By Bethany Everts | University Honors
If you had $250 billion to fight climate change, where would you begin?
This is the exact challenge taken on by students in the University Honors Program seminar, Living with Our Changing Climate (UHON 395H).
Eric Hunt, an extension educator in the School of Natural Resources, designed the project to move beyond traditional lecturing and give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in literature and data, to prove what is going on Earth’s changing climate. Hunt is particularly passionate about the project, recognizing that his students will have to live with and adapt to climate change.
“At their age, they tend to be more creative than people who get to be 50 or 60 years old, which is the typical age of lawmakers," Hunt said.
Although the project’s scope may have seemed initially intimidating, Hunt divided the task into manageable steps and assigned course participants to one of four distinct regions of the United States – West Coast, Heartland, Gulf Coast and Northeast. Each group was strategically composed of students with diverse majors and personalities to counter groupthink and create balance in climate approaches.
Aidan Hand, a senior biological sciences major, found the group dynamics to be particularly rewarding.
“My group-mates in other majors had differing ideas and perspectives that I likely wouldn't have thought of on my own,” Hand said. “Projects like this would never be done by only one person in the real world, so it's more realistic to real climate change mitigation efforts.”
Read the full article at https://news.unl.edu/article/honors-students-develop-strategies-to-foster-climate-hope