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The Great Indoors for Middle School

The Great Indoors for Middle School

climate change curriculum elementary grade 3-5 science interactive climate lessons for kids science curriculum

Environmental Science, Homes & Health for Middle School

This unit is designed to provide educators with the necessary resources and instructional strategies to support student learning while addressing real-world environmental health challenges.

In this engaging and inquiry-driven unit, students will follow Mira as she uncovers the connections between environmental impacts and its down-stream effects on human health. Through case studies, data analysis, and hands-on challenges, students will explore how wildfires, flooding, and pests can impact indoor environments—and what can be done to reduce risks.

Ideal for:

This course is perfect for middle school students who are curious about the connections between environmental science and everyday life. It is especially suited for learners who enjoy problem-solving, hands-on exploration, and applying science to real-world issues.

Outcome:

By the end of this unit, students will have a stronger understanding of how environmental factors can influence human health at home, develop strategies to mitigate risks, and practice communicating scientific ideas to different audiences. This unit empowers students to think critically about their role in environmental and community health.

Course Features:

  • Case-Based Learning: Students investigate real-world scenarios where environmental impacts affect human health, following Mira’s journey to explore extreme weather events.
  • Hands-on Investigation: Interactive simulations and data analysis help students uncover the science behind environmental impacts on home environments.
  • Actionable Solutions: Students identify and evaluate prevention and mitigation strategies to protect indoor spaces from environmental-related health risks.
  • Science Communication: Learners apply their knowledge by designing public awareness projects to educate their communities about environmental impacts and home health.
  • Collaborative Exploration: Group discussions, guided inquiries, and project-based learning foster teamwork and critical thinking.

Join us on this journey where students uncover the science AND learn how to make homes safer and healthier for the future!

The curriculum includes detailed learning objectives, background information, teacher slides, an instruction plan, activities, and necessary materials for the lessons.

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Webinar 4: Preparing the Air for Newborns and Children

Presentation Summary: 

This webinar focuses on the maternal and child population and shares evidence-based tips and tools to create rooms in the home with optimal air quality for pregnancy, newborns, and children. It includes discussion of common consumer and household products that contribute to poor indoor air quality and the accompanying health impacts for children, such as such as childhood asthma. The webinar also shares a guidance tool for the prevention, reduction, and elimination of indoor air pollutants. The tool is tailored for parents and expecting parents, and suitable for sharing in clinical settings.

 

Learning Objectives:

Indoor Asthma Triggers

  • Indoor Air Sources: Learn about several common indoor sources that can potentiate or exacerbate childhood asthma.
  • Chemical and Physiological Process: Explore how certain chemicals that can live indoors affect body systems.
  • Asthma Health Risk Reduction: Learn about actions that can be implemented to reduce indoor air pollution health risks.

 

Indoor Household and Personal Products

  • Indoor Air Pollution and Pregnancy: Recognize the impact of indoor air quality on pregnancy.
  • Children’s Vulnerabilities: Identify the effects of indoor air quality on children’s health and development.
  • Harmful Personal and Household items :Identify personal care and household items that may negatively impact indoor air quality and health and provide some alternatives.
  • Improving the Air for Newborns and Children: Identify resources where you can check if products you’re bringing home are safer for human health and the environment (EWG Verified, EPA Safer Choice, etc.)
  • Patient Resources: Review a “Preparing the Air for Newborns and Children” handout for parents and expecting parents.

 

Speakers: 

Vi Thuy Nguyen, MD, FAAP

Dr. Vi Thuy Nguyen is a Fellow of Environmental Health as part of the American Academy of Pediatrics and serves as Co-Chair of San Diego’s AAP Climate Change and Health Committee, Chair of AAP California State Government Affairs Expert Committee on Environmental Health and Climate Change. She is Co-Founder of San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air, a coalition of concerned pediatricians who advocate for pediatric asthmatic patients. She also now serves as Co-Chair of the Public Health Advisory Council for Climate Actions Campaign in San Diego. She originally earned her MD at Harvard Medical School and trained in general pediatrics and pediatric endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She completed her 5-year-term as Assistant Chief of Pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente San Diego. After a numerically successful but personally grueling time in middle management and experiencing burn-out, Vi has pivoted her extra-curricular physician time to being an advocate for physician wellness and joy and climate work. She is a proud trained Climate Reality Leader and Co-Lead of Kaiser San Diego’s Sustainability/Green Team. 

Christine James, M.D., M.Sc. 

Dr. Christine James is a clinical assistant professor and associate program director of the Allergy and Immunology fellowship at UC San Diego Health. Her interest in climate change and health began in fellowship when she completed a clinical research study on pediatric asthma and traffic-related airborne pollutants. She is a trained Climate Reality leader and serves as co-chair of the Public Health Advisory Council of Climate Action Campaign, a San Diego-based climate change advocacy organization. She is a former Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis. She is currently a fellow with the University of California Clinical Decarbonization Fellowship and the University of Colorado Climate and Health Policy Fellowship.

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Webinar 3: Indoor Air Quality Hot Topics - Gas Stoves Health Impacts and Pests and Pesticides

Presentation Summary:

This webinar explores two hot topics: gas stove pollution and pesticide exposures. The first part explores the health effects of gas stove pollution and provides actionable steps to reduce health risks. The second topic covers the principles of Integrated Pest Management to minimize encounters with household pests and as an alternative to pesticide use as the primary solution for pest control.

 

Learning Objectives:

Gas Appliances and Health

  • Indoor Air Pollution from Gas Stoves: Learn how gas appliances produce potentially dangerous indoor air pollutants.
  • Health Impacts from Gas Stoves Use: Address the health impacts that can be caused or worsened by gas stoves, especially with improper ventilation.
  • Susceptible Populations: Identify and prioritize the populations most at risk for the health impacts of gas stove pollution and understand why they are more susceptiple.
  • Gas Stove Health Risk Reduction: Learn about actions that can be implemented to reduce gas stove-related health risks.

 

Integrated Pest Management

  • Health Impacts of Pests and Pesticides: Understand how both, unmanaged home pests and the use of harmful pesticides can affect health.
  • Control Pests and Reduce Pesticide Use: Explore some effective ways to reduce or eliminate pesticide use and still control pests. 
  • Professional Support: Identify when a pest problem is beyond your control and professional support is needed.

 

Speakers: 

Zach Williams, MPH

Zach Williams is the Associate Director of the Environment and Health program with the Physicians for Social Responsibility. He has a background in climate and health education, social services for marginalized youth, project management, and international emergency response. Zach received both his Bachelor of Science in Applied Psychology and his Master of Public Health from New York University. Using both his passion for the environment and commitment to justice, Zach has educated high school students, seasoned health professionals, and elected officials alike about the human health effects of climate change. His current work focuses on supporting building decarbonization policies nationwide in the interest of public health and calling out the fossil fuel industry as the primary culprit behind a wide range of health impacts due to fossil fuel pollution.

Cynthia Knowles, MS

Cynthia Knowles, is dedicated to supporting families in creating the healthiest home possible using the least toxic and safest means possible. Her field work in Latin America and home visits in multicultural Bay Area communities has taught her that families can empower themselves to prevent pests and mold and improve indoor air quality. From early conservation work in rural Latin America beginning in 1993 to pollution prevention and healthy homes projects over the past 20 years in San Francisco and San Mateo County, she delights in facing a challenge and exploring the source of unhealthy living conditions.

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Webinar 2: Improving Home Air Quality

Presentation Summary:

This webinar expands upon the Introduction to Indoor Air Pollutants in Homes webinar that explained how to identify common indoor air pollutants. This webinar covers practical actions that can implemented at home to improve indoor air quality. The discussion includes strategies for how to prevent, reduce, and eliminate common sources of indoor air pollution through the identification of the pollution source, and through actions around ventilation, filtration, and monitoring. An assessment tool for patients’ homes – especially relevant for nursing specialties such as public health, home health, case management and other roles where nurses and other health practitioners commonly enter the patients living space – is presented.

 

Learning Objectives:

  • State of Indoor Air Quality: Learn how to identify indoor air pollutants found in the home that require action.
  • Attainable and Affordable Actions: Learn how to prevent, reduce, and eliminate those indoor air pollutants in the home.
  • Home Health Assessment: Identify when it is important to conduct an indoor air quality home health assessment.
  • Home Health Assessment: Understand how to conduct an indoor air quality home health assessment.
  • Indoor Air Quality Engagement: Explore some effective ways to engage patients, families and communities in improving their indoor air environments.

 

Speakers: 

Barbara Sattler RN, DrPH, FAAN

Dr. Sattler is a Registered Nurse with an MPH and DrPH from the John Hopkins School of Public Health. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She is also a professor at the University of San Francisco and an international leader in environmental health and nursing. Dr. Sattler is a founding and active member of both California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice, as well as the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. She has worked in communities facing environmental health risks associated with lead-based paint, pesticides, superfund sites, and risks associated with gas and oil extraction, including fracking. She has been an advisor to the US EPA’s Office of Child Health Protection and the National Library of Medicine for informational needs of health professionals on environmental health. 

Crystal Loucel, RN, MS, MPH

For over a decade Crystal Loucel has served as a bilingual and bicultural Public Health Nurse (PHN) within the San Francisco Bay Area. She obtained her Master of Science from UCSF’s School of Nursing and a Master in Public Health from Loma Linda University. Since 2019, Crystal has worked as a Certified Diabetes Care & Education Specialist (CDCES) and a Health & Wellness Nurse Coach (HWNC-BC). In her current role, she works as a Research Nurse for a study in Type 1 Diabetes and co-transplantation of pancreas cells for improved insulin production. She currently serves on the National Board of Directors of NAHN and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee. In 2023, she was awarded year-long fellowships through the Alliance of Nurses for a Healthy Environment as well as an Emerging Diversity Leaders Fellow with AcademyHealth.

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Webinar 1: Introduction to Indoor Air Quality in Homes

Presentation Summary:

The first webinar is a general overview of indoor air quality in the United States including information about sources of indoor air pollutants, health impacts and vulnerable populations. This webinar also discusses how the climate change and associated events like wildfires and flooding can impact indoor air environments and health. 

 

Learning Objectives:

  • Indoor Air Quality in US Homes: Understand the current state of indoor air quality in US households.
  • Susceptibilities and Health Impacts: Learn about the populations most susceptible to indoor air pollution and the potential health consequences they face.
  • Body Systems Affected: Discover which body systems are most impacted by indoor pollutants.
  • Health Effects of Exposure: Explore some of the health effects associated with exposure to indoor air pollutants.
  • Sources of Pollutants: Identify common sources of indoor air pollutants within homes.
  • Climate Change and Air Quality: Understand how climate change is influencing indoor air quality.

 

Speakers: 

Lisa Thompson PhD, MS, RN, FNP, FAAN 

For the past 20 years, Dr. Thompson has worked on intervention trials related to household air pollution. She is a tenured Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University. The focus of her research is to evaluate effective behavioral change interventions to reduce maternal and infant exposures to household air pollution from the use of solid cooking fuels in low-resource countries. She was inducted into the 2021 Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame and received the 2023 Episteme Laureate award from Sigma.

Barbara Sattler RN, DrPH, FAAN

Dr. Sattler is a Registered Nurse with an MPH and DrPH from the John Hopkins School of Public Health. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She is also a professor at the University of San Francisco and an international leader in environmental health and nursing. Dr. Sattler is a founding and active member of both California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice, as well as the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. She has worked in communities facing environmental health risks associated with lead-based paint, pesticides, superfund sites, and risks associated with gas and oil extraction, including fracking. She has been an advisor to the US EPA’s Office of Child Health Protection and the National Library of Medicine for informational needs of health professionals on environmental health. 

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Group 4

Augusta Williams

Augusta Williams, ScD, MPH is an environmental health scientist with over 10 years of experience at the intersection of public health and climate change. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University. She was previously a Health Scientist for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance where she was involved in several high-profile rulemaking activities, including serving as the technical lead for the agency’s hazardous heat regulatory portfolio. In 2019, Augusta was selected as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Augusta received her Doctor of Science (ScD) and post-doctoral training at the Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her Master of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, all in environmental health. She attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges where she received her Bachelor of Science in both Biology and Geoscience with an atmospheric science concentration. Across her work and educational experiences, Augusta’s applied research interests have examined the public health and built environment impacts of hazardous heat, precipitation extremes, and severe weather events, as well as informing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies to protect and promote public health from the scale of a single residential home all the way to a national level. She recently returned to Upstate New York, where she is originally from, and currently resides in Syracuse, NY.

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John Spengler

John Spengler has over 40 years’ experience in environmental health and exposure science, characterizing the exposure to and effects of contaminants in outdoor and indoor environments. Through studies of homes, office buildings, schools, and transit systems Spengler’s research has investigated design, materials, maintenance, and behaviors that mitigate exposures to harmful contaminants. During the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, his team examined transmission and mitigation of airborne viruses in schools, airplanes, airports, and buses. Several recent studies have looked at health and the built environment and the wellbeing benefits of exposure to nature, including using virtual reality to explore physiologic and cognitive effects of exposures to nature in indoor and outdoor settings. For the past decade, Spengler’s teaching and research have increasingly focused on issues related to climate change and sustainability. Motivated by the urgency conveyed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), his team has formed collaborations with professional organizations, NGOs, and companies to affect evidence-based decisions more rapidly in other sectors of society.

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Barbara Sattler

Dr. Sattler, RN, DrPH, FAAN is a Professor Emeritus at the University of San Francisco (USF), where she is still actively teaching, and an international leader in environmental health and nursing. For 25 years, prior to USF, she directed the Environmental Health Education Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She is a founding and current Board member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and on the Leadership Council of the California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice, national and state organizations, respectively, that integrate environmental health into nursing education, practice, research, and policy/advocacy.

She has been a member of the US EPA Children’s Health Protection Policy Advisory Committee and the National Library of Medicine Committee for informational needs of health professionals on environmental health. Sattler has been a Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (lead-based paint demonstration), and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Sattler is a Registered Nurse with an MPH and DrPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

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Nejem Raheem

Nejem Raheem brings almost 20 years of experience as an environmental economist to his research and teaching work at Emerson College. His expertise is in the economic analysis of natural resource and environmental issues, focusing on ecosystem services and traditional or indigenous economies. In addition to Emerson, he has taught economics at the Harvard Extension School, Kinship Conservation Fellows and the University of New Mexico. Along with researchers from the US and Ecuador, he recently published three articles on drinking water provision in the Galapagos Islands; he also edited the Ecosystem Services section of Elsevier’s Imperiled Encyclopedia.

Raheem has been working with the US Federal Agency NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) to run trainings for staff members on assessing and reporting on Ecosystem Services for condition reports. He will be presenting with ONMS staff at the ACES conference in December 2022. He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Environmental Management, WIRESWater, Marine Policy, and the International Journal of the Commons. He is an avid hiker, open-water rower, player of guitars, songwriter, and cook. He can get by in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and his English is pretty solid.

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Adam Pearson

Adam Pearson is an experimental psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Pomona College and a member of the Graduate Faculty in the School of Social Science, Policy, and Evaluation at Claremont Graduate University. He received a B.S. in Biology from Cornell University, and M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University. His research explores social psychological factors that shape public engagement with climate change, environmental decision making, risk perception, and collective action. He is an elected Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and has received early career awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. His research has been featured in synthesis reports by the US National Academies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report, and in legal cases, and has appeared in a wide range of media outlets such as TIME, The Boston Globe, FiveThirtyEight, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

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Jeff Niederdeppe

Jeff Niederdeppe is Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and a Professor of Communication and Public Policy at Cornell University. He is Director of Cornell’s Health Communication Research Initiative (HCRI) and Co-Director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity (CCHEq). His research examines the mechanisms and effects of mass media campaigns, strategic messages, and news coverage in shaping health behavior and social policy. He is committed to producing, supporting, and disseminating innovative and rigorous research to support efforts to achieve health equity. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles in communication, public health, health policy, and medicine journals, and his work has been funded in recent years by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

He was elected as a Fellow of the International Communication Association in 2022, received the CALS Research and Extension Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Science and Public Policy in 2019, the Early Career Award in 2016 from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion Section of the American Public Health Association, and the Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication Award in 2014 from the Kentucky Conference on Health Communication. He serves on the editorial boards for seven journals in communication and public health.

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Max Lum

Dr. Lum was responsible for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) initiatives in health communication, media relations and the Institute’s international program portfolio for over fifteen years until his retirement in 2011. He currently serves as senior advisor to the Office of the Director, on e-communication and research translation issues.

Dr. Lum began his career as a White House Fellow serving as a technical writer and community involvement specialist and most recently served as Director, Health Education and Promotion, ATSDR-CDC before coming to NIOSH.

Max’s graduate academic training is from the University of Southern California and was focused on public management (MPA) and communication practice within the medical education program (EdD). He is a current adjunct lecturer at the Harvard and John Hopkins School of Public Health.

Topic related publication: Lum, M. Crisis Communication for Occupational Health in the Pandemic Era. In: Koh, D. 4th ed. Textbook of Occupational Medicine Practice, April 2022.

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Adam Seth Levine

Adam Seth Levine is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. Many questions pique his interest and excitement. The top ones are: “When do ordinary citizens become engaged in civic life, and with what impact?” and “How do diverse people, such as researchers and community leaders, collaborate to address problems?” He has published research findings addressing these questions in a variety of political science, transportation planning, climate change, communication, law, and economics journals, as well as in one book entitled “American Insecurity,” published by Princeton University Press. He is deeply committed to broad public engagement. Many of his studies entail formal collaborations with nonprofit organizations, in which they work together to design and carry out research. He regularly gives talks on civic engagement to a wide variety of audiences, including researchers, nonprofit leaders, policymakers, students, business leaders, and philanthropists. Lastly, he is also the president and co-founder of research4impact, a nonprofit that creates powerful new collaborative relationships between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Since 2018 he has helped create over 300 new collaborations.

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Cynthia Gonzalez

Dr. Cynthia Gonzalez is a first-generation Mexican American lifetime resident of Watts that brings a strong background in community-based participatory research, cultural anthropology and social ethnography to the understanding of community wellness. Dr. Gonzalez focuses her scholarship in the study of urban communities and its impact on overall wellness. Her approach of finding “local solutions to local problems” in urban neighborhoods is rooted in equity, social justice, critical engagement, and multidisciplinary scholarship. Influenced by her upbringing, Dr. Gonzalez is interested in developing place-based initiatives through community participatory engagement and neighborhood assessments to improve the quality of life for low-income and racial/ethnic minority residents living in under-resourced neighborhoods. She has developed partnerships between community, government, and academia through efforts like the Watts Community Studio and Los Angeles Promise Zone Young Ethnographers Program.

In order to ensure community-partnered principles, Dr. Gonzalez has served as a community advisor to numerous place-based and racial justice focused projects and led a multi-million dollar collaborative grant for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) known as Watts Rising. In her role as an Assistant Professor at Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, Dr. Gonzalez advises on COVID-19 related projects to ensure local community representation, partnership, and inclusion and also leads a COVID-19 education project for mental health clinicians working in communities like where she grew up. Most recently, Dr. Gonzalez took on a role as the Director of the Pardee RAND Graduate School’s Community-Partnered Policy and Action PhD program in policy analysis where students prepare to be future scholars that are mindful of how social dynamics impact research, using an equity and racial justice lens. She has received numerous honors and awards for her innovative teaching in community engagement and public health. Her academic journey takes her to UCLA where she completed a BA in Chicana/o studies and public health, USC earning an MPH in biostatistics and epidemiology, and the California Institute of Integral Studies where she completed a PhD in social and cultural anthropology.

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McClain Bryant Macklin

McClain Bryant Macklin, J.D., M.B.A., is the Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for the Health Forward Foundation, a foundation focused on access to healthcare, the social determinants of health, and health equity. She has an extensive background in policy at local, state, and national levels with a focus on the nexus of health, economics, and equity. She previously served as the Director of Policy and Research for the Greater Kansas City Civic Council and the Director of Policy for Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Missouri. She also practiced at Husch Blackwell LLP, specializing in Public Policy, Campaign Finance and Ethics, White Collar Litigation and Government Affairs. McClain has a MBA from Florida A & M University and a JD from The George Washington University Law School. She currently serves on the advisory board for the Network for Public Health Law and a number of non-profit boards in Kansas City.

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José Guillermo Cedeño Laurent

Dr. José Guillermo (Memo) Cedeño Laurent is an Assistant Professor at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute at Rutgers University. As Director of the Climate Adaptive and Restorative Environments (CARE) Lab, Dr. Cedeño’s scientific and professional goal is to contribute to the creation of data-driven solutions in the built environment that helps us address climate change and social environmental injustice. Dr. Cedeño Laurent received his ScD in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to that, he received a master’s degree in energy engineering by Aachen University in Germany, and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering by Monterrey Tech in Mexico. Before joining Rutgers, Dr. Cedeño worked in the field of healthy buildings, focusing primarily on climate change and health in the built environment as associate director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard.

 

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Nicole Ardoin

Nicole Ardoin, Emmett Family Faculty Scholar, is an associate professor in the Social Sciences Division of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, and Sykes Family Faculty Director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). Her research focuses on the nexus of environmental behavior, environmental learning, and sense of place. Prof. Ardoin’s Social Ecology lab group studies the design, implementation, and effectiveness of conservation practices that motivate individual and collective environmental behaviors in terrestrial and marine environments in the United States and internationally. 

Her work occurs primarily in informal and community settings, including, but not limited to, parks and protected areas, within fishing communities, with participants on nature-based tours, and in farmers’ markets, among other everyday-life settings. Prof. Ardoin and her research group frequently pursue their work in collaboration with community partners including nonprofit conservation organizations, national and state parks, philanthropic foundations, and a range of national and international governmental agencies.