For Boston University students and faculty, collaborating on sustainability curricula, research, and real-world exploration is a key part of the BU experience.
Biking and Air Pollution Monitors: Janetos Climate Action Prize
The Janetos Climate Action Prize is awarded to a student or group of students who develop a Campus Climate Lab project that is judged to have the most substantial potential impact on advancing the goals of BU’s Climate Action Plan and shifting toward more sustainable University operations. In 2024, this prize went to a group of Engineering students who took an innovative approach to tracking air pollution. This group of students developed a compact air pollution monitor that can be affixed to a bike, including Bluebikes the bike share network within the city of Boston.
The prize is named in honor of Professor Anthony Janetos (1954-2019), who served as Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment. Professor Janetos notably served as Chair of BU’s Climate Action Task Force, which developed the University’s Climate Action Plan.
Working with the Campus Climate Lab
The Campus Climate Lab is a program that brings together faculty and student teams to help make Boston University’s campus community and operations more sustainable, while advancing the Climate Action Plan. BU Sustainability collaborates with the Institute for Global Sustainability to administer the program.
BU Sustainability’s Engagement Manager, Parren Fountain, worked with a team of faculty and students on analyzing Indigenous curricular offerings and cultural spaces at Boston University, compared to peer institutions. Led by student researchers Selby Vaughn (CAS’24), Delaney Foster (CAS’25), and Elizabeth Kostina (CGS’22, CAS’24), the team’s research findings led to a roadmap with specific next steps for filling the gaps in Indigenous curriculum, cultural activities, and spaces at BU.
Sustainability Curriculum
Advancing and integrating climate change and sustainability into the curriculum is a central theme of the Climate Action Plan. There are sustainability-focused courses in all of the University’s 17 schools and colleges. These courses go beyond “Environmental Science 101” and engage students across academic disciplines in real-world exploration of sustainability and the world around us.
- Clean Energy Services: Financial Models and Incentive Structures – This new course for master’s students at the Questrom School of Business explores the reasons behind the slow adoption of clean energy technologies and develops business models that provide incentives and financing to accelerate adoption.
- Climate Change Biology in Massachusetts: What Would Henry Say? – This course contextualizes Thoreau’s “Walden” within modern climate change biology research. Students will read Walden concurrently with papers on climate change and recent books to appreciate how Thoreau anticipated many modern issues related to climate change.
- Data Science for Conservation Decisions – This course covers the application of quantitative methods to support conservation decisions. Students will engage directly with ecosystem value mapping, systematic conservation planning, policy instrument design, rigorous impact evaluation, decision theory, and data visualization.
BU SPARK! Collaboration
BU Spark! is an innovation and experiential learning lab housed in the Boston University Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. Spark allows students to gain hands-on experience on real-world projects that tackle emerging challenges and utilize data science to help solve them. Sustainability Analyst, Gabrielle Brewer, worked with BU Spark on a project aimed at improving data collection as part of Boston University’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS) submission. This project involved creating a tool that consolidates data on research publications by BU faculty that address a sustainability challenge, showcasing how the University is engaged in sustainability research across departments.