Climate Diaries
The Year of Sustainability Climate Diaries is a collection of stories of LSA Students, Faculty, and Staff that seeks to highlight the varied and intersectional dimensions of climate change and sustainability in our college. These are personal narratives that reflect specific experiences across the breadth of our college but are not all-encompassing. We are thankful to those who were willing to share their stories with us.
Do you have a story, project, or idea that you would like to be featured? Contact sustainable-lsa@umich.edu with any questions or submissions. You can read the Climate Diaries Report here.
- Cherish Dean’s Climate Diary
The Storyteller’s Story: Cherish Dean’s Reflection on Why Telling Stories is Crucial to the Sustainability Movement Have you wondered at all about the person behind the Climate Diaries? Here’s a chance to hear directly from her during her final days at LSA. Written in about the same amount of time she would take to interview,… Continue reading Cherish Dean’s Climate Diary - Brittany Pendergraft
GRAD STUDENT – Classical Studies PhD Candidate “I was born and raised in rural Appalachia, like super rural. Technically Virginia, but [at] the intersection of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. [It was] a very poor area, coal country, an area hit hardest by the opioid crisis. And when I was there, just seeing so many people… Continue reading Brittany Pendergraft - Evan Petrosky
GRAD STUDENT – Physics PhD Candidate & Sustainability Champion “I grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts. I went to undergrad at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And I had no idea what I wanted to do and I tried out a lot of things. I ultimately decided on Physics [because] I really enjoyed… Continue reading Evan Petrosky - Dan Rife
STAFF – Director of LSA Facilities & Operations “I came to the university as a student, in chemical engineering. After I graduated, [I went] to work for a local chemical consulting company, where they had an office of two or three people that focused on energy management. When I interviewed, I interviewed to hire in… Continue reading Dan Rife - Meghan Duffy
FACULTY – Susan S. Kilham Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies “So I’m a professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and I ended up here because [U of M] is a really wonderful university. It has amazing students. It has amazing resources. And my research focuses on aquatic… Continue reading Meghan Duffy - Jill Myers
STAFF – Biodiversity Lab Manager “When I was doing my PhD, I kind of joked with my advisor that I was never going to leave. And then I defended my PhD in summer of 2020, which was a tough time to find a job…everyone had a hiring freeze. And this was not the job that… Continue reading Jill Myers - Sara R. Rivera
STAFF – Geomicrobiology Lab Manager “Yeah, so I’m originally from Michigan. And I came to University of Michigan as an undergrad, with every intention of transferring and leaving, because I really wanted to do oceanography and live on the coast by the ocean somewhere. Really, when I was eight, I decided I wanted to get… Continue reading Sara R. Rivera - Alex Bryan
STAFF – Director of Student Life Sustainability “I was a student here in my undergrad degree and [I had a] great time. [I took] English Lit as a degree with a double minor in PitE and Earth Sciences. I learned a lot and had some pretty transformative experiences. I think many of those were around… Continue reading Alex Bryan - Maddie Clough
GRAD STUDENT – 3rd Year Materials Chemistry PhD I’m now a third year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry. I grew up in rural Mid Michigan, so actually not too far from U of M, but I ended up going to Central Michigan University for my undergrad. There, I studied chemistry and I was… Continue reading Maddie Clough - Stuart Kirsch
FACULTY – Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology I’m an environmental anthropologist, [though I wasn’t always one]. At the beginning of my career, I worked in Papua New Guinea with a group of people who lived downstream from a large copper and gold mine that was slowly destroying their environment. And, over time, I… Continue reading Stuart Kirsch - Sara Soderstrom
FACULTY – Director of Program in the Environment (PitE) “I grew up in a family of Wolverines. My parents met here. My dad was starting med school and my mom was an Undergraduate Transfer, and they were up in Bursley cafeteria as the non first year students finding each other and hanging out. So I… Continue reading Sara Soderstrom - Ella Mannino
STUDENT – Chair of TREES Subcommittee “I’m from Ortonville, Michigan, which is about like an hour north of here, in between Flint and Pontiac. Ortonville is kind of a rural farm town, like I lived in the woods, so that’s a big part of why I care so much about the environment. I’m an International… Continue reading Ella Mannino - Tim McKay’s Climate Diary
From Great Lakes to Great Plains: Tim McKay’s Journey by Train Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel over 700 miles by train? Maybe not, but LSA Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, Dr. Tim McKay, made the almost 18-hour trek by train for an astonishing carbon reduction (hint: it was around… Continue reading Tim McKay’s Climate Diary - Caitlin Jacobs
STAFF – LSA Carbon Neutrality Program Manager “So I did grow up in a smaller town, in Kentucky. For anyone who grows up in that town, it’s cool to go downtown and see the flood wall…there are murals on the flood wall. You learn very early in your elementary education that there was this big… Continue reading Caitlin Jacobs - Lashaun Jackson
STUDENT – SCANN, Graham Sustainability Scholar, MDining Sustainability and Community Engagement Intern, UM Sustainable Food Program, and member of the Maize & Blue Cupboard Student Advisory Council “For me, that first year in college was [during COVID]…all virtual. At the time, I was really interested in astronomy and astrophysics, actually, [but] my introduction to astronomy… Continue reading Lashaun Jackson - Daphne Matter
STUDENT – VIPs Fund & Graham Sustainability Scholar “So I’m from Seattle, Washington. I love my hometown. I grew up in the city, but Seattle is also a very nature oriented place in that you’ve got lots of waterways and lakes and you’ve got the Olympics to one side of you and you’ve got the… Continue reading Daphne Matter - Kelsey Dyez
STAFF – Climate Scientist in Julia Cole’s Climate Lab “I’m a climate scientist and studied geology as an undergraduate, and then paleoclimatology and paleoceanography as a grad student. I did that research for several years as a postdoc in various parts of the world and then I came to the University of Michigan to help… Continue reading Kelsey Dyez - Juhi Pawar
STUDENT – Representative on TREES Subcommittee “I’m from, like, 30ish minutes away from Ann Arbor. When I was deciding where I wanted to come, I knew that I wanted a place that wouldn’t be too far away from, you know, my family and stuff like that. And then one thing that I also really liked… Continue reading Juhi Pawar - Anne McNeil
FACULTY – Faculty Lead for the Year of Sustainability, Carol A. Fierke Collegiate Professor of Chemistry, & Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry. “I grew up outside of Buffalo, New York. My parents moved to Virginia when I was in high school, and then [I] went to college down there, but when I decided to… Continue reading Anne McNeil - Andrew van Baal
STUDENT – Student Sustainability Coalition (SSC) + Student Carbon Neutrality Network (SCANN) “I’m a lifelong Michigander. I grew up along Lake Michigan, and that, I think, definitely formed my interest in environmentalism. I didn’t realize it was a super huge passion until I got here and got plugged into the work that was happening here.… Continue reading Andrew van Baal - Nate Sanders
FACULTY – Faculty Lead for Year of Sustainability & Chair of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “So I grew up in Arkansas, and in the summers of high school, a friend and I would go to Colorado and backpack and fish for a couple weeks. And so I fell in love with mountains. And then it… Continue reading Nate Sanders
