coe joins u.n. sustainable development solutions network

The College of the Environment is proud to announce a new partnership with the US branch of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Launched in December 2018, the UN-SDSN cooperates with financial institutions, the private sector, civil society organizations, and UN agencies to effect sustainable development throughout the world.

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meet our 2019-20 student think tank fellows

Each year, our COE Think Tank brings together Wes students and faculty from across the university, plus a noted outside scholar, for a yearlong conversation on a topic of vital environmental importance. This year’s focus: how humans relate to and value the non-human part of the world. Read on to discover how our three student fellows have been exploring the topic in their work.

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thinking outside the box: meet our 2019-20 think tank faculty

Each year, our COE Think Tank brings together Wes students and faculty from across the university, plus a noted outside scholar, for a yearlong conversation on a topic of vital environmental importance. This year’s focus: how humans relate to and value the non-human part of the world. Learn more about questions our 2018-19 faculty fellows have been pondering this year.

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sayet shares importance of revitalizing traditional foodways

On Feb. 28, students in ENVS201/soph seminar greeted guest speaker Rachel Sayet, an anthropologist/educator from the Mohegan Tribe, who spoke about revitalizing traditional foodways in New England and beyond. ENVS201, taught by COE Director Barry Chernoff and assistant professor of environmental studies Helen Poulos, introduces students to critical methods for conducting research on environmental issues, as a primer for performing research in the ENVS major.

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mcleod ’19 hosts bears ears exhibit and screening

On February 22, the COE hosted a screening of the 2016 documentary short film Shash Jaa’: Bears Ears, followed by a Q&A with Navajo-Hopi filmmaker/director Angelo Baca. A post-showing reception featured a photo exhibit of the Bears Ears region by Fiona McLeod ’19.  Shash Jaa’ details the efforts of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition against the reduction of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent after President Trump’s 2017 executive order. It is a continuation of the film Into America: The Ancestors’ Land, directed by Baca & Nadine Zacharias, which examined natural resource extraction in southeastern Utah.

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coe faculty-student grant program supports o’connell’s antarctic research

This past January, Nethra Pullela ’20, Liz Atalig ’21, and Jackie Duckett ’20 joined E&ES Professor Suzanne O’Connell on a journey to the center of the earth–traveling to  the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) at Texas A&M University to collect data and samples for O’Connell’s “Where Was the Antarctic Oligocene Ice?” project, funded by the COE’s Faculty-Student Research Grant Program.

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