Confronting Emotions in the Climate Sciences

Traditional climate change courses introduce students to a wide array of scientifically and emotionally challenging subjects without acknowledging the significant distress that climate learners often experience from studiously bearing witness to ecological degradation, and the social injustices this deepens. Students enrolled in the proposed course will study a rapidly growing body of scholarship and activism related to emotive and existential responses to climate change. They will explore the psychosocial complexities that the Anthropocene proposes through key texts, films, and guest lectures that draw on climate psychology, philosophy, art, literature and history. A key outcome of this course is identifying pedagogical tools that can be implemented to foster wellbeing within the climate science community and its adjacent fields. Through self reflection, journaling, and group work, students will develop new self-care skills and collective mental health 'protection and promotion' strategies. A primary goal of the course is to understand how trauma-informed learning modules can support the scientific objectives of graduate students. Final projects will include the development of evidence-based instructional and mentoring recommendations for students studying any aspect of climate science. The course is designed to engage students in participatory scholarship; assessment of the effectiveness of various learning modules on student wellbeing and motivation towards their research will be conducted using pre-post style surveys and qualitative interview methods. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)