Climate Change Solutions Minor

Rebecca McPherson
Contributing Writer

New this year is a Climate Change Solutions minor led by Professor Lucas Kellett and Professor Julia Daly. The new Climate Change Solutions Minor is an interdisciplinary study pulling from a multitude of programs including: Anthropology, Biology, Geography, Geology, Business, Environmental Science, Environmental Policy and Planning, Health, Philosophy and Political Science.

“We want students to have a critical and intersectional awareness of climate change,” Professor Kellett said. This minor provides that.

By pulling from many disciplines, the students will have opportunities to see how climate change affects and is handled in multiple areas of study.

Although this minor may be easier to complete for science majors who may have taken many of the classes for their major anyway, any student is able to take this minor.

“Everyone can have a hand in fixing climate change,” Kellett said.

With the versatility of this, you are able to implement it into any major. Professor Kellett advises students that this minor will help no matter what field you go into.

“This minor allows students to go into whichever profession they go into and be able to integrate these climate change solutions into their professions,” he said.

Not only is UMF teaching climate change solutions in the classroom but they are also actively making strides around campus to be more sustainable. As an institution, UMF has been working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through heating and waste emissions. Making campus a more sustainable place is not only a UMF initiative, but is quickly becoming an initiative on campuses around the country. Luckily, UMF has been ahead of the curve—UMF has dramatically reduced number two heating emissions with the implementation of the biomass plant. Additionally, over the last decade, UMF has reduced emissions by at least ⅓, greatly reducing our effect on the environment.

“What is great about this minor is it is connecting what we have been doing around campus and we are now teaching that in the classroom,” Kellett said.

The hope for the climate change solutions minor is that it will one day become a major, focusing on ways to protect the environment and try to fix this crisis we call climate change. Professor Kellett adds that this minor is a “small spring board for UMF graduates who are interested in this huge problem of anthropogenic climate change.”