Join UChicago academics, students, and staff for a week of virtual and in-person programs this spring around the internationally-observed Earth Day on April 22. Learn about how our community is thinking rigorously about environmental impact and ways to leverage data, practices, policies, and creativity to help combat climate change.
Some events open before Earth Week – check the details for more information! National and global events open to the public are also listed at the bottom of the page. Hosting an event that’s not on this list? Let us know!
Looking for a different audience or the full calendar of Earth Week events (which are all open to students)? Check out the links below:
Monday, April 19, 2021
4:10pm CDT ENERGY STAR Benchmarking with James Novack: A Chicago Studies Data in Dialogue Session
Chicago Studies Program & Environmental Frontiers & Facilities Services
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Join Chicago Studies and Environmental Frontiers for a one hour Data in Dialogue session with the University of Chicago’s Facilities Services Data Analyst, James Novack. During this interactive conversation, students and staff alike will have the opportunity to directly experience a deep dive into the ENERGY STAR data portal, take a look at how the University’s environmental impact is displayed within the campus’ energy use benchmarking, and speak with James concerning questions about the aforementioned topic.
The Data in Dialogue series offers participants a “behind the scenes” look at a Chicago-relevant dataset, archive, or other resource for research about the city. As the work of Miranda Fricker and others have taught us, data are not neutral. How we construct our episteme—that is, what we consider to be knowledge and what we reject from consideration—is often as important to the conclusions we reach as the rigor with which we pursue our research methods and the incisiveness of our analyses. Sessions in this series will open critical conversations with Chicagoans responsible for making decisions about data at all stages in its “life-cycle,” from collection to curation to publication to representation.
6:00pm CDT Camille T. Dungy and Ed Roberson – Trophic Cascade and Asked What Has Changed
The Seminary Co-op Bookstores
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Camille T. Dungy and Ed Roberson will discuss Trophic Cascade and Asked What Has Changed.
About Trophic Cascade: In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Camille T. Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope.
About Asked What Has Changed: Award-winning poet Ed Roberson confronts the realities of an era in which the fate of humanity and the very survival of our planet are uncertain. Departing from the traditional nature poem, Roberson’s work reclaims a much older tradition, drawing into poetry’s orbit what the physical and human sciences reveal about the state of a changing world. These poems test how far the lyric can go as an answer to our crisis, even calling into question poetic form itself. Reflections on the natural world and moments of personal interiority are interwoven with images of urbanscapes, environmental crises, and political instabilities. These poems speak life and truth to modernity in all its complexity. Throughout, Roberson takes up the ancient spiritual concern—the ephemerality of life—and gives us a new language to process the feeling of living in a century on the brink.
Read more about what The Seminary Co-op Bookstores are doing for Earth Week.
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
10:00am CDT EFCampus Student Project Showcase: student-faculty-staff partnership addressing campus sustainability
The Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
As part of Earth Week, the Environmental Frontiers Initiative is pleased to showcase student research projects contributing to campus sustainability. Join this session to hear from EFCampus Undergraduate Research Assistants on their analysis of campus energy and water systems, and the interventions they evaluated to improve conservation. These students from across the physical, biological, and social sciences divisions collaborated with Facilities Services and Office of Sustainability staff with faculty guidance from the Program on Global Environment (PGE) and the Center for Robust Decision-making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP). This highly collaborative effort worked at the intersection of campus operations and rigorous quantitative analysis to demonstrate concrete opportunities for the University to advance its sustainability goals.
EFCampus is a partnership between the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, the Program on the Global Environment (PGE), the Center for Robust Decision-making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP), and the Offices of Facilities Services and Campus Planning + Sustainability at the University of Chicago.
1:00pm CDT Release of Campus Sustainability Tour
Chicago Studies Program & Environmental Frontiers & Facilities Services
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – tour will be available on desktop and mobile app (Apple & Android)
Interested in campus sustainability? Join Chicago Studies and Environmental Frontiers for a virtual tour of the campus utility plant! Learn more about how the University sources and uses its energy, as well as the steps being taken to help the University of Chicago reach its sustainability goals. You can view this tour through Vamonde, a virtual tourism platform that integrates multimedia content with your mobile device’s geolocation capabilities to enable “adventures” through cities and sites around the world. For the 2020-2021 academic year, Chicago Studies is working with Vamonde to bring the city into the classroom, the dorm room, and even the home office…anywhere in the world!
2:00pm CDT Opportunities in Ecology and Environmental Science at the MBL
Marine Biological Laboratory Ecosystems Center
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Join Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) scientists and leaders to learn about the exciting opportunities for UChicago students to study ecology and environmental science with renowned researchers and among abundant natural biodiversity. Attendees will be introduced to the Fall term Semester in Environmental Sciences, as well as the MBL’s signature summer research experiences, career opportunities, and ways each person can engage rigorously with personal and institutional sustainability through the N footprint project. Calculate your personal Nitrogen (N) footprint at http://calc.nprint.org/ before the event, which will feature live Q&A and data collection (we recommend you do the detailed food option) – bring your questions and your footprint results! Event hosted by Linda Hyman, Burroughs Wellcome Director of Education at the MBL.
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
8:30am CDT PME Research in Environmental Protection and Sustainability
Matthew Tirrell, Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor and Dean, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Learn about the diverse range of research projects on environmental protection and sustainability happening at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago. This presentation series is hosted by Dean Matthew Tirrell and features talks from graduate students and faculty members on pressing research in areas like solar fuel production, new techniques and materials for energy storage, sustainable plastics, agricultural innovation, and more. Join to find out more about Pritzker Molecular Engineering’s collaborative approach to developing holistic solutions for complex, global issues.
10:30am CDT Scientific Machine Learning and Stiffness
Argonne National Laboratory
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – attend here
Scientific machine learning (SciML) is the burgeoning field combining scientific knowledge with machine learning for data-efficient predictive modeling. We will introduce SciML as the key to effective learning in many engineering applications, such as improving the fidelity of climate models to accelerating clinical trials. This will lead us to the question on the frontier of SciML: what about stiffness? Stiffness is a pervasive quality throughout engineering systems and the most common cause of numerical difficulties in simulation. In this event we will showcase how learning accurate models of battery degradation and the energy efficiency of buildings fails with previous techniques like physics-informed neural networks but succeeds with new stiffly-aware architectures like continuous-time echo state networks.
11:15am CDT Live Taping of “The Axe Files” with Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield
The Institute of Politics
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – register here with a current UChicago email address
Please join the IOP in welcoming Linda Thomas-Greenfield, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, as she sits down with IOP Director David Axelrod for a taping of his CNN podcast, The Axe Files. Amb. Thomas-Greenfield joins us just a day before President Biden convenes a virtual Earth Day summit on climate change with world leaders and will discuss the key role that climate change and environmental protection plays in U.S. diplomacy.
11:30am CDT Information Session: Graduate Certificate in Urban Science and Sustainable Development
The Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
University of Chicago Master’s and PhD students are invited to apply for the 2021-2022 Certificate in Urban Science and Sustainable Development. This program recognizes graduate student work at the nexus of urban development, the study of cities, and the future of sustainability. The Certificate is awarded in conjunction with existing UChicago graduate degree programs, and establishes the scientific and intellectual underpinnings for a career in the emerging field of sustainable urban development.
Urban Science is the systemic and computational study of how cities work, grow and develop to advance a more sustainable and equitable future. This field offers an interdisciplinary framework that is critical to accelerating a global understanding of cities to meet challenges, from climate change, pandemics, social inequities and more. The Certificate’s goal is to provide the foundations of methodological education and training to realize the global potential of cities and to improve the human condition in an increasingly urban world.
This info session will give an overview of the Certificate program, eligibility, the application process and answer student questions. Applications due June 20, 2021. View full program details on the Mansueto Institute’s website.
4:10pm CDT Chicago Futures: The Abundant City
Chicago Studies Program
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – view details and register here
Join Chicago Studies and Laura Letinsky, Professor of Visual Arts, for her panel discussion on The Abundant City. This discussion will focus on envisioning the potential fruitfulness of Chicago’s food culture, both artistically and agriculturally. This presentation is a part of our Chicago Futures series, a lecture series focused on imagining the future of Chicago through turbulent times.
Thursday, April 22, 2021 [Earth Day]
4:10pm CDT Monarch Community Science with the Field Museum
Chicago Studies Program & Program on the Global Environment
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Spend your Earth Day learning more about how to protect one of Chicago’s most important pollinators! Join Erika Hasle, Conservation Ecologist for the Field Museum, and Professor Alison Anastasio, Urban Ecologist and environmental steward, for a special Earth Day presentation on monarch butterflies, their migration patterns, and their impact on Chicago’s ecosystems. This presentation will also include information on the Field Museum’s Monarch Community Science Project, an initiative that invites volunteers like you to help collect data on monarch butterflies right here in the city, and includes a free plant giveaway! Read more about the event and speakers on the Chicago Studies website.
Friday, April 23, 2021
10:00am CDT The Climate of History in a Planetary Age with Dipesh Chakrabarty
The Neubauer Collegium & The Seminary Co-op Bookstores & 3CT & The Graham School & UChicago Press
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, in conversation with Elizabeth Chatterjee, Assistant Professor of Environmental History and the College, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Associate Professor, Department of History and the College, and Emily Lynn Osborn, Associate Professor of African History, African Studies, and the College.
“The idea of anthropogenic and planetary climate change does not face much academic challenge these days, but the idea of the Anthropocene has been much debated by both scientists and humanist scholars,” Dipesh Chakrabarty writes in his new book, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021). To fully understand the present moment, he argues, we must make a conceptual shift in the way we orient ourselves to both the global, a human-centric construction, and to “a new historical-philosophical entity called the planet,” which intentionally decenters the human. At this event, Chakrabarty will join a panel of scholars at the forefront of exploring the implications of the Anthropocene framework for historical research to consider how climate change upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization.
12:30pm CDT The Future of Farmer’s Markets: A Chicago Studies Conversation
Chicago Studies Program
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here
This one-hour session will feature a live conversation and Q&A with Chicago area farmers and market managers about the evolution and future of Chicago’s vibrant outdoor markets thru and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the Chicago Studies Program’s broader Chicago Studies Conversations and Chicago Futures series. The recording of this session will be released as a podcast shortly after the event.
Want more Earth Week content? Check out these events taking place nationally and globally:
April 19-25
Earth Week Mini Film Fest
One Earth Film Festival
Virtual – view screenings and get tickets here
April 20-21
Barriers to Scale:
U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office
Virtual – register here by April 12
April 20
Three Days of Climate Action: Global Youth Climate Summit
Earth Uprising
Virtual – details here
April 21
Three Days of Climate Action: Global Education Summit
Education International
Virtual – details here
April 21
Wildfires and Air Quality: Part 2
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Virtual – register here
April 22
Three Days of Climate Action: Earth Day Live
EARTHDAY.ORG
Virtual – details here