members, students, and staff, results from a survey questionnaire, and solicitation of some alumni opinion.  

Broadly speaking, the meetings functioned as brain-storming sessions without any attempt to achieve consensus. The memorandum incorporates a wide variety of comments and suggestions that emerged from the meetings.  

PAGE 18.

4. The GSD should arrange funding for summer internships that would permit students to test course-generated ideas in the field. This may be understood in part as an extension of the GSD’s wide array of so-called “sponsored studios,” where various entities with site-specific problems and opportunities provide funding for students to develop creative design and planning solutions. It may be interesting to think about internships as taking the next step with regard to ideation and implementation.  

5. The GSD needs more faculty in the climate space. A cluster hire that produces candidates with diverse disciplinary and field approaches makes sense.  

PAGE 19.

9. The GSD should propose the creation of a university-wide Consortium composed of individuals from business, civic organizations, construction, government, technology, science, public health, and other allied professions to meet regularly and cross-fertilize with the latest thinking on climate responses. Indeed, Harvard’s immense convening power makes the possibility of a pivotal annual meeting, coupled with multiple smaller group offshoots, more than a pipe dream.  Were the Consortium to take root, it could ultimately spawn university-enterprise-government-civic collaborations in research and practice that would serve as a launching pad for translational pipelines running from basic research to application and vice versa. With growing demands to measure investments and operations against Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics, the Consortium could become a truth-seeking forum for evaluating efforts in the climate sense. There is this sense that academia is behind industry or that industry is behind academia.  Depending on the subject matter, both can be true. As one of potential co-creators and sponsors of the Consortium, the GSD can leverage the Center for Green Buildings and Cities, the Joint Center for Housing Studies with its unparalleled relationships with housing providers, and the Master in Real Estate and Master in Design Engineering programs with their connections to enterprise activities

PAGE 19.

Harvard Graduate School of Education  Author: Fernando M. Reimers

PAGE 20.

… as the recent gift of 1.1 billion dollars to Stanford’s newly established Doerr School of Sustainability, the first school established at that university in 70 years tasked with the bold mandate to accelerate solutions to the global climate crisis.

PAGE 24.

The single most transformational action to create capacity in the schools to address climate change would be to make faculty lines available to schools and departments to enable hiring faculty dedicated to the study of the implications of climate change in the areas addressed in each school, and the ways in which the fields of study within that particular school, and the professionals prepared there, can contribute to adapt to, mitigate and revert climate change. These individuals will form the core of a group, across the university, which will lead Harvard’s efforts to advance knowledge and teaching in this area.  This approach to infusing our climate change efforts broadly across our existing curriculum, building an ‘invisible college’ of climate focused faculty with appointments in all schools, might have
greater impact, over time, than Stanford’s approach of creating a separate school focused on climate, which entails the risk of becoming a silo within the larger institutional structure.  

PAGE 25.

In addition to developing public goods to support climate change education as those described above, we could support members of our alumni network who are involved in the design of social innovations that address climate change. For example, we could fund summer fellowships for students working on projects focused on climate change. We could also identify Harvard alumni working on climate change efforts and provide them visibility and support them in scaling those efforts.

PAGE 30.

FAS - Division of Continuing Education  Author: Lindi von Mutius

We are now challenged to increase innovation and address the following gaps in our programs’ climate curriculum:

●   Climate change education tailored specifically to certain professions, and in collaboration with, professional organizations or corporations

●   Professional development modules that are shorter and more flexible than regular courses

●   Hiring instructors with a more diverse set of backgrounds, identities, and geographic locations

PAGE 31.

In, there are opportunities beyond our programs to innovate and collaborate:
     ●   Internship and skill-building opportunities for younger students seeking work experience…

     ●   Connecting our events to those occurring in the wider Harvard community, and giving our students a sense of belonging to a larger Harvard community of learners.

PAGE 35.

FAS - Arts & Humanities and Harvard Divinity School  Authors: Sarah Dimick, Janet Gyatso, Ian Miller, Karen Thornber

Current State of Play

Despite tremendous enthusiasm for climate education in the Arts & Humanities at Harvard, current course offerings and initiatives remain both scarce and uncoordinated. …

PAGE 36.  

Beyond the classroom, The Environment Forum, co-organized by Robin Kelsey and Sarah Dimick through the Mahindra Center for the Humanities, serves as the primary conduit for guest speakers in the environmental arts and humanities. This initiative needs increased funding to support more than the current schedule of three talks per academic year. A regular schedule (for example, the third Thursday of the month) would enable the Forum’s audience to cohere into a community of environmental arts and humanities thinkers on campus.

PAGE 41.  FAS - Science/John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences  Authors: Missy Holbrook, Rebecca Nesson, Dan Schrag, Steve Wofsy, Elsie Sunderland

Climate change has been a core focus of research and education for many science and engineering faculty at Harvard since the 1970s. …

PAGE 44.

FAS - Social Science  Authors: Jason Beckfield, Janet Browne, and Dustin Tingley

This memo summarizes ideas about how social scientists currently contribute to climate education at Harvard, and how those contributions might develop alongside Harvard’s new climate change initiative. In preparing this memo, we spoke to faculty, students, staff and alumni via 1:1 meetings and listening sessions. The social sciences cover a broad range of perspectives and needs, and we undoubtedly omitted insights. Economics was covered by a separate group as part of the committee’s efforts.

PAGE 46.  

Potential Long-Term Opportunities

Community partnerships

Harvard faculty and students come from almost everywhere, including places that are already experiencing fatal extreme weather events linked to climate change or are struggling with policy and environment induced transitions. 
Harvard faculty and students also study nearly everywhere. And Harvard alumni, with deep expertise and connections, live all over the world. Those social and intellectual ties present opportunities to form deeper partnerships with communities and organizations far from 02138, but such partnerships need to be real relationships that develop and deepen over time with sustained and serious investment.

PAGE 48.  

Implementation and Barriers

The number one barrier we heard about in our conversations is that Harvard lacks a critical mass of faculty to create a coherent social science curriculum on climate change, and to offer advising to undergraduate and graduate students.  
This is reflected in the minimal course offerings in this space. Across the whole division in AY 2019-2020, the last pre-COVID set of course offerings, we had only 8 courses centrally about climate change, and no clear progression or thematic structure. Government had 1, and Sociology had 0, for instance. And where they exist, there is no clear progression or thematic structure even with Departments. Further, the few faculty working in this area are overwhelmed with requests from students across the College, GSAS, and the professional schools to meet and discuss their interests.
Several faculty said they would be interested in doing more in this space, but that they felt like they as scholars know too little about the general subject area to be effective. This is an important consideration because, for example, Harvard should avoid the “101 problem” (Dean Claybaugh interview, spring 2022) where students take multiple courses that all have similar “101 level” introductions to climate issues.  

PAGE 49.  

University-wide Economics  Authors: Robert N. Stavins, Robert Stowe 

PAGE 54.  

Harvard Kennedy School Authors: Suzanne Cooper, Daniel P. Shrag

PAGE 57.  

Longer-Term Opportunities

Climate-based field learning experiences – See above, but significant expansion would take a lot of resources. Field-based courses are very faculty-intensive, to create the learning experience and cultivate the relationships with the client organizations. HKS has several very good models and we would be happy to share what we know about field-based learning in general if helpful. The greatest constraint to expansion of field experiences for students is faculty time to cultivate relationships with external entities and craft meaningful learning experiences. Unlike internships, field-based courses have learning goals and curriculum designed with the field experiences as a critical component of achieving those learning goals. That said, perhaps with University resources to cultivate the clients, faculty could include climate-relevant clients in existing field-based courses with broader learning goals. HKS alumni, as well as alumni from other parts of the University might be clients for field learning, enhancing the connection between current and former students. 

PAGE 58.

Harvard Law School Authors: Catherine Claypoole, Richard Lazarus

PAGE 63.

Harvard Medical School Authors: Gaurab Basu, MD, MPH and Caren Solomon, MD, MPH

PAGE 67.

Harvard College Writing Program  Authors: Karen Heath, Thomas R. Jehn

Making Persuasive Arguments About the Climate Crisis: 
A Role for the Harvard College Writing Program in Undergraduate Climate Education 

PAGE 72.

Harvard Forest  Author: Clarisse Hart, Harvard Forest Director of Education and Outreach 

PAGE 74.

Harvard Office for Sustainability  Author: David Havelick 

PAGE 75.

Co-Curricular and Extra-Curricular Learning. Twenty years ago, we launched one of the first-ever peer-to-peer sustainability education programs, called the Resource Efficiency Program, which trains student employees to become sustainability change agents.  We also manage the Council of Student Sustainability Leaders, which allows students from across Harvard’s 12 Schools to work together on projects and inform the priorities and work of our office.  One of the students from the Council helped launch the Climate Leaders Program for Professional Students at Harvard, in collaboration with the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE).

We have two funds that support sustainability projects, including the Student Sustainability Grant Program and the Campus Sustainability Innovation Fund. With funding from the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, we hosted a workshop for staff who work with students on these types of sustainability projects, called We Are All Educators, which helped staff become more effective educators when working with students.  We also supported the new Harvard Alumni for Climate and Environment (HACE) Shared Interest Group (SIG) with their Climate Boot Camp that they launched in 2021 for alumni, together with Climate Reality Project.  

PAGE 76.

Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment SIG
Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment SIG Management Committee

Executive Summary

Climate education at Harvard does not end at commencement – climate education extends into the Harvard alumni experience. The Harvard alumni ecosystem fostered by the Harvard Alumni Association, Schools, and other Harvard community organizations drives climate education beyond Harvard undergraduate and graduate degrees.  

By 2025, Harvard will have established a new system of climate initiatives, embodying the principles of interdisciplinary work and external partners. Harvard will have core climate competencies and literacy standards interweaving technical and social disciplines. Climate justice will be a fundamental element of climate education. Harvard will offer 1) enhanced climate education and career support services, 2) increased resourcing for Harvard-wide climate education initiatives, and 3) introduced new Harvard faculty climate education programs and courses. Harvard alumni will be fundamental to co-creating this climate education ecosystem.

By 2030, Harvard climate education will be interdisciplinary and intergenerational. Harvard will be positioned as a leader in global climate education. Climate education will address systems-level change, knowledge-action linkages, and intergenerational well-being. There will be clear professional services and pathways for students to enter a climate job regardless of the field of study because each student will have a core climate education as a part of their Harvard citizenship learnings.  

I. Alumni Community Current State of Play 

Climate education in the Harvard alumni community has been experimental, creative, emergent, and responsive to community needs due to underinvestment in climate education. Nonetheless, climate education has grown more robust in the alumni community over the past decade, especially with the surge in climate interest and resourcing in the past few years. For example, alumni could become a student again and enroll in HarvardX courses like Health Effects on Climate Change or attend a climate session during their Reunion programming. Professionals could take the new HKS Executive Education program on climate and energy or submit a venture for the Harvard iLab and Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment’s Climate Entrepreneurship Circle. Alumni could use the Office for Sustainable digital Alumni Guide or attend a virtual event through a Harvard Club. These engagements complement professional and personal efforts based in non-Harvard affiliated communities or organizations that deepen alumni climate education.  

Climate organizing efforts have served as a fundamental core of Harvard climate education in the alumni community. Over the past decade, the Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard campaign raised awareness about climate change (and Harvard’s contribution to the climate crisis) among the alumni community and served as an ongoing educational opportunity for alumni to learn about climate change and climate action. These efforts used in-person and digital organizing tactics like seminars, webinars, petitions, background documents, forums, sit-ins, and protests to embed climate education across disciplines, schools, and graduation years. Similarly, the Harvard Forward campaign harnessed alumni interest in climate action during the Board of Overseers elections and offered workshops, digital resources, and electoral action options for alumni to re-engage with Harvard on climate education. These campaign methods used experiential and applied learning methods to provide Harvard alumni with practical climate skill development and education while activating their Harvard identity.  

The Harvard Alumni Association's shared interest groups serve as another method of climate education in the alumni community. Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment SIG (HACE), Harvard Alumni Disaster Preparedness and Response Team, Harvard Alumni for Agriculture, and Harvard Alumni for Fashion, Luxury, and Retail, Harvard Alumni in IMPACT, among other SIGs, create educational programs and events for the Harvard community. These SIGs collaborate with Harvard Centers, Harvard Clubs, School-Based Alumni Networks, and student groups to host in-person and virtual seminars, workshops, and conferences. For example, the Harvard Alumni Association worked with multiple groups to host the Climate Conversation Series in 2020.  

Harvard must prepare alumni to unlearn, relearn, and learn new skills for leadership in a world with a changing climate. The current climate crisis requires a broad immediate leadership response across all sectors; we cannot wait for the next generation to be trained. Harvard as an educational institution can participate in this response by empowering its alumni community. There is a strong demand and need for climate-related programming and community within the alumni community at Harvard. This represents an opportunity for the university to strengthen its ties to alumni. There are also opportunities for alumni to work in tandem with the undergraduate and graduate programs to mentor, provide connections, and support events. HACE attempts to build a better connected and resourced Harvard alumni community to meet fellow alumni, learn about climate and the environment, and act to combat the climate and environmental crises.  

Founded in 2020, HACE is one of the only University-wide, dedicated climate and environment alumni initiative, and has grown quickly to just under 2,000 members representing all Harvard schools. HACE connects Harvard alumni and members of the larger community through a number of growing community groups including the Mentorship Program, Affinity Groups, Local Groups, and International Groups, as well as events with undergraduate (e. g., EAC) and graduate groups. HACE supports several long-term arcs of virtual programming including the Deep Dive Series, the Career Transitions Series, and the Environmental Justice Series. Now in its second year with the Harvard iLab, the Climate Entrepreneurship Circle program provides a cohort of 28 entrepreneurs resources and support to accelerate their development. (Please see this announcement at this link for our current cohort.)  

HACE’s Pilot Climate Boot Camp - Alumni Climate Education Case Study: In 2021 HACE and Climate Reality co-developed and produced The Climate Boot Camp, a pilot for an educational program offered to alumni. Over 500 members of the Harvard community participated in the pilot. This participation demonstrates that alumni are deeply concerned about the climate crisis and want to learn how to drive sustainable action in the organizations where they have influence. Starting in 2022, HACE will offer the open-access program to the Harvard alumni community independently. Please see a summary of the program at this link and in Appendix II. The experience with the pilot underscored the alumni demand and revealed the opportunity to further develop action-oriented educational programs developed for alumni.

II. Shorter-term, actional opportunities for 2025

Harvard should increase resourcing and launch new Harvard-wide climate education initiatives. These alumni-led and supported efforts will be complemented by strengthened investments in undergraduate, graduate, and alumni. Alumni climate education initiatives, like the HACE and Climate Reality Climate Boot Camp, provide scalable models of alumni learning. However, human capacity and financial resources commonly constrain alumni volunteer organizations.  

1.  Provide investment for one-time development as well as ongoing support for HACE’s continued evolution and professionalization of the Harvard Alumni Climate Action Training, the action training piloted led by the Climate Boot Camp volunteer planning team, to maximize its quality and impact:

a. Year 1 and 2, one-time investment of $400,0000 to revamp program curriculum, lectures, interactive sessions and ongoing volunteer community support structure offered through HACE’s website.

b.  One-time investment of an amount (TBD) after year 2 for developing the program as a HarvardX offering available to the wider public.

c. Starting Year 1, ongoing investment of $100,000 annually for:

i.   Program content updating at regular intervals to stay current and address identified needs.

ii. Managing ongoing program marketing, production and volunteer training to facilitate interactive sessions and community support.

d. Starting Year 1, ongoing infrastructure investment $15,000 annually:

i.   Infrastructure including: learning management software, video hosting, community platforms, others as needed.

ii.  In-kind access to Harvard’s Zoom account, relevant memberships (e.g. AASHE), fund-raising accounts (e.g. Instrumental), and active university email accounts.

2.  Invest $100,000 annually for HACE operational support for ongoing programming to include but not be limited to:

a.  Programs: career development (e.g. Career Transitions Series and The Mentorship Program); environmental justice programming (e.g. The Environmental Justice Health Series), community programming (e.g. networking and affinity groups).

b.  Supporting infrastructure including but not limited to site development and database development

3.  Provide operational support to HACE through paid University student interns (e.g. Communications, events, or social media term time and summer interns

4.  In partnership with HACE, provide formalized institutional support for alumni through HACE including through:

a.  Increased integration with HUCE, OFS, and BEI through formalized staff contacts to support alumni programming development.

b. Formal representation of HACE on the HAA Board through an appointed position.

c. The creation of a HAA Director position supporting SIG climate-related activities for HACE and other SIGs.

Harvard should establish core climate competencies and climate literacy standards. What does climate education at Harvard represent? Climate change, like other socio-ecological systems, expands beyond atmospheric science disciplines and requires interrogation by physical and social domains. Climate justice should serve as a fundamental element of climate education. Climate education should be anchored in community needs and create practical skill development needed for climate action. Climate research and knowledge generation is not enough. Climate education at Harvard must accelerate knowledge-action pathways. By 2025, Harvard must define climate education benchmarks for all graduating students. In turn, this can inform basic competencies to develop for Harvard alumni so alumni can be guided in their climate education journey.

Harvard should enhance climate educational support and career support services. In a 2018 survey of 100 students from eight Harvard schools, Sanjay Seth found that about half of students interested in climate-related work came to Harvard with professional experience in the field. Around three-quarters of students surveyed were either underwhelmed or didn’t meet their goals and expectations at Harvard. Almost all (94%) of students surveyed said they had a mostly or completely self-directed experience studying climate change at Harvard. More than half were somewhat or very dissatisfied with their ability to work with students across the various Harvard schools. Harvard Schools provide educational support (e.g. PAFs, tutors, and faculty advisors) and career support services, so Harvard can focus on increasing support for those resource providers so students receive better climate advising. Similarly, Harvard-wide digital resources could support alumni and community members, too. For example, the HACE climate and environment alumni database could support the decentralized career services alumni networking digital resources.

Harvard should hire new climate faculty and establish climate residency programs for practitioners from frontline and underrepresented communities. Who defines and represents climate education instructors inside and outside of the classroom? New faculty hires will build out academic connections, lead breakthrough educational pathways, and inspire Harvard students and alumni. Digital opportunities provide a greater connection to the frontline and marginalized communities facing the burden of climate injustices. Harvard can redefine traditional academic professional standards by uplifting Indigenous and local community knowledge in these hires and in the new research and courses. These new faculty can also pioneer new teaching methods that generate open-access resources, like on HarvardX. Harvard students can still receive personal instruction and learning, but the HarvardX components of new climate courses could enhance alumni climate education.

Harvard has a unique opportunity to invest in the alumni community to create the next generation of climate education. Harvard alumni still turn to Harvard to understand the breakthrough climate solutions, read the leading research, watch the big thinkers, listen to the lessons learned and insights from practitioners leading the way to create more climate resilient livelihoods. By 2030, we hope they still turn to Harvard, but one with significantly expanded climate institutions, initiatives, and innovations.

PAGE 79.

Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, Author: Brenda Tindal, Executive Director

The Harvard Museums of Science & Culture’s mission is to foster curiosity and a spirit of discovery in visitors of all ages, enhancing public understanding of and appreciation for the natural world, science, and human cultures.

PAGE 80.

Peer Institutions, [no author name given]

In preparation for the work of this committee, Vice Provost Stock requested support from the Office of the Provost in researching the current state of climate and sustainability academic programs at ivy plus peer institutions. The information that follows is an abbreviated list of the most robust programs, as of January 2022.

[End of excerpts from 84 page Appendix to the September “Report on the Future of Climate Change at Harvard University.”]