Clean Teleconference Call July 15th, 2025
Abstract: Many of us have experience using an educational innovation that opens students' eyes to the urgency and scale of climate change and related challenges, or helps them see the potential of technological, policy, or economic solutions. But even the most effective educational tools do not 'go viral' – instead, they tend to be used by a small percentage of possible educators and, therefore, reach a small percentage of students. In this webinar, we'll explore the insights from a dynamic model we developed and described in a paper published in Nature Sustainability.We use the model to ask why these educational innovations do not scale rapidly and how scaling could be achieved. Our model and real-world examples show that community-based propagation can generate exponential growth and that, without it, we are unlikely to rapidly scale the educational innovations needed to build urgently needed capacity in sustainability.
Bio: Juliette Rooney-Varga directs the Climate Change Initiative, co-directs the Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy, and is a professor of Environmental Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is also a Research Affiliate at the MIT System Dynamics Group.
She has more than twenty years' experience as a scientist studying biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. Her current work focuses on translation of science to bridge the gap between scientific and societal understanding of climate change and sustainability. She develops and analyzes the impact of dynamic modeling and interactive simulations that enable people to learn for themselves about the climate and energy systems. These simulations bring current climate change and energy science to students, citizens, and policymakers at all levels and have been shown to motivate science-informed action.
She earned a Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire, an MS from Cornell University and a BA from Colby College.
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