Green Earth Week banner with Earth graphic, dates April 19 through 23, and website URL eco.uchicago.edu

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!

All Earth Week events are open to UChicago students. Looking for events open to a specific audience? Check out the links below:

 

Monday, April 19, 2021

All Week      PSI Earth Week: Seed Starters

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – sign up before April 18 for free seeds and an asynchronous workshop here

Hello plant lovers! As part of PSI’s series of Earth Week activities, the Science, Art, and Sustainability project group are hosting an asynchronous seed paper creation workshop! Seed paper is a way to recycle your own scrap paper and use it to grow plants. It’s so easy to customize your seed paper with different types of seeds, colors, shapes, and designs so get creative with it! Afterwards, you can plant your seed paper and watch a beautiful plant grow! Funded in part by Student Government.

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.

9:00pm CDT      PSI Earth Week: Codenames

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details here

How many environmental sustainability terms do you know? Join us for the sustainability-edition of Codenames where we throw in words related to the environment and sustainability for PSI’s Earth Week, hosted by HPBP. All participants will be sorted into random teams and will compete for glory (and possibly a gift card)! Funded in part by Student Government.

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.

3:00pm CDT      Is the Climate Crisis an Accomplice to the Murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery & Breonna Taylor?

Institute of Politics
Open to – Students
Virtual – view details and register here

The recorded and public murder of George Floyd at the hands of police caused global outrage at the continued violence against unarmed black people. Outrage turned into a movement – throughout 2020, the demands for justice and equality were felt in every sector of our country. As thought leaders, activists and policy makers seek solutions, we must also address varying factors of causation including climate change. According to one peer reviewed study in the Journal of Environmental and Economic Management, “Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States.” This seminar will examine the data, experience and policy decisions that connect the dots between a warming planet and violence, particularly in communities of color. Part of the seminar series led by Heather McTeer Toney, IOP Spring 2021 Pritzker Fellow. Learn more about Heather McTeer Toney here and learn more about her seminar series here.

5:00pm CDT      PSI Earth Week: Kahoot Recycling Rush

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details and attend here

Clueless on what you can and can’t recycle in Chicago? Think you’re already a pro? Want to win a free succulent? All are welcome to play Kahoot with us at Recycling Rush, one of Phoenix Sustainability Initiative’s many Earth Week events hosted by our Campus Waste Reduction Group! Join us to learn more about Chicago’s recycling guidelines, items frequently recycled wrong, and all other things recycling. 6 attendees will win free succulents: our top 3 winners and 3 more random attendants! Funded in part by Student Government.

6:00pm CDT      PSI Earth Week: Peaceful Planting and Painting

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details and attend here

Come celebrate Earth Week by finger-painting and planting! Early registrants received a clay plant pot and basil seeds – feel free to join with your own materials! Funded in part by Student Government.

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]

All Day             Earth Day of Service

University Community Service Center
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
In person – registration now closed

Earth Day of Service aims to invite students, faculty, and staff to the South Side of Chicago by teaching them the environmental aspects of the neighboring communities. By actively participating in Jackson/Washington Park clean ups and partnering with orgs such as Hyde Park Neighborhood Club University students, faculty, and staff will learn that helping the environment starts close to campus. Groups will be in pods of 5-10 people to maintain safety.

All Day             Earth Day 2021 Art Vote

Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry at the Smart Museum of Art
Open to – Students
Virtual – cast your vote here by April 22 (CNet login required)

UChicago students—cast your vote for art! In celebration of Earth Day, the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry invites all University of Chicago students to vote to select an artwork to be acquired for the collection of the Smart Museum of Art. The Smart’s collection is your art collection—help us build it! Learn more about the four short-listed works of art—by Edward Burtynsky, Minerva Cuevas, Binh Danh, and Ranu Mukherjee—and cast your vote between April 12 and 22.

12:00pm CDT      PSI Earth Week: Sustainable Cooking Contest

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details and submit a dish here

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative’s Campus Composting Group is hosting a sustainable cooking competition for Earth Week! We will award prizes for several categories such as best use of leftovers, best zero-waste dish, most creative dish, and most aesthetic dish. Prizes are a zero waste item of your choice from https://zefirowaste.com/ up to $20. To enter, create a dish repurposing food, using as little waste as possible (e.g. using ingredients you already have in your fridge), take pictures of your process, and submit them—along with a short description of sustainable choices you made while cooking. Submission form is open from April 18 at 12pm CDT to April 22 at 12pm CDT. Funded in part by Student Government.

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

All Day      PSI Earth Week: Minecraft Building

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details here

Earth Day Minecraft Building! In association with UChicago Minecraft, Phoenix Sustainability Initiative will be hosting a crafting event on a UChicago server. From Thursday, April 22 to April 23, anyone who owns Minecraft can log on and build anything related to Earth Day or sustainability. Participants can send screenshots of their creations to PSI via Facebook with the chance to be featured on the PSI Instagram. The top builds will be moved to the main UChicago server and winners will receive exclusive metal straws! To participate, join the UChicago Minecraft Facebook group and their discord channel if possible. Directions to install Minecraft and log onto the server will be provided. Whether it’s your first time crafting or you’re a seasoned veteran, come build with us and celebrate sustainability virtually! Funded in part by Student Government.

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.

11:00am CDT    Pursuing a Meaningful Green Career

Career Advancement
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff, Public
Virtual – register here

Finding a career that’s more than a bottom line can ask you to approach your internship and job search in a different way. If you want to pursue a career at an organization that considers a triple bottom line – social, environmental, and financial – this is the event for you. At this session we’ll consider what it means to put your values into action beyond just this week. This workshop will also help you consider some key questions around experience, skills, compensation, direction, and more. Part of the UChicago Green Careers program.

12:30pm CDT    The Future of Urban Farming: 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.

6:00pm CDT      PSI Earth Week: Intro to Embroidering Small Designs

Phoenix Sustainability Initiative
Open to – Students, Faculty, OAAs, Staff
Virtual – view details here

Have a pair of socks with a hole or a shirt that could use some spice?
Green Data will be hosting a clothes-mending and patch-sewing workshop at 6 pm CDT on Friday, April 23rd, where you can learn some minor clothing repair skills or, if you want to add some decorations instead, you can also learn how to sew some small embroidery designs! We will be providing you with small, basic sewing kits! Our event will have asynchronous and synchronous parts. The former will be for clothes-mending, and we’ll create a Clothes-Mending 101 guide for you if you ever find a small tear or hole in your clothes. Our synchronous event will focus on embroidery, so please stop by if you want to hang out and learn how to sew small but cute designs on (almost) any item of your choice! Funded in part by Student Government.

 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
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

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