Your Support Matters
Your gift to the Program in Climate and Environmental Studies helps us to achieve our mission of discovery, exploration, and the creation of knowledge—to find solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
From Our Director
Welcome to Vanderbilt’s Program in Climate and Environmental Studies! We are a group of highly-engaged faculty and students who are committed to addressing the twinned crises of our time—climate change and environmental degradation.
Our program’s innovative interdisciplinary focus, along with its use of experiential and collaborative pedagogies, enable students to integrate a wide variety of methodologies, perspectives, and disciplinary knowledges as they work together to forge solutions to pressing real-world problems. Supported by our team of distinguished and dedicated faculty from across the university, students learn to engage with their intellectual passions as well as the wider community. Besides offering innovative course work, our program encourages students to participate in exciting research, internship, and immersion opportunities. As activists, advocates, creators, and leaders, our students and alumni are changing the world in fields as wide ranging as research, business, health, the government, nonprofits, and the arts.
We hope you will find your home in the Program in Climate and Environmental Studies. We have lots of fun together—enjoying events and outings of all types—even as we roll up our sleeves to do the hard, yet rewarding, work of creating a more just and sustainable planet. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Teresa Goddu
Director of Climate and Environmental Studies
Professor of English
Why Climate and Environmental Studies?
To effectively address climate change and environmental degradation, students must have a broad understanding of the contexts and impacts that surround them. Drawing from a range of disciplines, including climate and environmental science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and the humanities, this program allows students to examine human interaction with climate and the environment. Students learn interdisciplinary and innovative approaches and are prepared for careers in law, business, community organizing, medicine, urban planning, advocacy, finance, education, and more.
Students in climate and environmental studies gain the following key proficiencies:
Interdisciplinary and Systems Thinking
Students learn to understand complex climate and environmental issues by integrating a variety of methods and perspectives.
Creativity and Innovation
Students experiment with diverse ideas to generate novel solutions to challenging climate and environmental problems.
Collaborative Problem Solving and Community Engagement
Students develop rigorous responses to real-world challenges in cooperation with community, government, and business stakeholders.
Ethical Leadership and Advocacy
Students hone their skills in principled decision making, consensus building, and strategic action to promote a more just and sustainable world.
Resilience and Resolve
Students approach the challenges of climate and environmental crises with courage and compassion as they adapt to a changing world to forge new pathways forward.
Program History
The Program in Climate and Environmental Studies emerged from a faculty development initiative called the Cumberland Project, which sought to encourage innovations in climate and environmental education by providing faculty with intensive workshop opportunities to design courses with significant climate and environmental components. This project helped faculty to develop initial courses in climate and environmental studies.
With these courses in place, the College of Arts and Science faculty launched the Program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies in 2012 by offering a minor in environmental and sustainability studies. In 2022, the faculty launched an innovative interdisciplinary major in climate studies, and the program was renamed Climate and Environmental Studies. In 2026, the program launched a new interdisciplinary major and minor that focuses on experiential and place-based pedagogies as well as community-engaged learning.
In addition to housing the climate and environmental studies major and minor, the program also hosts lectures and events, assists students with procuring research and internship opportunities, and tracks alumni placements.
Contact Us
The Program in Climate and Environmental Studies is located on the second floor of Garland Hall in Vanderbilt’s historic campus core. For general inquiries, please call (615) 322-7540.
Contact the appropriate member of our administration for any program-specific questions.
Building and Delivery Address
Program in Climate and Environmental Studies
Vanderbilt University
2117 West End Ave.
228 Garland Hall
Nashville, TN 37235
Mailing Address
Program in Climate and Environmental Studies
Vanderbilt University
PMB 401510
Nashville, TN 37235-1510