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Workshop: Incorporating Systems Thinking within Environmental Curricula
Friday, November 11, 2022, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Registration
Potomac Science Center
Systems thinking is often described as a core capacity for understanding sustainability and a critical skill for the 21st century. As such, this workshop is part of a George Mason University Curriculum Impact Grant-funded project that seeks to convene faculty and graduate students to examine the current state of systems thinking pedagogies and explore how they are being incorporated within two undergraduate degree programs–the BS in Environmental Science offered by the Department of Environmental Science & Policy (ESP), and the BA in Environmental and Sustainability Studies offered jointly by the School of Integrative Studies and ESP. Faculty and graduate students from other departments who teach related courses are also welcome. Workshop participants will share their own best practices in teaching students about systems and identify opportunities to integrate systems thinking within courses and throughout program curricula. The event will be held at Mason’s Potomac Science Center and will include a catered lunch for participants. The first half of the workshop (9:30-11:30 am), comprised of introductory talks and a curricular review, will be live-streamed for those who wish to attend but are not available for the full day. Please register HERE and email organizers K. L. Akerlof, Andrew Wingfield, Jeremy Campbell, Ted Chen, and Meaghan Caruso with any questions you have about the event.
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Faculty Matters Workshop series
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University Global Coalition Annual Gathering
Monday, Oct 3, 2022, 10:00 AM – Friday, Oct 7, 2022, 12:00 pM EDT
Registration
The University Global Coalition will host its 2022 Annual Gathering, with sessions held virtually throughout the week of October 3-7, 2022. These deep dive sessions on selected topics focus on innovative partnerships for Sustainable Development Goal innovation, with actionable outcomes leading towards the 2023 SDG Summit.
Visit UGC 2022 Annual Gathering or follow UGC on twitter (@uniglobalco) or LinkedIn (University Global Coalition) for updates.
Register today! Please save the email and password information used to register; you will need these to access the session links.
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Pitch and Pilot: Fairfax County Innovation Challenge
Registration is now open for an innovation competition to develop smart city solutions centered on carbon neutrality & climate action.
The goal of the challenge is to find innovative solutions that improve energy efficiency, increase the use of renewable electricity, and accelerate the use of electric vehicles to shift from a carbon-based economy to a carbon-neutral community. The deadline for accepting applications is October 3, 2022, at 5pm ET.
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MITRE Capstones Project Portal
As part of its University Innovation Exchange (UIX) initiative, MITRE is partnering with universities to offer technical advisors and capstone project ideas that reflect real problems facing the United States government. The MITRE Capstones Project Portal is a web-based platform for university faculty and students to browse, select, and execute capstone projects with a MITRE technical advisor. There are several exciting opportunities currently on the Project Portal. You can review the full list here.
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25Live Guide – Feature Your Sustainability Events
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ISE Faculty Profiles
The ISE faculty directory is a tool for you to find others with complementing expertise and for external and internal audiences to find you! If you haven’t yet submitted your research profile information for the directory, please complete your profile here.
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The Beck Environmental Lecture: Michael Mann
Michael E. Mann is back with his new book The New Climate War, which reveals the thirty year campaign major polluters have run to deflect blame for climate change onto individuals, and away from their own toxic practices. Bill Nye says, “Mann shows that corporations and lobbyists have been successful in convincing us that climate change will be fine, if we just recycle our bottles and turn out the lights. Instead, he says, global warming is a problem way too hot for any one person to handle. He’s optimistic though, because he sees what we really can and will do.” Mann combats climate doom-saying with practical steps to save the planet. Sponsored by Robert & Lucy Beck.
This event is part of the Fall for the Book Festival, which runs from October 12-15. View the full schedule at fallforthebook.org/schedule.
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SKYWARN Lecture
Monday, October 13, 2022, 12pm - 2pm ET
Johnson Center Meeting Room F (No. 336)
Brendon Rubin-Oster, Lead Meteorologist in the National Weather Service (NWS) Baltimore/Washington Forecast Office in Sterling, Virginia, will teach a SKYWARN class at GMU on October 13 from 12 pm to 2:00 pm in Johnson Center Meeting Room F (No. 336). The purpose of the NWS SKYWARN program is to train the public to be citizen weather spotters. SKYWARN spotters are very important during major weather events in that they provide real time ground truth about hazardous weather such as severe thunderstorms, tornado, flooding, winter hazards and other hazards that the mid-Atlantic experiences. The real time weather spotter information is used to help inform warning decisions and verify ongoing hazardous weather events.
The NWS SKYWARN class is provided free of charge to the public. Weather spotters are given a spotter ID to be used when reporting weather information to the Baltimore/Washington Forecast Office. The Baltimore/Washington Forecast Office provides watches, warnings, advisories, and forecasts for the District of Columbia, much of Maryland, the northern third of Virginia, and the eastern West Virginia panhandle.
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Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Conference
Monday, October 24, 2022, 8am - 6:30pm ET
Mason Square, Arlington, Virginia
Registration
You are invited to George Mason University’s Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Initiative at Mason Square. The ARIE Conference will provide a forum for higher education, industry, government, nonprofit, and other stakeholders to critically discuss anti-racism and inclusive excellence in the academy; share effective practices and resources to advance anti-racism and inclusive excellence; and amplify the visibility and impact of research, scholarship, and creative activities conducted by Mason researchers and other national scholars on anti-racism and inclusive excellence.
For more information, click here.
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Bring Down Counterfeiting 2022: Policy Hackathon
George Mason University’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) is pleased to partner with Amazon to co-host the 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon, which is now accepting registrants. Tickets are finite so register now!
Annually, counterfeiting and piracy are a $464 billion problem, or 2.5% of global trade, according to the OECD. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property, compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs, and may place the health and safety of consumers at risk. Additionally, counterfeiting may intersect with other nefarious activity such as illicit trafficking in narcotics, arms, persons, and wildlife. The methods counterfeiters use and the channels they aim to exploit continue to evolve, and there is wide variability in the investments and impact that different industry stakeholders are having to prevent counterfeiters.
Organized by Blue Clarity, Bring Down Counterfeiting invites teams to register between August 5th and October 7th. This event will challenge teams from U.S. academic institutions, companies, and other affiliations to develop innovative ideas to improve public-private collaborations in the United States against the industry-wide, global challenge of counterfeiting. The final round of the public policy hackathon will be held in-person on November 5th, when teams will compete for more than $20,000 in prizes.
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New For-Profit Social-Impact Pitch Competition
The Richard King Mellon Foundation has launched the Social-Impact Investment Pitch Challenge. We need a wide range of solutions to address the world's most vexing social problems. The Foundation is looking to invest in novel products, technologies, or services from social-mission-oriented startups and for-profit companies.
Three winners will be selected, each receiving investments between $250,000 and $500,000.
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- Building support for endometriosis, the invisible condition that will affect 1 in 10 biological females, College of Health and Science News, September 30, 2022.
- Study: How to Reduce PVC-Related Greenhouse Emissions by 2050, Research News, September 28, 2022.
- Major NIH Grant Creates New Center at Mason, Duke to Help Communities in Opioid Crisis, Schar School News, September 27, 2022.
- Building a 'digital twin' of the real world, School of Business News, September 26, 2022.
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NSF launches entrepreneurial fellowships for engineers and scientists
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new $20 million investment in Entrepreneurial Fellowships through a multi-year cooperative agreement with Activate.org. The Activate Fellows supported by NSF will be scientists and engineers from a variety of backgrounds and regions across the U.S. who will translate research breakthroughs to new products and services with broad societal benefits.
The Entrepreneurial Fellowships will help make entrepreneurship more accessible for people in less-developed innovation ecosystems, expanding geographic diversity and increasing participation of women and others who have been traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
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Dear Colleague Letter: Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovative Solutions to Sustainable Chemistry (CAS-SC)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces the establishment of the Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovative Solutions to Sustainable Chemistry Program (CAS-SC), under the CAS metaprogram umbrella. The CAS-SC Program recognizes the importance of sustainable chemistry in addressing many societal challenges and aims to encourage the expansion of the Nation’s research capacity in this topic area through submissions of research proposals. Proposals that emphasize a detailed and quantitative understanding of sustainable chemistry and include industrial partnerships are of particular interest.
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Dear Colleague Letter: Design for Sustainability in Computing
This recently issued Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 2022-60) Design for Sustainability in Computing encourages the submission of novel and high impact proposals that advance sustainability in all aspects of computing to the CISE Core programs (NSF 21-616). The DCL invites transformative, cross-disciplinary and potentially clean slate approaches to enable sustainability across all levels of the entire computing stack from hardware to networking to software applications. Proposals should consider diverse notions of sustainability and propose suitable metrics for quantifying impact. Traditional energy efficiency and power savings methods alone are not in scope for this DCL. Computing techniques for sustainability in other fields are not in scope for this DCL. This DCL seeks ambitious and forward-thinking proposals on Design for Sustainability in Computing along multiple dimensions that go beyond energy efficiency.
This DCL neither constitutes a new competition nor a new program. Rather, interested proposers should prepare and submit proposals in accordance with the instructions in the CISE Core program solicitation (NSF 21-616) and the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Additionally, to call attention to responsiveness to this DCL, the Project Summary should include "SustainabilityDCL" in the keyword list. Proposals submitted to this DCL will count towards the proposal limits imposed in the CISE Core program solicitation.
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NSF Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovative Solutions to Climate Change
This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) encourages the science and engineering communities to develop forward-thinking research that will demonstrably aid in the Nation's goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and developing approaches for adapting to the change that is already occurring. CAS: Innovative Solutions to Climate Change is a call to action that encourages the submission of certain types of proposals to appropriate existing NSF core programs to lay the foundation for disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and to answer fundamental questions related to novel approaches and solutions to climate change.- Funding source: National Science Foundation
- Anticipated funding amount: Up to $100,000
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Sustainability and Climate Change Call for Student Research
Sustainability and Climate Change invites student authors and author teams at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as those five years or less into their postgraduate level, including Ph.D. candidates, to submit viewpoints, commentaries, perspectives and original research. The Journal accepts research-based manuscripts for review as well as best practice case studies, and perspectives and commentary on newsworthy trends shaping sustainability in the culture.
Some of the focus topics for authors to consider include (but are not limited to): programs to address climate change; energy, water, and resource conservation; behavior modification programs; the impact of change agents; bringing diversity into the sustainability field; melding budget cuts and sustainability; the built environment; green workforce development; best practice case studies from higher education, nonprofits, and the private sector; and sustainable agriculture and food programs.
For more information, click here.
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2023 Next System Fellows - Applications Open!
We are now accepting application for admission to the Spring 2023 cohort of Next System Fellows. Maybe you hope for a life in which you can make a real difference in the world. You seek a career in public service, research and education, social enterprise, activism, or advocacy. You need to build your practical experience and career networks. And you also want to make a difference right now.
A Next System Fellowship becomes your Spring 2023 semester. You study with the same students. You work closely with our core faculty. You emerge at the end of the semester having completed a transformative educational process. This is the kind of college experience many of you are looking for.
Consider this opportunity and --if it feels right to you-- apply soon. Your application deadline is November 15th, but our admissions committee begins formal review of applications on October 1st. Apply here: https://fellows.gmu.edu/next-system/application
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Bird Strikes Prevention Volunteers
The Office of Sustainability’s Patriot Green Fund, led by Sarah D’Alexander, is engaged with Dr. Daniel Hanley, Dr. David Luther, and Shawn Smith, among others, in the development of strategies to reduce bird strikes and bird fatalities.
Dr. Hanley, Dr. Luther, and Shawn Smith have a unique opportunity for students to participate in community engagement at Mason’s campuses from mid-September to mid-October,
Students can support bird strike prevention by volunteering as citizen scientists! Students will travel pre-selected routes and report any observed bird fatalities in the mornings and/or evenings. Reports will be made using an application designed by Dr. Hanley, Dr. Luther, and Shawn Smith. Data from the reports will be used to help develop solutions to reduce bird strikes and bird fatalities.
Students can email Shawn Smith at ssmit28@gmu.edu and include “bird strike volunteer” in the subject line to get started.
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The Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE) aims to connect members of the Mason community with others across the Mason community–and with other communities, policy-makers, businesses and organizations–so that, together, we can more effectively address the world’s pressing sustainability and resilience challenges.
The ISE Newsletter provides up-to-date information on conferences, funding opportunities, and research pertaining to environmental science and sustainability. The biweekly newsletter aims to facilitate information sharing among researchers, practitioners, and relevant local, national, and international organization.
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