In elementary school, Sarah Collins first learned that fossil fuels are scarce resources we could eventually use up. This is some pretty deep stuff, even for a third grader. So it stuck, and that's why Collins came to ASU's School of Sustainability to earn her bachelor’s degree.

After she graduates next month, Collins hopes to join the Peace Corps to work on environmental issues in the Philippines. She is also planning to pursue a master’s degree in public policy.

Collins answered some questions about her time at ASU.

Question: What’s something you learned while at ASU — in the classroom or otherwise — that surprised you or changed your perspective?

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In the ASU Wrigley Institute's Project Cities program, students in departments across ASU - including public service, urban planning, theater, history, and sustainability - have been diligently crafting solutions for Apache Junction's most pressing environmental and social challenges. See their hard work presented to the City of Apache Junction at this semester's Project Cities Student Showcase.

Project Cities is an interdisciplinary partnership between local cities and the university. It pairs teams of students in ASU courses with challenges presented by cities to create innovative solutions for cities and promote academic and professional development among students.

The showcase will take place on Wednesday, April 25th, 2018, on the ASU Tempe campus in the Memorial Union, Room 207. It will last from 12:30pm to 3:30pm, with a poster discussion continuing afterwards. Light refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP here.

Think of a local spot you love to visit in your city. Is it a city park? A trailhead? A brewery or theater? If you live in the East Valley of the Phoenix area - or visit the East Valley or the Superstition Wilderness Area frequently - digital history students in an ASU Project Cities course project want to hear your answers.

The students are conducting a survey designed to identify the most important cultural landmarks of the East Valley – specifically, the Apache Junction area. The survey will inform the students’ suggestions for the City of Apache Junction to help improve geographical and cultural awareness and pride in the city.

This course project is one part of the Project Cities program’s year-long partnership with the City of Apache Junction. The partnership empowers ASU students to address the city’s environmental and social challenges through various course projects across multiple disciplines.

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In partnership with Conservation International, the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes will be hosting a series of speed talks by the ASU-Cl professors of practice on their respective research areas. This will be a great opportunity for faculty to learn more about their work and find out ways to get involved.

Wednesday, April 25, 9:25-10:25 a.m., ASU Tempe campus, Wrigley Hall 481. Light refreshments will be served. RSVP »

Click here to learn more about the ASU-CI partnership.

In partnership with Conservation International, the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes will be hosting a talk by CI CEO and ASU-CI Distinguished Professor of Practice M. Sanjayan titled, “Can nature save us? Stories from the natural world.”

The talk will take place on Tuesday, April 24, 2018 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. at ASU Tempe campus, Memorial Union, Mohave 236.

Sanjayan will be discussing the importance of nature to human wellbeing and the role we all play in conserving it.

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School of Sustainability undergraduate student Rett Evans shared his zero waste expertise on an episode of the Inside ASU podcast. The episode, called "Maroon and gold...and green? Sustainability at ASU," discussed the various initiatives Arizona State University is undertaking to become more sustainable.

The Inside ASU podcast, created by two ASU students, offers information to help prepare prospective or upcoming ASU students for their Sun Devil adventure.

Four ASU sophomores, including three in the School of Sustainability, will embark on an eight-week, two-summer journey to learn the ins and outs of sustainability research. As participants in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, they will spend eight weeks this summer with other students and faculty at one of four field locations learning how to conduct research.

Danielle Vermeer will be living and researching in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she will develop a model that can interpret different decisions and their outcomes in an interactive role playing simulation game. Elyse Kats will spend this summer at Northern Arizona University and various field locations throughout Arizona and Utah, like the Grand Canyon studying environmental conservation and policy, particularly water and land rights. Kelly Baker says she will work to bring together many different facets of activism and showcase that conservation does not only stand by the protection of land and ecosystems but also varying groups of people that have diverse backgrounds.

Next summer, these brilliant young minds will apply what they have learned to gain eight weeks of experience in an internship. In addition, they also will attend career development workshops each January and virtual mentoring meetings every month.

Representatives from 12 countries gathered at Arizona State University in April for the inaugural meeting of the Global Locust Initiative, a new research and action program designed to help scientists, governments, agribusiness workers and farmers cope with locust plagues.

The initiative, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, combines lab science, fieldwork and data modeling to help reduce locust outbreaks and the effects of plagues, with the goal to improve the well-being of farm communities and global sustainability.

The initiative is led by Senior Sustainability Scientist Arianne Cease, who describes her work in a six-minute KED Talk video, produced by ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

In the city of Apache Junction, just east of Phoenix, sharing ghost stories and advancing local social sustainability are complementary activities, according to a class of graduate students from ASU's School of Film, Dance and Theater.

In a course project coordinated by the ASU Wrigley Institute’s Project Cities program this semester, the students partnered with the City of Apache Junction to develop innovative ways to enrich the community’s historical awareness and strengthen the city’s brand. To do the trick, they’re leveraging the city’s rich Wild West history, complete with ghostly and superstitious tales.

The students have culminated their hard work in a performance titled “Positively Ghostly”, taking place on April 15th in Apache Junction. The students will reenact haunted tales both remembered and forgotten that are woven into Apache Junction’s history. The performance is free and open to all ages. It will take place from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at Flatiron Park (100 North Apache Trail). Free cookies will be served at 7:30 p.m.

In this special episode of the Future Cities podcast, a new type of knowledge is provided related to resilience. At the annual UREx SRN All Hands Meeting meeting held in late March, local Phoenix poets including Kimberly Koerth, Jacob Friedman, Rashaad Thomas, and Anna Flores read original poetry about Resilience, Equity, and Diversity (RED) in cities as part of the UREx La RED Poetry Event. The first half of the episode features the poems, the poets' inspirations, and what the poets hoped the audience would take away by listening to it. The second half of the episode features a discussion with several of the poets on the power of poetry as a tool for making our cities more resilient and equitable places to live.

If you have any questions about what you heard or have suggestions for future episodes, please e-mail us or find us on Twitter.

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, or Buzzsprout.

ASU is pleased to announce the appointment of Amanda Ellis as executive director, Hawaii & Asia-Pacific; director of strategic partnerships; and Senior Special Advisor for International Diplomacy, Sustainable Development and Inclusion for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. In this role, Ellis will create and cultivate international strategic partnerships and program initiatives that will include international sustainability, diplomacy and development, global gender issues, diversity and inclusion.

With her network of high level contacts from her time as Ambassador to the United Nations and at the World Bank Group, as well as demonstrated abilities to engage in advocacy, outreach, partnership and coalition building at the highest levels, Ellis will also support the full suite of sustainability experts across the Wrigley Institute to advance their research impact globally and to create relevant partnerships.

Until March 2016, Ellis served as New Zealand’s Head of Mission and Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. Ellis has also served as Deputy Secretary International Development and was the first woman to head the New Zealand Aid Programme.

Arizona State University has appointed Sanjeev Khagram, a world-renowned expert in global leadership, the international political economy, sustainable development and the data revolution, as the next director-general and dean of Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Khagram will join the board of directors of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and he will play a leadership role in the future of Thunderbird’s executive education programs.

Khagram has identified three areas in which he believes the Thunderbird School can take the lead in educating students from around the world: the global and transnational nature of the world, the cross-sectoral nature of the world, and the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation to comprehensive economic advancement.

DJ Donpasta, also known as Daniele De Michele, is an Italian performance artist and food advocate whose studies in economics drove him to food justice and activism. He performed at ASU as part of a multi-day visit co-sponsored by the Food Systems Transformation Initiative, the School of International Letters and Cultures, the School of Sustainability, the Herberger Institute Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs, and Aramark.

For his performance during the "Food Systems & Beyond: Food Reconnection" celebration,  Donpasta prepared plant-based Italian recipes on the patio of Engrained while mixing vinyl and chatting with  ASU students, staff, and faculty about issues affecting global food systems.

“When you start to work with food you start to understand the more important thing is that food is political,” De Michele said. “Food is production in the field, food is the work of the people, food is the health of the child and you can’t think about food if you can’t think of the quality of life of the people.”

The Global Drylands Center (GDC) celebrated its first six months with its official launch last Thursday. The amicable gathering hosted at the University Club brought together affiliates and faculty from diverse disciplines. A welcoming talk by GDC Director Dr. Osvaldo Sala highlighted early accomplishments, acknowledged the help and participation of affiliates and staff, and thanked the support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and ASU Wrigley Institute.

Following, ASU Wrigley Institute Director Gary Dirks highlighted the intersecting grounds of GDC and the ASU charter. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Natural Sciences Dean Ferrán García-Pichel also gave some words, offering a historic perspective of the center as an interesting analogy between the importance of history for science and the inception of GDC.

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An interview with Beth Polidoro, ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes deputy director and assistant professor of environmental chemistry in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, was published in today’s edition of ASU Now.

In this piece, Professor Polidoro provides key facts and insights on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

“The garbage patch was discovered in the late 1980’s. However, the size and amount of garbage has exponentially increased, especially over the past decade,” explains Polidoro. “Plastic use — and discards in general — have exponentially increased and are projected to reach more than 400 million tons per year by 2020.”

In the afternoon of Sunday, March 25, 2018, the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, in partnership with Plea for the Sea and Lightkeepers Foundation, hosted a film screening and expert panelist discussion about the vaquitas, the most endangered marine mammal in the world.

The vaquita is a small porpoise that can only be found in the northern waters of the Gulf of California, Mexico. Acoustic monitoring programs indicate that less than 30 individual vaquitas remain in the wild, and are threatened by fishing activities and by illegal trade in the swim bladders of the totoaba, an endangered fish species which shares the vaquita’s habitat in the Gulf.

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Creating a community garden near the Tempe Academy for International Studies (TAIS) starts off like many other projects: with the acquisition of funding. Students in the Project Based Modular Learning (ProMod) sustainability program decided to take a more creative approach.

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