By Ann Marie Deer Owens
The Program in Climate and Environmental Studies has launched several key initiatives this fall, including a new curriculum infused with interdisciplinary and experiential learning, to better equip students for the ongoing work to reverse climate change and environmental degradation. The program’s priorities include increased opportunities for community engagement and meaningful student internships.
The College of Arts and Science launched a minor in environmental and sustainability studies in 2012, which expanded into the nation’s first climate studies major in 2022. The recent changes were driven by a number of factors, including student and alumni feedback, ensuring the coursework prepares students to succeed in the ever-evolving field, and support and encouragement from the College of Arts and Science’s Dean’s Office to innovate and grow the program.
“We wanted to create a curriculum that was truly interdisciplinary in training and practice,” said Teresa Goddu, director of the program, professor of English, and professor of climate and environmental studies. “One goal was developing more of a sense of interconnectedness between climate and the environment, which were previously separate tracks of study.”
Coursework
“Our undergraduates recommended more core courses, instead of how we structured the original major, which had one required introductory class and then a ‘menu’ of choices in multiple disciplines,” Goddu said.
In response, the faculty added two intermediate interdisciplinary courses to the core sequence: one focused on climate and environmental policy and the other on climate and environmental humanities. Starting in fall 2027, all CES majors will also complete a senior project where they put their classroom learning into practice by engaging in relevant work in the community.
The program continues to be highly interdisciplinary; instructors hail from a wide range of departments across the university and students select from elective courses in anthropology, biological sciences, English, history, political science, earth and environmental sciences, and more. Adding to the program’s interdisciplinarity is its new home in the stunningly renovated Garland Hall, creating more opportunities for faculty to collaborate across departments.
New faculty
The Program in Climate and Environmental Studies is also expanding its scholarly expertise through hiring two new faculty members this fall: Alina M. McIntyre, assistant professor of the practice in climate and environmental studies, and David T. Shipko, Mellon Assistant Professor in Climate and Environmental Studies.
McIntyre recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northeastern University and Silent Spring Institute. While earning her doctorate in environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health, she collaborated with a nonprofit to reduce extreme heat and air pollution in an environmental justice community. “In partnership with residents, we conducted extensive heat monitoring to identify hot spots and encouraged policymakers to direct needed funds for cooling interventions,” McIntyre said.
She has a strong interest in evidence-based research to inform policy and looks forward to helping students learn more about the importance of advocacy to enact change. “I was drawn to Vanderbilt for the chance to be part of a vibrant and growing interdisciplinary program,” McIntyre said.
Shipko, who earned a bachelor of arts in cinema-television production from the University of Southern California, worked for DreamWorks Animation before enrolling in graduate school. He earned a doctorate in English from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a junior lecturer.
“As a science fiction scholar, I am interested in how speculative narratives shape the way we think about the past and the present,” Shipko said. He is writing a book about the relationship between climate denial and science fiction. Shipko aims to teach students to think critically about the ways narratives that include journalism, fantasy, and science fiction shape how we view the climate crisis.
In addition, Meredith Degyansky is a new Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow and cultural anthropologist who is based in CES. She earned her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has a book project about her experiences working with an immigrant-led cooperative land project in western Massachusetts.
Experiential learning
Students are encouraged to participate in research, internships, and Immersion opportunities that help prepare them to engage across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors on critical issues related to climate and the environment.
Place-based learning is embedded into several CES courses, with students exploring Nashville neighborhoods to learn about the effects of urban heat and mapping yardscaping practices to gauge their impact on ecology and human health.
“Two cohorts of students in my Business, Society and the Environment course have completed research for Clearloop, a Nashville-based solar energy company,” said Zdravka Tzankova, associate professor of the practice in climate and environmental studies. As director of undergraduate studies, she also helps facilitate research and internships for individual students with nonprofits like the Nashville Tree Foundation and Metro Nashville Government’s sustainability division. “I am working with colleagues at the Vanderbilt Career Center to create improved, more structured pathways for students interested in careers in the public and nonprofit sector,” she said.
Thanks to generous donor support, CES has provided fellowships the past two summers to selected undergraduates pursuing unpaid research and internships with high social impact. These opportunities, which have ranged from geological field research on glaciers to environmental justice advocacy, have the potential to shape students’ professional trajectories.
In fall 2025, the 20th anniversary of the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, faculty from CES and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences led a field trip to New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta. Students traced the structural legacies of slavery and plantation economies to the contemporary disparities in environmental and climate vulnerabilities in southern Louisiana and New Orleans, while exploring the forces that shaped the trajectory of the Katrina disaster for the marginalized populations of New Orleans.
This fall, CES will host a field trip to Mound Bottom, an ancient Native American mound center in Cheatham County, Tenn. Brooke Ackerly, professor of political science and climate and environmental studies, and Tennessee State Archeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf are co-directing the trip, which is open to all students. They will focus on how climate change affected the population and the relationship between religion, agriculture, and community hierarchies.
Career support
Tzankova has played an integral role in building student connections to the blossoming network of CES graduates working in green fields of interest, such as renewable energy and energy transitions, environmental consulting, advocacy, and green finance.
For example, Danait Issac, BA’24, currently a law student at New York University, spent the first two years after graduation working at Girl + Environment, an environmental justice nonprofit. In summer 2025, Isaac collaborated with Tzankova to mentor CES students completing internships there. These internships were unpaid but made financially feasible through CES funding set aside for the purpose of enabling this type of community-engaged experiential learning. A panel discussion with CES alumni returning for Reunion/Homecoming is in the works.
“We are eager to see the impact of our new interdisciplinary curriculum and strengthened resources on our students, as they become engaged citizens who not only dream better worlds but also build them into existence,” Goddu said.