Description
CEGU was established in 2022 as the culmination of a years-long collaboration between the Program on the Global Environment (PGE), the Committee on Geographical Sciences (CGS), and faculty across the social sciences and humanities whose research and teaching address the societal and spatial dimensions of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other kinds of environmental transformation. As part of this overhaul, our updated undergraduate major in environment, geography, and urbanization builds upon the experiential and site-based offerings of its predecessor, the major in environmental and urban studies.
Donations are applied to...
Your gift will support the establishment and development of transformative experiences for students beyond the classroom. Alongside experiential learning and community engagement, the program supports diverse forms of pedagogy that benefit substantially from fieldwork and/or data collection and analysis, and other forms of engagement on site. Specifically, the funds support field trips and site visits, guest speakers and community practitioner lectures and workshops, faculty development of new courses and research programs at US-based and global sites, and internships for students with faculty and in community-based organizations. Your philanthropy will also allow CEGU to support lodging, travel, and other expenses for students not covered by existing programs, ensuring equitable access.
Personal Message
“Doing fieldwork alongside class discussions and readings [is a] combination [that] is mutually reinforcing. You have an academic basis and an intellectual rigor—which is something we’re really familiar with at the University of Chicago—but also a connection to how that is actually working in the lives and communities of this particular area. Doing research and fieldwork alongside coursework means there is a firm foundation in the academic discipline and also a connection to how that manifests in the real world. You could do field research in the Calumet [region along the southern shore of Lake Michigan] during the summer, but that wouldn’t necessarily have academic context. You could learn about the Calumet just by reading a bunch of books, but then you don’t get the lived experience of people and of nonhumans in the area as well.”—Alison Anastasio, former assistant instructional professor, CEGU, speaking of her experience teaching in the spring 2022 “Calumet Quarter”
Why are donations necessary?
With this new capacity and support for the updated major, CEGU is well positioned to continue and enhance its portfolio of experiential, environmental, community-based learning, design, research, and practice. While we have secured funding to support the initial development and launch of these opportunities, we now seek further support to ensure their ongoing success as a mainstay of CEGU’s undergraduate program.