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Register for global youth climate summit co-hosted by ̽��Ƶ on June 5

Talisa Lin — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:34:00 +0000

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̽��Ƶ Student Comedians to Take Climate Humor from Local Earth Day Celebration to Hollywood Climate Summit

Toby Murdock — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:35:01 +0000

̽��Ƶ Student Comedians to Take Climate Humor from Local Earth Day Celebration to Hollywood Climate Summit Toby Murdock Thu, 14 May 2026 - 11:35

BOULDER, Colo. (May 14, 2026) — Sam Nelson, Liam Connelly, Chloe Hull, and Koyote Manske from the University of Colorado Boulder's Creative Climate Communication course are taking their unique brand of environmental humor to the national stage, representing the university at the upcoming ‘Scorched’ Climate Comedy show to close the events on June 4 at the Hollywood Climate Summit.

The student comedy group, recognized for their performances at the 11th annual "Earth Day Eve: Stand Up for Climate Comedy" event at the historic Boulder Theater, will bring their sharp wit and compelling storytelling to Los Angeles. Hosted in collaboration with the Hip Hop Caucus and Inside the Greenhouse, the Hollywood Climate Summit closing event will highlight rising voices alongside established professional comedians such as Reggie Watts and Esteban Gast, emphasizing the power of humor in addressing the climate crisis.

During the local Earth Day Eve celebration in Boulder, the students shared the stage with headlining professional comedians, delivering stand-up sets and sketches that tackled climate anxiety, sustainability, and environmental action. Their standout performances paved the way for their upcoming participation at the Los Angeles Hollywood Climate Summit, where they will perform original material for a diverse audience of climate justice advocates, industry professionals, and comedy fans. Want to check it out? Enjoy two days of hands-on programming, meaningful networking, and plant-based eats in Los Angeles (and free online via livestream) on June 3 and 4. Use our partner code HCSFAM 50% off your ticket! Grab yours at hollywoodclimatesummit.com/tickets

Max Boykoff, Faculty Executive Director of the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education at ̽��Ƶ, praised the students for their innovative approach to environmental advocacy.

"Humor is an incredibly powerful tool for breaking down barriers and making the complex realities of climate change accessible to everyday people," said Boykoff. "Seeing our students take the material they developed for our Earth Day Eve event and perform it on a prominent stage at the Hollywood Climate Summit is a testament to the impact of creative climate communication. They aren't just making people laugh; they are sparking meaningful dialogue and inspiring real climate action."

The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, which hosted the ̽��Ƶ event, continues to champion the integration of arts and sciences to mobilize communities. By utilizing humor as an engaging storytelling tool, these student performers are helping to break down complex ecological issues, proving that the fight for a sustainable future can be both impactful and entertaining.

Photo Credit: Ben Hale/PrettyGoodPics

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Max Boykoff talks SPIKE Center on eTown

Toby Murdock — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:54:36 +0000

Max Boykoff talks SPIKE Center on eTown Toby Murdock Wed, 6 May 2026 - 09:54

On May 6 eTown broadcast an episode that featured SPIKE Executive Director Max Boykoff talking about climate communication and the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education. Please click the link above to listen to Max's interview on YouTube.

"Young people nowadays aren't like my generation that had grown up in a world now thinking and talking about [climate change]," said Max. "Young people are ready to go."

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The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, almost one year in

Toby Murdock — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:28:26 +0000

The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, almost one year in Toby Murdock Mon, 27 Apr 2026 - 13:28

The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education was launched in fall 2025 after a $10 million gift from Buff alumnus Spike Buckley, which was given in response to Chancellor Justin Schwartz’s identification of sustainability as a campus priority. Since its inception, the center has grown into an accelerator for sustainability education and leadership on campus.

The Provost’s Post recently spoke with the Faculty Executive Director for the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education Max Boykoff, who is also a fellow with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a professor in the Department of Environmental Studies, about what the SPIKE Center has been working on during its first academic year and what the next year will bring.

An academic year in, how has SPIKE Center developed and/or evolved compared to how it was first envisioned?

This transformative gift from Spike Buckley provides an opportunity for us at ̽��Ƶ to come together as a globally recognized sustainability-related education destination for students preparing for careers that help to navigate their lives and livelihoods in the 21st century world. This is our moment to move forward as we build on many key initiatives developed over the past decades by ̽��Ƶ faculty and administrative leadership. We have been evolving our plans as our outstanding and capable SPIKE Center team integrates lessons learned from these past efforts while we move forward.

We have benefited from many conversations with students, staff, faculty and administrative leaders this academic year to align SPIKE Center priorities with demands, needs and aspirations here on campus regarding sustainability pedagogy and education in the next few years. We have therefore developed concrete plans to support the faculty creation of a sustainability minor for students to begin enrolling in fall 2027. The details are yet to be developed—and will require ongoing engagement with connected divisions, schools, colleges, centers and everyone in them—yet the larger goal and timeline have come into focus through our iterative strategic planning process over the past six months.

Our ambitions have risen as we have worked to better understand our great capabilities and appetite for transformative sustainability education on this campus in these times. We recognize that this is uniquely possible here and that many members of our campus community are ready for us all to move forward with planning to reach every student at ̽��Ƶ with meaningful sustainability-related educational opportunities by the year 2030.

How is this work supporting the campus’s broader sustainability work?

The work of the SPIKE Center takes place within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Sustainability, led by Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock, where education is one of the four priorities for sustainability implementation on campus. By working to support and accelerate our training of students to become leaders who drive transformational environmental change, we are helping ̽��Ƶ meet its goal of becoming a global leader in sustainability within public higher education.

Q: What can the ̽��Ƶ community expect from SPIKE going forward into year two?

A: Our initial focus has been to engage with groups and already-existing initiatives across campus to support sustainability education endeavors, generate awareness and engage in dialogues to envision the future of sustainability education at ̽��Ƶ.

In the coming years, we seek to engage and graduate the highest proportion of sustainability-focused students in global public higher education and achieve significant increases in graduation and post-graduation employment rates among sustainability-focused students. We will do this by providing opportunities for the entire campus to engage with sustainability education as we build and strengthen connections and receive and integrate feedback from our students, staff, faculty and leaders on campus as well as in the surrounding Boulder community.

We also will be imagining and energizing a common framework for sustainability education across ̽��Ƶ as we support faculty development of a sustainability minor across all schools, colleges and divisions to achieve a unique breadth of sustainability education for students here. The ̽��Ƶ community can also expect us to work to identify, uplift and encourage experiential learning across sustainability education, including robust employer relationships that will yield strong job and post-graduation outcomes as we collaborate on student recruitment efforts to attract students who want a world class sustainability education here at ̽��Ƶ.

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SPIKE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION 2026 DESIGN CONTEST

Toby Murdock — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:09:23 +0000

SPIKE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION 2026 DESIGN CONTEST Toby Murdock Thu, 12 Mar 2026 - 13:09

WHEN: DEADLINE: APRIL 8, 2026 before 12pm MT

WINNER ANNOUNCED: 2026 Earth Day Eve APRIL 21^st

WHO: any currently enrolled student at the University of Colorado Boulder may participate

WHAT: Create a design that illustrates what “sustainability education” means to you—or at least one way you find it matters. We welcome designs that include the word “SPIKE” to spread the word on the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education. This design could be placed as stickers on a water bottle, laptop, or other surface, or as a t-shirt design!

Submission Guidelines:

Create a circle (3x3), rectangle (3x2), oval (3x2), or square (3x3) design
Must be an original design: no AI-generated designs, clipart requiring permission, copyrighted or trademarked material (including CU or logos)
Please upload as a vector file format. We suggest a transparent background if that is fitting for your design

HOW: Fill out this form linked here and upload your design there!

WHY: Use your ideas and creativity to help shape what sustainability education means on our campus! You can earn bragging rights for submitting, and the winner may receive a $50 gift card to the CU Book Store!*

*If the winner is a non-US person, $50 will be paid via another payment mechanism to ensure proper international tax review.

SPIKE-affiliated students, staff, and faculty will be invited to judge the designs!

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The SPIKE Center Launches Inaugural Cohort of SPIKE Student Scholars

Toby Murdock — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:12:59 +0000

The SPIKE Center Launches Inaugural Cohort of SPIKE Student Scholars Toby Murdock Thu, 12 Mar 2026 - 09:12

The first inaugural cohort of SPIKE Student Scholars is up and running. Eleven students chosen from nearly one hundred applicants represent every college across the ̽��Ƶ campus. There is range from an undergraduate freshman in Education to a graduate PhD student in Chemistry working together to be change agents advancing sustainability education on the ̽��Ƶ campus and beyond. This representative group of CU students form an innovative community of practice and engage in activities that co-create, promote, and advance sustainability education initiatives at CU through the SPIKE Center. In the spirit of “nothing about us without us,” these students participate in designing and defining the roles, responsibilities, duties, and opportunities of and for SPIKE student engagement. They also contribute to establishing criteria and protocols for support and funding by the SPIKE Center for proposed initiatives and projects. They plan events for a wide variety of students to co-imagine and contribute their ideas and priorities for student engagement within the SPIKE Center. In addition, SPIKE scholars participate in outreach to disseminate their own sustainability work and the work of the SPIKE Center within our community, throughout the state, nationally, and internationally. We are grateful for the good-natured enthusiasm of this first cohort as we build the bridge as we cross it together. Our first student-created event will be on April 6, 2026, 5-6PM at CASE E390 where we will craft pencil bags out of repurposed materials while discussing effective approaches and techniques for providing testimony for environmental policy deliberations, all with great snacks, of course! Please direct any interested students to check us out at the Expo Hall from 4-6PM April 15^th at the CU Sustainability Summit or to reach out directly to the Associate Faculty Director for Student Engagement, Beth Osnes-Stoedefalke at beth.osnes@colorado.edu.

More information about the Student Scholars program can be found on this page.

Here is a full roster of this cohort of scholars:

Aisha	O'Neil	Senior	History, Political Science (PSCI-BA)
Cindy	Wong	Doctorate	Chemical Engineering (CHEN-PHD)
Larissa	Harrison	Masters	Music (MUSM-MMUS)
Naomi	Jepkemei	Masters	Master of the Environment (ENVR-MENV)
Claire	Legg	Junior	Environmental Studies (ENVS-BA)
Jack	Ryan	Sophomore	Management (MGMT-BSBA)
Kit	Irizarry	Sophomore	Leadership/CommunityEngagement (LDCE-BA)
Kylie	Clabaugh	Sophomore	Sust Planning & Urban Design (PLAN-BEV)
Mariah	Rosensweig	Senior	Leadership/CommunityEngagement (LDCE-BA), Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EBIO-BA)
Mary	Fofana	Masters in Law	Natural Resources Energy and Environmental law
Talin	Shefman	Sophomore	Aerospace Engineering Sciences (ASEN-BSAE)

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The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts will offer SPIKE-NEST Graduate Fellowships in 2026

Toby Murdock — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:43:05 +0000

The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts will offer SPIKE-NEST Graduate Fellowships in 2026 Toby Murdock Thu, 5 Mar 2026 - 14:43

The Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder (̽��Ƶ) has partnered with the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education (SPIKE Center) to support both undergraduate and graduate students to work on collaborative, sustainability-focused projects bridging the arts and sciences.

This project seeks to develop collaborative and interdisciplinary explorations of sustainability. Each awarded group will consist of cross-disciplinary small teams of graduate student collaborators that welcome and mentor an undergraduate student who will work on a media project alongside the team, resulting in a broadly-defined media project for public exhibition on campus focusing on sustainability. Example projects may include: public installations, performances, time-based or moving-image based works, sonic or audio compositions, or any other arts forms that would be within practice-based research.

Since 2017, NEST has supported over 80 graduate students, facilitating art-science exhibitions across the state, featuring new research that has manifested in film, sculpture, music, painting, video, virtual reality, and all manner of live performance, including poetry, theater, and dance. Projects have been presented at scientific conferences, in science journals, and yielded quantitative data in multiple dissertations. In 2026, NEST joins forces with SPIKE to engage more students and to think creatively about sustainability in cross-disciplinary work at ̽��Ƶ.

The SPIKE Center formed in Fall 2025 to assist in the implementation of Chancellor Schwartz’s vision for sustainability at ̽��Ƶ in the sphere of education. The SPIKE Center works to facilitate a shared future of sustainability education at the campus and support its realization.

“Graduate students never fail to create imaginative new methods for approaching society’s biggest problems,” said Erin Espelie, co-Founder of the NEST Studio for the Arts. “This partnership with the SPIKE Center will empower more students to explore the intersection of the arts and sustainability sciences, creating new ways to work across disciplines.”

“At the SPIKE Center we seek to support sustainability education pursuits from all academic approaches,” said Max Boykoff, Faculty Executive Director of the SPIKE Center. “Artistic performance and exhibitions play a crucial role in shaping the popular consciousness around sustainability, and we are delighted to partner with the NEST Studio on this project.”

“The SPIKE-NEST partnership reflects ̽��Ƶ’s belief that powerful sustainability solutions emerge when artists and scientists create together,” noted ̽��Ƶ Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock. “By supporting these summer fellows, we are investing in bold, cross-disciplinary thinking that will help shape a more resilient and imaginative future”.

The deadline for NEST-SPIKE summer 2026 proposals is March 23rd, 2026. Send proposals to nest@colorado.edu with the subject line: Summer Fellowship Application.

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The Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the Leeds School of Business and the SPIKE Center of Sustainability Education Announce Partnership

Toby Murdock — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:47:01 +0000

The Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the Leeds School of Business and the SPIKE Center of Sustainability Education Announce Partnership Toby Murdock Thu, 5 Mar 2026 - 13:47

Carly Simmons

The Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility (CESR) within the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder has partnered with the SPIKE Center of Sustainability Education (SPIKE Center) to empower future sustainability leaders by funding four additional CESR Sustainability Scholars, contributing to 150% growth of the program for the 2026-2027 cohort.

The CESR Sustainability Scholars program supports Leeds undergraduate and MBA students with membership in a cohort of values-aligned business students, mentorship, and a financial stipend to enable transformational learning opportunities in sustainability and social impact. Thanks to the partnership with the SPIKE Center, these students will also connect with student leaders from across disciplines at CU through the SPIKE Student Emissaries Program.

Carly Simmons (BusAna, SupChnMgmt SRE'27), a 2025–2026 Sustainability Scholar, used her funding to enable her work at the Sunflower Seeds for Ukraine initiative, where she is helping convert solar panels into phone chargers and providing warm clothing for Ukrainian communities.

“Being part of the Sustainability Scholars cohort connected me with people who are values-driven and excited to think bigger,” Simmons said. “The networking alone has opened so many doors.”

The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education is newly founded in Fall 2025 and seeks to accelerate the development of sustainability education at ̽��Ƶ. It does so by working with students and faculty to envision the future of sustainability education on campus, and by supporting key partnerships such as the one with CESR. CESR empowers Leeds students to solve social and environmental challenges.

“The vision of the SPIKE Center is to empower sustainability across all academic disciplines,” said Max Boykoff, Faculty Executive Director of the SPIKE Center. “The business world is a critical driver of progress in sustainability, and so we are delighted to be partnering with CESR on this student-centered program.”

“Sustainability is a crucial challenge for businesses in the 21st century,” said CESR’s program manager, Katherine Ratledge. “Thus, we are excited to be partnering with the SPIKE Center to provide more transformative educational opportunities for Leeds students around the intersection of sustainability and business.”

“This CESR and SPIKE collaboration creates a dynamic alliance where sustainability curriculum meets business acumen – turning classroom training into real world solutions.” said Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock.

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Climate change media coverage fell 14% in 2025

Toby Murdock — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:17:25 +0000

Climate change media coverage fell 14% in 2025 Toby Murdock Fri, 27 Feb 2026 - 09:17

Media coverage of climate change or global warming in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through December 2025. (Credit: MeCCO/̽��Ƶ)

In 2025—Earth's third warmest year on record—massive fires destroyed entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles, a deadly heatwave killed more than 24,000 in Europe and powerful storms triggered catastrophic flooding in Southeast Asia.

Scientists were quick to highlight the potential links between many of these disasters and a rapidly changing climate. But media coverage of climate change decreased by 14% in 2025 compared to 2024, according to a recent report from ̽��Ƶ’s Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO).

Max Boykoff

“Over the past three and a half decades, climate change has become a high-stakes, high-profile, and highly-politicized venture involving science, policy, culture, psychology, environment and society,” said Max Boykoff, professor of Environmental Studies and a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Boykoff, who is also the faculty executive director of the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, leads MeCCO’s efforts to track media coverage of climate change and understand messaging trends here in the U.S. and across the world. ̽��Ƶ Today sat down with him to chat about the shift and the implications.

What is the Media and Climate Change Observatory?

MeCCO is a collaborative project that monitors and assesses climate change and global warming coverage in 131 newspapers, radio and television outlets spanning 59 countries and 14 languages. There is no other open-access resource like it available to researchers and practitioners, interested media outlets and decision-makers across anywhere else in the world.

How do ̽��Ƶ students support MeCCO?

In a new partnership between CIRES and the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, MeCCO is expanding student involvement and support at ̽��Ƶ. As part of broader MeCCO activities, ̽��Ƶ students also serve as SPIKE Student Emissaries, working with collaborators at universities, institutes and organizations worldwide. Together, the 30-member team monitors climate-related news and produces monthly and annual summaries and explainers. The partnership expands MeCCO’s reach while building competence and confidence among participating researchers and students.

How does your team track changes in media coverage about climate change?

In partnership with the University Libraries, MeCCO team members produce open access datasets each month at the global level for newspaper and radio coverage. The team also evaluates newspaper coverage in seven regions—Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America and Oceania—as well as at the country level in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

We use existing news archives to assemble data, making sure we have broad geographic coverage, high circulation and reliable access to material.

Media coverage of climate change or global warming in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through December 2025. (Credit: MeCCO/̽��Ƶ)

What contributed to the decline in coverage in 2025?

Ongoing political economic headwinds, and newsroom consolidation and reductions have contributed to this diminished coverage. Moreover, there is finite news space for competing stories, with the Trump administration flooding the public sphere with news stories across several domains.

News editors and reporters may also sense that their readers are getting tired of reading and hearing about climate change when making decisions about what stories to cover. Furthermore, journalists may be hesitant to connect the dots between ecological and meteorological events like wildfires, and a changing climate due to the ongoing politicization of climate science, despite the fact that those links are clear within relevant expert scientific communities.

How does this decline impact people’s awareness and understanding of climate change science?

People typically do not start their day with a cup of coffee and the latest peer-reviewed journal article. Instead, they turn to media—television, newspapers, radio, social media—to understand how science and policies could impact their everyday lives. This reality drives MeCCO’s work to monitor media coverage of climate change around the world and investigate how climate change coverage affects media consumers. When the media fail to cover these pressing climate issues abundantly and accurately, people may not recognize how climate change shapes their daily lives, livelihoods and challenges.

What are other ways scientists can reach people who might only hear about climate change issues from the news?

There are many ways scientists can creatively communicate and connect with different sectors of society. They can improve education and literacy, mobilize more effective advocacy efforts, raise individual-to collective-scale awareness, prompt behavior change and promote cultural change. Through video, theater, dance and writing, scientists can connect new and wider audiences to climate change—tapping into experiential, emotional, visceral and aesthetic ways of learning that go beyond traditional communication.

'Doom and gloom' messaging is prevalent in the media. How do you inspire hope?

There are many alternative pathways to effectively communicate about climate-related issues. In collaboration with ̽��Ƶ students, my colleague, Beth Osnes-Stoedefalke in the Department of Theater, and I have explored avenues like studying fast fashion communication strategies and environmental impacts (an industry that contributes significantly to global warming) and sustainable fashion alternatives.

We also explore how comedy may unexpectedly offer new routes to learning about climate change, overcoming often sober or gloomy scientific assessments through experiential, narrative, emotive and relatable storytelling. Humor can help increase accessibility to the complex and often-distant dimensions of climate change by bringing a long-term set of issues into the immediate social context. While comedy can provide relief amid anxiety-producing scientific results, it also serves to bridge difficult topics and overcome polarized discussions through entertaining and non-threatening ways to recapture a missing middle ground.

These activities then provide space for young people—college-aged students most centrally—to hope and to work toward desirable, sustainable futures.

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The SPIKE Center hosts climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith

Toby Murdock — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:13:27 +0000

The SPIKE Center hosts climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith Toby Murdock Fri, 27 Feb 2026 - 09:13

On Feburary 13, 2026, the SPIKE Center hosted climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith for a workshop and comedy show. Goldsmith has performed comedy on TV around the world - including on Live At The Apollo (BBC), Conan (TBS), and Russell Howard’s Stand Up Central (UK).

His comedy is about the climate crisis - how we can all do more to alleviate our dread and combat our inertia. His recent climate show, Spoilers, won Best Show 2023 at Leicester Comedy Festival, and was one of the best-reviewed shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

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faculty

Register for global youth climate summit co-hosted by ̽����Ƶ on June 5

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̽����Ƶ Student Comedians to Take Climate Humor from Local Earth Day Celebration to Hollywood Climate Summit

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Max Boykoff talks SPIKE Center on eTown

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The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, almost one year in

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SPIKE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION 2026 DESIGN CONTEST

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The SPIKE Center Launches Inaugural Cohort of SPIKE Student Scholars

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The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts will offer SPIKE-NEST Graduate Fellowships in 2026

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The Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the Leeds School of Business and the SPIKE Center of Sustainability Education Announce Partnership

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Climate change media coverage fell 14% in 2025

What is the Media and Climate Change Observatory?

How do ̽����Ƶ students support MeCCO?

How does your team track changes in media coverage about climate change?

What contributed to the decline in coverage in 2025?

How does this decline impact people’s awareness and understanding of climate change science?

What are other ways scientists can reach people who might only hear about climate change issues from the news?

'Doom and gloom' messaging is prevalent in the media. How do you inspire hope?

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The SPIKE Center hosts climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith

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Register for global youth climate summit co-hosted by ̽��Ƶ on June 5

̽��Ƶ Student Comedians to Take Climate Humor from Local Earth Day Celebration to Hollywood Climate Summit

How do ̽��Ƶ students support MeCCO?