How Columbia Students and Local Activists Are Co-Creating Climate Justice

"Environmental policies cannot be imposed from the top down; they must be built from the ground up. This semester, students formed interdisciplinary teams to work directly with two powerhouse community organizations: South Bronx Unite and the Staten Island Urban Center."

"Once we were putting it into practice and seeing what the roadblocks can be... you can see why it matters so much. It is a more relevant approach and that is how we create long-term change that is equitable."

"There's always a back-and-forth involved in... where the rubber meets the road between what someone needs and what you're able to produce. Students must learn to navigate real-world ambiguity rather than fixed assignment parameters."

Building Climate Justice: Co-Creative Coastal Resilience Planning is an undergraduate course that has evolved from an experimental pilot into a sought-after multidisciplinary program. Led by three faculty members and a teaching assistant, the course enrolls 17 students who work directly with community organizations including South Bronx Unite and the Staten Island Urban Center. The curriculum's core philosophy rejects top-down environmental policymaking in favor of ground-up co-creation. Students form interdisciplinary teams to address real community needs, experiencing the uncertainty and back-and-forth negotiation inherent in professional practice. This approach proves more challenging than traditional service learning but creates equitable, long-term change by teaching students to navigate real-world ambiguity and adapt to evolving client needs.

Read at State of the Planet