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Climate Change Education
Dickinson College is committed to the advancement of effective teaching that enables students to think critically about climate change causes, consequences, and solutions, and enable teachers to make extensive connections across disciplinary knowledge areas that span the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Our Commitment to Climate Literacy
While many college faculty members have competency for teaching about aspects of climate change that are closely related to their area of disciplinary expertise, fewer are comfortable teaching the broader connections that are necessary for their students to attain a holistic understanding. It is imperative that students are prepared to understand current scientific, policy, and ethical discourses about climate change, and participate as informed citizens in public decision-making for managing and reducing climate risks.
Dickinson College, with support of a grant from NASA’s Global Climate Change Education program, offers three opportunities for faculty development to enhance competencies for interdisciplinary teaching about climate change. Described below, these opportunities are open to all Dickinson College faculty and teaching staff, and workshops are open to teaching faculty from any higher education institution.
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Applications due April 1st, 2011 for all NASA Summer 2011 Workshops
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Changing Planet Study Group
June 28th-July 1st, 2011 (Dickinson College Campus)
Open to faculty and teaching staff any higher education institution
Applications due April 1st, 2011 for Summer 2011 Workshops
$1000 stipends awarded for Dickinson faculty participants
The study group is a year-long learning community for the enrichment of interdisciplinary teaching about Earth science and human dimensions of climate change at 4- and 2-year liberal arts colleges. The four day workshop will bring together science, social science, and humanities teachers from liberal arts colleges to develop new courses or course modules, revise existing courses, explore engaged learning pedagogies, and add to their knowledge for teaching about climate change. Participants will collaborate with each other to promote climate change education during the 2011-2012 academic year, reconvene for a one-day meeting in spring 2012, and continue to network and share teaching resources as part of the learning community in subsequent years.
August 8th-11th, 2011 (Dickinson College Campus)
Open to faculty and teaching staff any higher education institution
Applications due
April 1st, 2011 for Summer 2011 WorkshopsParticipants in the workshop will receive training in the use of a NASA global climate model (GCM) and the tools to integrate and visualize social, economic, and environmental data for teaching about climate change at the undergraduate level. The climate modeling component of the workshop will make use of EdGCM, a software package developed at Columbia University and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that integrates a computer climate model with a point-and-click interface and scientific visualization and mapping tools. EdGCM simplifies the set up, running, and analysis of climate model experiments (http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ ) and it is in use around the world helping students at universities and secondary schools learn about climate science and computer modeling through hands-on activities. The data tools portion of the workshop will develop capacity for using spatial analysis tools and build familiarity with selected NASA and other datasets for teaching about climate change and human-environment interactions.
Grants for Dickinson Faculty
Cool Climate Grants
Eligibility: Dickinson College Faculty and Teaching Staff
Applications due: February 7th for Student-Faculty Research Grants
March 4th for all other Cool Climate Grants
The Center for Sustainability Education is seeking new and revised courses that are focused on climate change, as well as the integration of climate change as a significant unit, case study, problem, lab, or example in multiple courses in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and laboratory sciences. Funding is also available for the creation of opportunities for students to engage in research on climate change in collaboration with members of the Dickinson faculty. Funding is available for curriculum development, professional development and student-faculty research projects that advance the above goals. Faculty and teaching staff from all academic divisions of the college are eligible to apply.
Learn more about applying for funding (Dickinson College faculty only)
NASA: Cooling the Curriculum Grant
With the support of a Global Climate Change Education NASA cooperative agreement, Cooling the Liberal Arts Curriculum: A Campaign for Climate Change Education at 4- and 2-Year Liberal Arts Colleges, opportunities are available for faculty interested in enhancing and developing new climate change curriculum. Cool Climate Grants are available to Dickinson College faculty and teaching staff, and two climate change curriculum development workshops are available to teachers from any institution of higher education.
More information about Dickinson's NASA Grant
A campaign to improve teaching and learning about global climate change will be implemented at Dickinson College, a 4-year liberal arts college located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and selected community colleges in the region. The participating schools will jointly implement a comprehensive, multifaceted campaign to build teacher competency for interdisciplinary teaching about climate change, enhance capacity for using NASA models and Earth observations in teaching and research, develop and implement a core curriculum of climate change-focused courses that promotes systems thinking, and integrate climate change more widely throughout the liberal arts curriculum.
PARTNER COMMUNITY COLLEGES:
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FUNDING PROVIDED BY NASA GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
EDUCATION PROGRAM
The Cooling the Curriculum campaign will be managed by Dickinson College’s Center for Sustainability Education. Co-investigators from the partner colleges will coordinate activities on their campuses and serve on the Climate Change Curriculum Task Force, which will guide development and implementation of the core curriculum of climate change-focused courses.
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