This article was co-written by William Walker VI, a sophomore in the School of Sustainability and Paul Prosser, Project Partner Liaison at the School of Sustainability. 

All students in Arizona State University’s Master of Sustainability Solutions (MSUS) program are required to design and execute a culminating experience project, with the goal being to partner with a community to confront a current sustainability issue. For their project, students Maryam Abdul Rashid, Skyliana Dosier, and Omar Sanchez are creating awareness about student homelessness, breaking down the corresponding stigmas, and improving access to services for homeless students in partnership with ASU’s Dean of Students office. The project explores the three fronts where homeless students experience the most insecurity: housing, health, and food.

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Campus Student Sustainability Initiatives (CSSI) is a student project-oriented club on campus where students engage in sustainability projects. They recently participated in the M3F festival where they helped implement sustainability practices applicable to the music industry. Read more about what they did from their President Casey Rapacki in her Q&A.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the globe and the U.S., more and more Americans are facing food insecurity. Now more than ever, organizations like United Food Bank  and other Feeding America members are critical to ensuring that no one goes to bed hungry — but they can't do it alone. Please consider donating your time, talent, or treasure here, and together we can weather this crisis! 

This blog post was written by Arizona State University graduate student Liz Broussard. In addition to studying Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership at ASU, Liz serves as a project coordinator at the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), where she supports the Mississippi Food Justice Collaborative, a network of organizations working to improve access to healthy food and transform Mississippi food systems.   

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In response to the COVID-19 virus that has made a sudden, profound global impact, Dr. Osvaldo Sala along with other scholars within the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University have co-authored their most recent article "COVID-19: The Ultimate Stress Test for Our Global Futures." This article details the catastrophic consequences from lack of preparedness of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides solutions on how to effectively move forward from this crisis and how to minimize the devastating effects from future outbreaks.

In the latest thought leader piece from the Global Futures Laboratory, "COVID-19: The Ultimate Stress Test for Our Global Futures," 21 co-authors from across disciplines at Arizona State University explore how COVID-19 is shaking our societal foundations and revealing how vulnerable our systems are to shocks — even though we've long had evidence that something like this could happen. The authors discuss what this pandemic means for society, make connections to the way we as a global population are handling climate change, and outline opportunities for optimal future responses.

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CSPO, ASU's Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, edits Issues in Science and Technology , a science policy journal published in collaboration with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Issues is launching a newsletter, and you can sign up on the journal's homepage at issues.org.

The website's homepage also features articles on the COVID-19 pandemic, including an article by sustainability scientist Dan Sarewitz on the lesson to be learned from coronavirus on the appropriate role of science in helping to guide us toward a better future.

The global pandemic has made digital technology in education more important than it ever has been before. In an April 8 USAID Digi-Know Webinar, sustainability scientists Mary Jane Paramentier and Faheem Hussain will present recent developments in education delivery using digital technologies and the emergence of artificial intelligence in education. They will also highlight the development of an independent, solar-powered, and educational library that provides localized educational content to resource-constrained locations around the world.

If you are interested in learning more about innovative digital initiatives transforming education in underserved and under-resourced areas of the world, or wondering how digital education might be relevant to your work, Register Now for this Zoom webinar.

On Tuesday, April 7, ASU will host one of 52 simultaneous state-by-state webinars as part of a virtual teach-in on climate solutions and justice presented by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. Sustainability scientist Jennifer Richter will moderate a two-part conversation, first with Patrick Graham of The Nature Conservancy, Hank Courtwright of Salt River Project, and Gary Dirks of ASU; then with youth voices Brian Mecinas and Perla Sanchez of Arizona Youth Climate Strike, and ASU senior Sarah Lucia Barbey representing Local to Global Justice.

The Solve Climate event features webinars with varying start times by state. Faculty and teaching instructors are encouraged to make a class about climate by assigning students to watch their state's webinar, then discuss it in the next class. Solve Climate offers teaching guides for discussion. International universities are welcome to participate.

Visit solveclimateby2030.org for more information. Register to attend the ASU event on our website.

According to the United Nations, the year 2050 could see more than 5 billion people suffer water shortages as a result of climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies. This forecast means that now more than ever, it’s important to create new ways of obtaining sustainable drinking water. One person working to make that a reality is Arizona State University professor Cody  Friesen.

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Arianne Cease and Ariane Middel, two senior sustainability scientists in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, recently received the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award. The award is given to the country’s most promising young faculty and it provides them with funding for five years to pursue outstanding research.

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With virtual meetings and classes being the norm these days, the university's Marketing Hub has created several backdrops that you can use for all of your Zoom calls. Download one or more ASU-themed virtual backgrounds and show your Sun Devil spirit!

Not sure how to change your virtual background? Follow these instructions, and happy Zooming!

Sustainability scientist Tom Seager has been part of the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies every year since 2013. This year's series on resilient healthcare infrastructure has gone virtual, adding new content related to the COVID-19 response to its ISSST2020 Keynote Series.

You can subscribe to the ISSST YouTube channel to find talks from previous ISSST programs, interviews, discussions, and new content generated by the ISSST2020 Thematic and Sessions Chairs.

A medical condition forced Samantha "Sammy" Selway to transition to online schooling. It was while she was in the process of doing this that she found Arizona State University's sustainability degree.

"After I had decided to leave [another university] because of the Misophonia, the director of their Disability Resource Center told me about ASU’s online programs and then I found the sustainability major," Selway said. "It was perfect and looking back, having to leave in-person college seems like a blessing in disguise."

Selway is a senior at ASU pursuing an online Bachelor of Science in sustainability with a focus in energy, materials and technology. Continue reading to get acquainted with Selway, her propensity to power through the obstacles of life and her research project.

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As this pandemic unfolds before our eyes, it is clear that it will shape our generation much the way the Great Depression and the World Wars shaped the generations of those times. So says sustainability scientist Mark Roseland and his co-author Ray Tomalty in a new piece published at Medium.com.

Social distancing raises profound questions for our approaches to sustainable cities. Sustainable cities and a suite of related terms such as urban sustainability, smart growth, eco-cities, new urbanism, and sustainable communities share a revulsion toward urban (and rural) sprawl, and a prescription for more compact urban development.

In some ways social distancing can help us see what more sustainable cities could be like. These include reductions in travel and air pollution, and increases in digital connectedness and respect for social institutions. But there are downsides, as well.

About the project

The City of Apache Junction (the City) has over one hundred mobile home and recreational vehicle parks and subdivisions within its city limits. Many of these parks were built in the 1950s, before the city was officially incorporated, and thus pre-date city code. As a result, many of the parks are now relatively outdated, and in some cases, have significant code violations that pose a safety and health risk to residents. Although the parks are an affordable option for low-income residents, they can be perceived as detrimental to the city’s image, as conditions and amenities can vary significantly from one place to another. Arizona State University’s master capstone student, Maggie Dellow, saw the need to establish a clear path forward for the out-of-code parks, without reducing affordable housing stock in the city. Her recommendations included solutions to define minimum standards and processes that would both allow for economic redevelopment and prevent low-income residents from losing access to housing. The work was recognized by the Arizona Planning Association for Arizona's Best Student Project Award, 2019. The work also received fourth place in the nation for Best Student Project, 2019 at the American Planning Association.

Read the full summary report here.

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One of the most important awards an early-career scientist can receive is the NSF CAREER Award. Arianne Cease, assistant professor in the School of Sustainability and affiliated faculty in the School of Life Sciences, recently received the call telling her that she would be an NSF CAREER recipient for 2020. Besides being prestigious, the CAREER provides funding for five years, giving the principal investigator a solid foundation on which to build their research program.

Cease is the director of the Global Locust Initiative (GLI). Locusts are grasshoppers that migrate together to a new location to exploit fresh resources. A locust plague can devastate local agriculture and bring starvation to untold numbers of people. The GLI is focused on interdisciplinary locust research and management to reduce or eliminate the harm caused by these migrating insects.

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Arizona State University’s Healthy Urban Environments Initiative awarded an innovative team of science students from the Arizona College Prep-Erie Campus with a $50,000 grant for their work on a heat stroke prevention device. With funding, these 9th and 10th graders will build a prototype of the device to test on student athletes.

According to Rachna Nath, a science teacher for the ACP-Erie campus, she and the students have been working with Chandler Innovations on the project since August 2019. After testing the device, they will report all data collected to the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, of which HUE is a unit.

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The research community is facing unique challenges during this crisis, from the unprecedented disruptions to education and academic and research programs, to how to best support public health efforts through our knowledge and expertise.

As we face new and unique challenges in confronting the COVID-19 epidemic, NSF is prioritizing the health and safety of the research community. NSF understands the effects this challenge will have on NSF-funded research and facilities, and they are committed to providing the greatest flexibilities to support your health and safety as well as your work.

In a new announcement, Important Notice No. 146, and a policy implementation guideline document, NSF explains that they are continually updating guidance and online resources to keep you informed. NSF is also accepting proposals for nonmedical, non-clinical-care RAPID research on coronavirus, as our ability to better understand the virus and how to effectively respond will be crucial to public health efforts.

Editor's note: Although this summer's Tokyo Olympics have been postponed due to COVID-19, there is a possibility they will be rescheduled to next summer. With Tokyo's extreme summer heat and humidity, dangers to health would remain. The following information holds true for August in Tokyo, including August 2021.

This summer’s Tokyo Olympics are expected to be one of the hottest Olympic Games on record. According to Jennifer Vanos, an assistant professor in Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, long-term climatology tells us that the question is not if it will be hot and humid in Tokyo, but rather how much hotter than normal it could be. In an effort to obtain more precision on these marginal differences and how the extreme heat will impact athletes, spectators and volunteers, Vanos and an interdisciplinary group of global researchers just published a paper in the journal Temperature.

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By: Nakasha Shoyinka, ASU Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Certificate student. 

The leafy green city of Yuma, AZ was a sight to see and provided so much information about agriculture practices in southern Arizona. The ASU Food Policy and Sustainability cohort was given the honor to have a panel discussion with four amazing individuals who work for the USDA in different capacities. After having a filling breakfast, we had an up close and personal chat with Mike Stevens (FSA), Raney Embree (FSA), Valentino Reyes (NRCS), and Godfrey Hinds (Rural Development). We asked questions and gained insight about the different roles and positions the USDA has on impacting farmers, the land, and conservation.

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