The Environmental Collaboratory
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Climate Hub Grant Program

Supported by the Waverly Street Foundation, the Environmental Collaboratory's Climate Hub Grant Program supports ideation and collaboration around project ideas aimed at strengthening Drexel’s commitment to sustainability and climate resilience, creating new connections across academic and administrative units, and incorporating community knowledge and expertise with the potential to scale at levels meaningful to Drexel’s 2030 Strategic Plan.

The Environmental Collaboratory is pleased to support the formation of four collaborative teams of faculty, students and staff in support of research, creative and scholastic endeavors that will further catalyze Drexel’s Areas of Excellence & Opportunity (AEOs) in Sustainability and Climate Resilience. The Climate Hub Grant Program was shaped by the input and experience of over 45 faculty, students and staff who submitted ideas, convened to identify areas of overlap and synergy, and ultimately formed collaborative teams to advance meaningful projects. We are pleased to support the following teams with funding with to continue to develop their projects through the 2024-2025 academic year and beyond.

Climate Hub Student Project Fund

The Climate Hub Student Project Fund is the first grant available to Drexel students for the support and funding of project-based, community-facing, and student-led immersive learning experiences at Drexel within the climate sphere.
learn about the climate hub fund

Projects

Project Team: Steve Vasquez Dolph (College of Arts and Sciences), Annette Gadegbeku (College of Medicine and Dornsife School of Public Health), Casey Hanna (School of Education), Magdalena Maczynska (Teaching and Learning Center), Scott Quitel (Close School of Entrepreneurship)

This project has established a seven-week transdisciplinary faculty learning community designed to foster relationships, resource-sharing, and collaborations around climate justice education — empowering faculty with the knowledge, connections, and cultural humility needed to develop responsive and reciprocal environmentally focused classrooms, courses and curricula.

The 2024 Incubator cohort included 10 faculty members and 2 students (graduate and undergraduate). In an exit survey, participants reported numerous areas of impact, including:

  • Implementation of pedagogical strategies modelled in sessions (including place-based learning activities, jigsaw activities, freewriting, reflection prompts, learning stations, playlists, creative assignments, climate affect surveys, hands-on activities, interactive lecture techniques, videos, and visualizations).

  • Developing connections and collaborations across academic disciplines, including engineering, architecture, education, global studies, biology, medicine, ecology, and literary studies.
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  • Assignment, course, and curriculum design initiatives

  • A less tangible but critical mind-shift exemplified by the following testimonial: “I am inspired to redevelop my courses in more humanizing ways that center my students and their relations—emotions, connections to lands, waters, and other species.”

Incubator participants committed to proposing a new or substantially revised campus-based climate justice education project. The list of Spring 2024 deliverables includes five new courses (in Ecology, Engineering, and Global Studies); three course re-designs (in Biology, Architecture, and Education, including re-design of foundational course in Certificate in Creativity and Innovation Program); and the design of a new eight-week middle-school mini-course sequence developed in collaboration with community partners.

 

Project Team: Ben Kalina (Westphal College of Media Arts & Design – Film and TV),Jessica Creane (Westphal – Game Design), James McKinney (Westphal – Music Industry), Franco Montalto (College of Engineering), Naida Montes (Community Engagement Practitioner)

This project will explore how storytelling, visualization and interactive tools, including film, virtual/augmented reality, AI and games, could help Philadelphia citizens reimagine the futures of their neighborhoods and inform a community-driven design process for the city’s built environment. It aims to leverage the creative and scientific resources of the team and Drexel to enable communities to present their own visions for sustainable and climate resilient communities.

Project Team: Jonathan Deutsch (College of Nursing and Health Professions (CNHP) – Food and Hospitality Management), Brandy-Joe Milliron (CNHP – Nutrition Sciences), Scott Quitel (Entrepreneurship), Hasan Ayaz (School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems), Rajneesh Suri (Provost’s Office and LeBow College of Business), Rachel Sherman (CNHP – Drexel Food Lab), Caroline Schauer (Engineering), Dee Nicholas (Westphal – Design Research)

This project aims to leverage the University’s diverse sustainability course offerings to develop an inter-college sustainable food systems and built environment undergraduate program. This University-wide initiative will enhance connections among current offerings, promote classes across colleges, and create opportunities for students to conduct research with faculty, participate in community outreach, and pilot their own projects in an incubator space.

Project Lead: Kacy Gao (College of Arts and Sciences student and TEC Co-op), with support from students in the Colleges of Computing & Informatics, Nursing and Health Professions, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Media Arts & Design and Business.

This project will create a small-grant program (<$5,000) funding up to five cross-disciplinary, student-led projects with faculty mentors, spanning climate and sustainability, environmental and justice-based topics. TEC will facilitate faculty-student pairing for the projects, with its co-op student serving as its inaugural student project lead.