By Pam McElwee & Marjorie Kaplan
Rutgers hosted the first ever Summer School in Sustainability Governance, led by RCEI Affiliates Pam McElwee and Rachael Shwom of Rutgers Department of Human Ecology as part of the RCEI signature initiative to build a Center for Sustainability and Governance in the Anthropocene (C-SAGA). Twenty-nine attendees from Rutgers plus 19 other institutions across the US, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UK came together to learn about governance issues, strengthen research capacities across a range of skills, and build a cohort of like-minded scholars. The students represented a wide range of social science disciplines (anthropology, economics/finance, geography, sociology, education, health sciences, political science, public policy and administration, environmental management, and global affairs) and the natural sciences (ecology and evolution, plant biology, marine affairs and biology). About half were early Ph.D. students in their first years of graduate school and the rest were late Ph.D. or postdocs.
Students heard from a range of Rutgers speakers, including RCEI Affiliates Atif Akin, Marjorie Kaplan, Lucas Marxen, Janice McDonnell, Cymie Payne, and Tom Rudel, alongside a keynote from Yukyan Lam of the New School. The attendees also formed working groups on food systems, climate, biodiversity/socio-ecological systems, marine and coastal areas and energy systems to practice building conceptual models and thinking creatively about filling existing governance gaps.
As one student said afterwards, “I know I speak for everyone when I say the discussions, insightful guest speakers, and opportunities for relationship-building were truly invaluable. Personally, I went into the program feeling uncertain about how to leverage my diverse interests and skills in a way that could meaningfully impact environmental justice and governance. After hearing from so many interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary speakers, I’ve been able to reframe my research and career interests with much greater confidence, new ideas, and a renewed level of motivation.”
Funding for the summer school was generously provided by NSF, RCEI, Rutgers Global, SEBS Global, and the Department of Human Ecology.