SchillerNow is the newsletter of the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society at Boston College. Please enjoy the following issues.
In this issue you’ll find a welcome note from Interim Seidner Family Executive Director Dunwei Wang; highlights from some of our biggest events of the year, including the COP30 Symposium and the Climate Is Every Story series. We also celebrated new research by Institute Professor of Global Sustainability Hanqin Tian and Assistant Director, Programs Kaley McCarty being honored with an Ever to Excel Award.
In this issue we announced Dunwei Wang as the Interim Seidner Family Executive Director of the Schiller Institute. We also promoted the continuation of our yearlong collaborations with the Journalism and Environmental Studies Programs (Climate Is Every Story); Center for Teaching Excellence (Teaching to Inspire Changemakers); Office of Technology Transfer and Licensing (Intellectual Property Series); and the Climate Reveal podcast.
After six years as Seidner Family Executive Director, Laura Steinberg announced that she will be stepping down. Other highlights from this issue included achievements by our Core faculty members: Hanqin Tian receiving the Bert Bolin Award and Lecture from the American Geophysical Union (AGU); Edson Severnini launching the Schiller Informal Lunch Series (SILS); Jier Huang being awarded a Department of Enegry grant; and Yi Ming being awarded a Faculty Fellowship.
This issue highlighted the experience of our 2025 Working For and With Communities cohort, who completed their project in Santiago, Chile over the summer. We also announced multiple speaker series for the upcoming academic year and participation in the Environmental Ethics in Dialogue conference, and celebrated Schiller Core faculty member Jier Huang being awarded a National Science Foundation grant.
In this issue, we highlighted multiple large events hosted by the institute, including the COP29 Symposium, the third annual Eagles Sustainability Competition, and Nobel Prize winner Moungi Bawendi's record crowd attendance for Schiller’s Distinguished Lecture Series. The issue features an article summarizing the three speakers from this year’s series.
Edson Severnini joined the Schiller Institute as our newest Core faculty member, with a joint appointment in the Economics Department. We also highlighted the experiences of our COP29 delegates while in Baku, Azerbaijan and looked forward to an event filled semester to come.
Our Schiller Core faculty and staff hit the road. Seidner Family Executive Director Laura Steinberg spoke with PwC’s growing climate and sustainability team and at the DEVCOM Soldier Center in Natick, MA. Schiller Core faculty members Hanqin Tian and Yi Ming joined executive leaders in Greater Boston, including Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, at the Globe Summit 2024, the Globe’s flagship annual conference.
Meet our inaugural cohort of Schiller affiliate faculty, a group of extraordinary faculty who extend the reach and impact of the Institute. We also announced the launch of our student-facing newsletter, The Scoop; and featured highlights from the summer including hosting the largest international climate modeling conference and the 2024 Working For and With Communities cohort, who completed a project in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
Our Schiller Core faculty and staff were busy once again in this issue. Jier Huang led a three-day symposium at the American Chemical Society meeting; Hanqin Tian was a co-author on three recent papers examining and measuring greenhouse gasses and nitrogen and carbon cycles in US cropland, global lakes and reservoirs, and global forest; and Yi Ming co-authored an article outlining the physical science research needed to evaluate marine cloud brightening, and will serve as co-lead of NOAA’s newly formed Working Group on Precipitation.
In this issue we introduced Kaley McCarty as our new Assistant Director, Programs. Kaley helped host our COP28 Symposium, our first time sharing the experiences of the COP delegation with the BC community over a series of events throughout one day. We also announced Core faculty member Hanqin Tian as the inaugural director for the new Center for Earth Systems Science and Global Sustainability (CES3).
An issue of new beginnings: we announced a new computational research space for Core faculty members Yi Ming and Hanqin Tian; welcomed new research fellow Javiera Garcia-Meneses; and launched a new faculty search.
We celebrated the launch of two student-focused programs: the Student Board and the Working For & With Communities (WF&WC) program. The WF&WC cohort completed a project in Siem Reap, Cambodia over the summer. We also highlighted the Climate Change Professional Dinner and Networking Night, a partnership with the Career Center and Alumni Association to provide a networking opportunity for students to practice their networking skills with BC alumni working in climate change-related careers.
Lots of firsts in this issue, including the first Eagles Sustainability Competition where interdisciplinary student teams are challenged to propose solutions to a sustainability problem being faced by a department on campus. We also featured the first institute-led book club and co-sponsorship of BC’s first Make-a-thon.
We welcomed our newest Schiller core faculty member, Jier Huang! We also announced several new initiatives, including the new major in Global Public Health and the Common Good (administered by the Connell School of Nursing in partnership with the Schiller Institute); a new internal seed grant program; and the new Working For & With Communities student program.
In this issue we reported on the experiences of our COP27 delegates in Egypt and some interesting outcomes from one of our internal grant seed awardees. We also announced our first Poet Laureate, undergraduate Jesse Julian; and recapped the event held to officially open our building, 245 Beacon St.
Our first issue of SchillerNow! Lots to celebrate, including the hiring of our first two Core faculty members Hanqin Tian and Yi Ming, and our journey of moving into 245 Beacon Street. The institute also took the lead on managing the university’s COP delegation and we previewed events related to that year’s conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society
245 Beacon St.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-3503
schiller.institute@bc.edu
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