Content: Latest News
SUStainability courses, minors and Programs
The University of Illinois is adding new courses, minors, and majors focused on the academics of sustainability!
New courses include Challenges of Sustainability, Environmental Policy, Water Planet Water Crisis, Earth Resource Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability - a global perspective.
In addition to the Environmental Fellows minor, students in any discipline can study sustainability in the new Earth, Society and Environment minor.
Interested in majoring in sustainability? Receive a Liberal Arts and Sciences degree in either the social dimensions of sustainability or the natural science dimensions of sustainability by studying for a BS in Earth, Society and the Environment.
if you're not a degree-seeking student at the University, consider our on-line certificate in Environmental Sustainability - it can be completed part-time in one year, anywhere in the world!
Sustainability textbook
The School has helped produce a new, open, online, free sustainability textbook - read more and download in now!
STudents examined sustainable developemnt on the first SESE Costa Rica Trip
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School research featured in Illinois today, NASA NEWS
From NASA:
"Larry Di Girolamo and postdoctoral scientist Sagnik Dey of the University of Illinois, Champaign, used a decade's worth of MISR data to comprehensively analyze aerosol pollution over the Indian subcontinent. This densely populated region has poor air quality and lacks on-the-ground pollution monitoring sites. The study was published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research..."
School scientists make the cover of Nature, twice
The work of two Geology Department researchers made the cover of Nature in the last few months, with beautiful photos. Jonathan Tomkin "moves mountains" in September, and Pinaki Chakraborty experiences "turbulent times" in June.
Congratulations 2010 ESES graDuates!
We are proud to announce our second year of ESES graduates! Nineteen bachelor students graduated from the program this May, going into a range of occupations and graduate programs, including environmental software design, law, and environmental science.
2010 SESE REsearch Review
The annual research review of SESE students will be held on March 5, 2010, 2:00pm-5:00pm; Alice Campbell Alumni Center. Refreshments will be served. There will be prizes for outstanding posters, and the the photo competition will continue into its second year. The list of abstracts is here.
2009/2010: SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY Speaker series
Room 5602 Beckman Institute; Fridays, 2:30 - 4:00
September 11 Hans-Martin Füssel Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Vulnerability to Climate Change: Scientific and Ethical Challenges in Adaptation Policy
September 25 Robin Mearns Social Development Dept. of The World Bank
Social Dimensions of Climate Change: From Principles to Practice at the World Bank
October 16 Elizabeth Shapiro Texas A&M University
Can the Rural Poor Profit from Climate Change? The Case of the Mexican Payment for Ecosystem Services Programs
November 13 Roger Kasperson [in 124 Burrill Hall, 407 S Goodwin Ave.] Clark University
Closing the Gap between Science and Practice
January 29 Stephen Humphreys London School of Economics
Access to technologies for climate change adaptation and mitigation under international law
February 12 Maria Carmen Lemos University of Michigan
Knowledge, Democracy and Adaptive Capacity – Water Management in Brazil
March 12 Hans G. Bohle Geography, University of Bonn
Climate Change as a Security Risk: Water, Food and Health in India
April 23 Neil Adger [via video streaming] University of East Anglia
Transforming the World – Can we Adapt to the Coming Climate?
School scientists chart arctic sea ice
School scientists chart arctic sea ice; the long-term trend is toward an ice-free summer » NY Times article.
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October 2009 : Professor Sue Kieffer's work on the possibility of water on Enceladus highlighted in Astrobiology magazine |
Astrobiology magazine reports on recent work by Professor Kieffer of the School. Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, has been observed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft to produce giant geysers of water. Professor Kieffer and her co-authors have indicated that these plumes may be the result of sublimation, lowering hopes that a vast, sub-surface ocean lies beneath the icy crust.
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October 2009 : Professor Ashwini Chhatre's Forest protection work highlighted in NEW SCIENTIST |
Professor Chhatre tracked 80 forests over 15 years and as, highlighted in New Scientist, found that we should give the forests back to the local people to save them: " ...our findings show that we can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities".
May 2009: Inaugural graduation of ESES majors
We are proud to announce our first year of ESES graduates! Far left: Ian Canterbury, contributor of the photo (and 2009 President of the ESES undergraduate society), middle: Daniel Hauser, 2nd from right: Nick Rojas, and far right: Nicole Cox.
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June 2008: Professor Ashwini Chhatre publishes in Science |
The article outlines three features of contemporary forest governance as decentralization of management in degraded forests, logging concessions in publicly-owned commercially valuable forests, and timber certification, primarily in temperate forests. Although a majority of forests continue to be owned formally by governments, the effectiveness of forest governance is increasingly independent of formal ownership. Growing and competing demands for food, biofuels, timber, and environmental services will pose severe challenges to effective forest governance in the future, especially in conjunction with the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. It argues for a greater role for community and market actors in forest governance.
October 2007: School professors and scientists share in NObel peace prize 
We are proud to announce that four University of Illinois Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) Faculty, Professors Atul Jain, Michael Schlesinger, John Walsh, and Don Wuebbles, and four Department Research Scientists, Natalia Andronova, Katharine Hayhoe, Ken Patten, and William Chapman, served as authors, reviewers, or contributors of reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All DAS faculty played leadership roles in the preparation of the IPCC reports, and with the DAS research scientists share in Nobel Peace Prize with their IPCC colleagues around the world.
The Nobel committee cited the IPCC's two decades of scientific reports, saying they have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming." The IPCC, a group representing over 180 governments, operates under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. It commissions assessments of global climate change by hundreds of scientists who are experts in the field.