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About four years ago, Holly Bailey-Hofmann’s English 101 class at West Los Angeles College got a complete makeover. She’d signed up to be part of a pilot program for professors interested in infusing their curriculum with lessons about climate change and community resilience. The program only required her to “climatize” one module of the syllabus, but she loved the work so much she overhauled the whole class.
The goal for her students remained the same pre- and post-makeover: learning to write effectively and conduct academic research. Now, though, she teaches reading, writing and research by assigning research studies and nonfiction essays about climate change — including pieces about how social norms are often a barrier to addressing climate change, how climate change affects mental health, and how abnormally hot days could affect cognitive skills. She’s found her students love it.
“We just want to do right by our students. We want to give them the climate literacy they’re going to need later in their lives,” Bailey-Hofmann said.
The pilot program was run by WLAC’s California Center for Climate Change Education, which was established by the state legislature in 2022 to promote climate change education and infuse sustainability practices at nine Los Angeles-area colleges. Each year since then, roughly 15 WLAC professors have received a stipend from the center to study how climate change intersects with their field and redesign at least a portion of one class to reflect that. The program has since expanded to professors from the other eight colleges.
The professors span disciplines including art, communication studies, biology, film production, chemistry, paralegal studies and child development, among others. Jo Tavares, director of the California Center for Climate Change Education, said that in the next few years, she hopes to create a virtual library that faculty statewide could draw on to understand how climate intersects with what they’re teaching, and update their courses.
Across the country, college leaders are trying to figure out how to best prepare their students for the consequences of climate change. Experts say all careers will in some way intersect with climate change, and that in order to be prepared for the job market, students need a basic understanding of climate science and its social implications. But, as I wrote in my story about the University of California San Diego’s new climate change course requirement, colleges are not necessarily saying that every student should sign up for Climate Change 101. |
