Sustainability News

Arizona State University Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership student Danielle Leoni certainly has enough accomplishments under her belt without a master’s degree. She is the executive chef and co-owner of The Breadfruit & Rum Bar in downtown Phoenix; she owns her own business, Leoni's Focaccia; and she was recently named as a 2018 James Beard Foundation Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership program fellow. Last summer, Leoni was awarded a “Seafood Sustainability Seal” by the James Beard Foundation after she participated in its Smart Catch sustainable seafood program.

Even having accomplished all of that, Leoni is driven to learn and do more in the realm of sustainability — thus, her enrollment in the EMSL program in the ASU School of Sustainability. Read on for why she chose the program, how she balances all of her responsibilities and how she hopes other restaurants will incorporate sustainability into their practices.

Question: Why did you decide to join the EMSL program?

Continue Reading

When we heard that Arizona State University School of Sustainability alumna Haley Paul became Audubon Arizona’s new policy manager, we knew we had to catch up with her. Paul graduated with a Master of Science in sustainability with a thesis examining the 1980 Groundwater Management Act and its impact on agriculture in south-central Arizona. After receiving her degree, she went on to work in fields related to water resources and water conservation before landing at Audubon Arizona in April 2018.

Paul answered several questions for us including how she became interested in sustainability and advice she has for current ASU sustainability students.

Question: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study the field you received a degree in?

Continue Reading

Robert “Bob” Kates, an emeritus board member of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, passed away on April 21, 2018 at the age of 89. Kates’s family and friends remember him as collaborative, curious and creative — a man who asked big, complex questions and engaged others to help answer them. At the heart of everything Kates did was a question he often pondered with those closest to him: "How does one do good in the world?"

In addition to serving on the ASU Wrigley Institute’s board, Kates’s work was cited in the "Temozón Retreat Report," which was instrumental to the founding of the institute. His sustainability research — and much of his work — centered around another major question: “What is and ought to be the human use of the earth?” Kates described sustainability science as the most interdisciplinary field in his professional life.

With an academic and scientific mind, Kates’s impact spanned several universities and institutions. He was a geography professor at Clark University in Massachusetts; he helped create what is now the Institute of Resource Assessment in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; he directed the Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University; he was a senior research associate at Harvard University; he was the executive editor of Environment magazine; and he was the presidential professor of sustainability science at the University of Maine.

Continue Reading

Professor Sonja Klinsky, a Senior Sustainability Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, recently published a book that examines how transitional justice theories and approaches can address climate change issues. Klinsky co-wrote “The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice” with Jasmina Brankovic, a senior researcher with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa.

More information about “The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice” is available on Sun Devil Shelf Life, ASU’s new searchable database of books by university staff, faculty and alumni.

Beginning this summer, members of 12 rural communities throughout Arizona will get the chance to explore the past, present and future of water’s environmental and cultural impact in Arizona and beyond when the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibit Water/Ways visits their town. The first location to see Water/Ways is the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum between June 2 and July 15.

Presented by Arizona State University and Arizona Humanities, the exhibit's journey continues through March 2020.

“Partnering with the Smithsonian on this project gave us an opportunity to expand the scope and impact of the work being done at the Decision Center for a Desert City to well beyond Phoenix and Arizona, to provide an informal educational experience in rural areas and reach an audience much broader in scope and background than we had previously been able to reach,” said David White, director of DCDC and a senior sustainability scientist at ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

Arizona native Adam Gabriele loves to learn. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree from the School of Sustainability, and now he’s working on a doctorate from ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

Gabriele’s mix of interests led him to pursue a unique research topic while at the School of Sustainability. His scientific paper, called “Living in a Wounded World: Sustainability and Psychological Trauma,” explored the psychosocial benefits of agricultural therapy for combat veterans impacted by PTSD and moral injury. “The results strongly suggest that sustainable agricultural can be of powerful clinical benefit to traumatized veterans and that sustainable behaviors and values in general increased as trauma symptoms decreased,” Gabriele wrote.

Read on for how Gabriele got inspired to do this research and what sustainability means to him.

Question: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study the field you majored in?

Continue Reading

In the city of Apache Junction, at the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, graduate students from Arizona State University performed a series of theatrical scenes related to the city’s history. This event, called “Positively Ghostly,” brought to life tales of ghosts and lost treasures gathered from local residents, and illustrated the Old West history ingrained in the city. These performances allowed residents to connect with local legends and landscapes while reflecting on the value that their city brings to Arizona.

“Positively Ghostly” was a collaboration between the city of Apache Junction, ASU School of Sustainability students involved in Project Cities, and ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts students. The event was part of a wider tourism project called “Positively Apache Junction” led by Project Cities, a university-community initiative within ASU's Sustainable Cities Network.

Continue Reading

School of Sustainability undergraduate Austin Crane has achieved a lot in the past year. Besides working on his bachelor's degree, Crane has been interning at Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply as a sustainability intern.

Since he started at Ewing in the summer of 2017, Crane has helped implement a variety of sustainability projects, including a sprinkler controller recycling program and community service events. He’s also made changes to the way Ewing’s employees are engaged in sustainability by creating training materials and relaunching a company-wide “Green Team.”

“Ultimately, my work is concerned with spreading the word about sustainability and letting people know that living sustainably is easy and doable,” Crane said. “I believe that we as sustainability professionals can only be successful if we can convince people to join us on our quest.”

Continue Reading

Half of the world’s people, particularly in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, depend heavily on one staple food crop: rice. Although rice is one of the world’s most important crops, it is also one of the most water intensive. For centuries, farmers have grown rice by flooding fields with fresh water, requiring more than two times the water needed for wheat or maize. We use a third of the world’s freshwater resources just to cultivate rice.

The flooding method may be its own worst enemy. Waterlogged soil in rice paddies creates the perfect home for microbes that release methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat. By contributing 20 percent of the world’s man-made methane emissions, rice production helps drive climate change, which then threatens the water supply that sustains it.

Continue Reading

School of Sustainability student Zoë Stein is a go-getter. In April, she won an Arizona State University Pitchfork Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Leader. She is currently a master's student in Global Sustainability Science, a dual degree program that awards degrees from ASU and Leuphana University in Germany. Once she graduates, Stein plans to run for local office.

“Zoë is going to change the world,” said Katie Ulmer, the School of Sustainability's academic advisor for graduate students. “She is the globally engaged Sun Devil! She will one day be a household name in the Phoenix area, synonymous for many great achievements.”

With that in mind, we wanted to pick Stein’s brain about her experience as a sustainability student. Here are a few of her answers.

Question: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study the field you majored in?

Continue Reading

Since 1970, Earth Day has provided a platform to raise awareness about environmental sustainability, has acted as an opportunity for educational experiences, and has promoted a call to action to protect the planet. Today, Earth Day is a worldwide campaign supported by millions of people in 192 countries working together to fight for a clean environment.

On Earth Day 2018, staff from Arizona State University’s LightWorks attended EarthX and presented the latest research and technologies that address today’s climate change issues. EarthX is the world’s largest Earth Day expo, where people gather to share ideas and solutions from all over the world.

LightWorks, in association with ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, participated in the Clean Capitalism Challenge Panel hosted by EarthX. Scholars discussed with organizations from across the country an outline of an efficient, pro-business, pro-growth clean tax code that can tilt the playing field in the direction of cleaner, more efficient solutions to transform capitalism into clean capitalism. Watch the highlights on the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability's YouTube channel.

As Joni Adamson tells it, these are exciting times for the environmental humanities. And she should know: Adamson, a senior sustainability scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was recently awarded a highly sought-after fellowship from the National Humanities Center and is now looking forward to advancing her work in this realm.

Adamson, whose work explores the intersections between literature and the environment from the perspective of environmental justice, has been tapped to receive the Benjamin N. Duke Fellowship of the Research Triangle Foundation. She is working on a new book that aims to trace the origins of human thinking on climate.

Continue Reading

Greenhouse gas emissions are a growing problem, but Arizona State University sustainability scientist Elisabeth Graffy believes that the electric utility industry can be a force for change. Graffy recently co-wrote an article, “Corporate Finance and Sustainability: The Case of the Electric Utility Industry,” about this topic in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.

The electric utility sector “accounts for about half of all climate emissions and is the foundation of all sustainable energy futures that generally get discussed,” said Graffy, who leads several initiatives at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, including the LightWorks program’s Energy and Society group. In the article, Graffy and three analysts discuss how the industry can transform to meet sustainability goals — no small feat.

Continue Reading

When Benjamin Fogg was brainstorming ways to bring sustainability practices to FedEx Ground, a company he began working for after completing his bachelor’s degree in Alabama, he discovered Arizona State University’s Online Master of Sustainability Leadership. Fogg applied to the program at the School of Sustainability, he said, because of its focus on innovation and leadership “paired with the broader, global context. Since FedEx Corporation operates all over the world, it felt like the perfect fit for my career.”

During his time as a master’s student, Fogg was promoted multiple times and moved to different states. “ASU Online allowed that mobility to happen while I continued my education,” he said.

Recently, Fogg was promoted to a Sustainability Specialist position at FedEx. His career goal, he said, is to “obtain a senior leadership position within the company that focuses on bringing sustainability to the forefront of what we’re doing.”

School days for Carl Harris were not the routine experience they are for most college students.

Harris has been on active duty or reserve status for the U.S. Navy for the past 18 years, with multiple deployments throughout the Middle East. On top of that, Harris earned a bachelor’s degree this month through the online engineering management program in ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, with a minor in sustainability from ASU’s School of Sustainability.

“I am a big fan of the whole sustainability movement,” Harris said. “Sustainable technologies are going to be a big emerging market around the world. I would love to work in engineering management at a cutting-edge sustainable tech company.”

As the largest university in the country Arizona State University inevitably makes quite a bit of waste. Sure we have a Zero Waste initiative, and we recycle and compost, but there are often items, large and small, that get overlooked. Students are helping to fill the gaps.

In spring 2018 a one-credit course was created as a cross-disciplinary effort between the School of Sustainability (SOS), University Sustainability Practices (USP), and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (HIDA) to bring students of different disciplines together to collaborate on a sustainability-focused art project. Students were charged with the task of developing a prototype of an outdoor common space for the Tempe campus. They focused on waste, recycling, and circular resources and were then released to complete the project with guidance from a team of staff from SOS, USP, and HIDA. The intention of the final installation was to engage campus visitors, students, staff, and faculty who move through common spaces at ASU. Groups were encouraged to consider innovative materials and construction processes for their installations.

Class time comprised of talks by artists, designers, and sustainability experts to give students an idea of the kinds of projects they could create, the specific issues they could focus on, and free time to work on their designs. Once student teams moved through development stages, they received approval to construct their proposed installation. Students were judged by ASU student peers, selected staff, and faculty. Funding and scholarship opportunities were also available for this group and were judged in a competition setting.

Continue Reading

School of Sustainability holds its spring convocation ceremony in Gammage Auditorium on Thursday, May 10. Watch live at 4:30 p.m. Arizona time.

Two staff members at Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability are editors of a new book, “Urban Planet: Knowledge Towards Sustainable Cities,” released by Cambridge University Press.

Corrie Griffith, Program Manager for the Global Consortium for Sustainability Outcomes, and Mark Watkins, Program Manager for the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project, were on a team of 10 editors who crafted the book. The authors argue that global urbanization challenges can be alleviated by weaving inclusiveness and sustainability into the fabric of society.

“Urban Planet” brings together the expertise of more than 100 scholars across many different fields to develop interdisciplinary approaches to global urbanization issues.

In February, Major League Baseball announced it was partnering with ASU on a zero waste initiative that took place during spring training. In April, the Diamondbacks called on School of Sustainability Dean Christopher Boone to partner with them on a special Earth Day project.

Our fearless dean agreed to throw out the first pitch at the Sunday afternoon game. The official video shows the pitch was juuuust a bit outside, but we do like to think outside the box here at ASU.

Many School of Sustainability alumni and staff were in attendance at the game to support the Diamondbacks and Dean Boone. View our photo album from the event.

With its roots in a plant-based diet, Julia Colbert’s interest in sustainability began to grow. Colbert understood development does not need to come at the cost of our planet, and wanted to find a way to create harmony between humans and nature.

So she enrolled in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She was recognized at Convocation as the school's 2018 Outstanding Graduate.

During her time at ASU, Colbert took advantage of every learning opportunity. Through School of Sustainability study abroad programs, she traveled to foreign countries to learn new sustainable practices and solutions. She joined student organizations and accepted jobs at the ASU Sustainability Teacher’s Academy and Decision Center for a Desert City.

In the fall, Colbert will return to ASU to pursue a master's degree in sustainability.

She answered some questions about her experiences as a sustainability student.

Question: What’s something you learned while at ASU — in the classroom or otherwise — that surprised you or changed your perspective?

Continue Reading