Meet affiliated faculty Jennifer Keahey

Read on for an interview with Jennifer Keahey Senior Sustainability Scholar, Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation; Assistant Professor of Sociology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.

Congratulations to WE Empower 2020 awardees Bessie Schwarz and Beth Tellman on their life saving work! Cloud to Street co-founders Tellman and Schwarz recently released the ‘largest observed dataset of floods’ to the public free of charge.

Our cohort spoke with Robert Bonnie, President Biden’s nominee to be Agriculture Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation, on a sunny Friday, July 23, 2021. The conversation was remote, as things tend to be nowadays, and Robert Bonnie spoke to us from his office at USDA. 

On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 21, the Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Cohort took a much-anticipated trip off of ASU’s DC campus. The entourage embarked on a refreshing stroll down K Street to the Washington DC office of Dentons Law Firm, one of 204 locations worldwide that serve to build agile, tailored solutions to meet the local, national, and global needs of private and public clients of any size.

A new paper on the transformation of Caribbean coral reefs throughout human existence was recently published by Katie Cramer, Program Lead for Coral Reef Conservation.

During our D.C. immersive, we were fortunate enough to hear from staff of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry including Katie Naessens, Senior Professional Staff Member, Adam Tarr, Senior Professional Staff, Kyle Varner, Professional Staff, and Jacqlyn Schneider, Deputy Staff Director, who gave a nuts and bolts look at the inner workings of the Senate Ag Committee.

We are excited to announce that the “Preliminary Housing Analysis & ADU Policy Recommendations for Peoria, AZ” project has received the 2021 “Student Planning Project” Chapter Award with the Arizona Planning Association! Meagan Ehlenz’s PUP 580 Planning Workshop and Deirdre Pfeiffer’s PUP 525 Urban Housing Issues class worked in conjunction with each other to research two affordable housing challenges in Peoria: a needs assessment and a policy strategy for Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) ordinances.

On the first day of a week-long immersion trip to Washington DC, our Food Policy & Sustainability cohort met via Zoom with Mae Wu, the Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs (MRP) at USDA. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about her role and the current priorities of MRP.

After an early morning of professional headshots on the fourth day of the immersive, everyone felt a little sluggish as we sat down to hear Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young speak. That changed rapidly as Dr. Jacob-Young’s high energy and enthusiasm for science lit up the room and grabbed everyone’s attention as soon as she began talking about her career. It was immediately easy to see that she loves her work and loves to educate and inspire the next generation of leaders.

Two ASU faculty affiliated with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Michael Barton and Sander van der Leeuw, joined an international panel of 31 natural and social scientists to write a newly published article in Nature Geoscience that investigates abrupt shifts in the Earth’s past and how they can be used to predict the future.

Extreme heat is often thought of in conjunction with Arizona, but other states are also experiencing unprecedented higher temperatures during a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.

Read on for an interview with Chase Farnsworth, Senior Sustainability Fellow, Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation and Senior Project Development Manager, Phoenix Office, Mortenson.