Tuesday, February 3, 2026 • Online • Can we Negotiate our way out of Climate Change? Challenges and opportunities from COP30 in Brazil
How is the Paris Agreement faring 10 years after its approval? IU Professor of International Studies, Jessica O’Reilly, and IU student delegates provided a report on the state of international climate governance, based on their observations of the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held November 2025 in Belem, Brazil.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 • In-Person at Upland Brewery • Climate Change Through Geologic Time and Its Impacts on Evolution and Ecology
Earth has experienced tremendous changes in climate and environment over the last 500 million years. The fossil record provides evidence for the impacts it had on species and ecosystems and also for how life has affected climate. Comparisons with the past can be used to assess the pace and magnitude of the anthropogenic climate change unfolding today. This program was led by Dr. David Polly, Professor, IU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS). Dr. Polly is a vertebrate paleontologist who studies the ecology and evolution of mammals and other vertebrates in the fossil record including trait-based studies of community response to environmental change.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025 • Online • Environmental Protection and Climate Action: Where is our with National Environmental Policy Headed?
Over the past year, we have witnessed extraordinary changes to environmental policy at the national level. These changes have the potential to impact air and water quality, exposure to chemicals and climate change, public health and quality of life in America and around the world. In this program, we discussed some of the most significant proposals, who is saying what, and how these changes may could affect Indiana communities.
This program was facilitated by Janet McCabe, an environmental policy expert with a long career in public service, law, and academia. She currently holds affiliations with the IU McKinney School of Law, the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and IU’s Environmental Resilience Institute. She has served at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in several capacities, including as Deputy Administrator from 2021–2024. Janet has also held positions in environmental agencies in Indiana and Massachusetts and directed Improving Kids’ Environment, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit focused on environmental threats to children’s health.
Tuesday, October 7 • In-Person • Under Rising Temperatures: How Extreme Heat Shapes Our Cities and Communities
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest climate risks, but its impacts aren’t felt equally. In this session, we’ll explore how scientists measure heat in cities, why some communities are more vulnerable than others, and how climate stories can make these issues more relatable for students. Together, we’ll talk about heat and how to turn it into meaningful learning in the classroom. This program will be facilitated by Dr. Dana Habeeb, Assistant Professor, IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.
Tuesday, September 9 • Virtual/Online • Earth’s Vital Signs: An Up-to-the-Minute Look at Key Global Climate Metrics
Dr. Jeff White provided an up-to-the-minute report on the most important metrics used to track Earth’s changing climate. He focused on the big picture – global-scale metrics that track changes in Earth’s climate. He explored their meaning and significance as tools to monitor Earth’s climate health. Dr. White is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University. He has been at IU for 42 years. Before retiring from fulltime duties in 2020, Dr. White was founding Director of IU’s Integrated Program in the Environment.
Tuesday, May 6 • In-Person • Clean Water for Life: Protecting our Sources of Drinking Water
Where does your drinking water come from? How is that water source protected? What are the top threats to water quality in Indiana?
Participants learned what is being done to protect Lake Monroe, a source of drinking water for over 130,000 people as well as a huge recreational destination and economic driver. Maggie Sullivan, watershed coordinator for Friends of Lake Monroe, discussed the top water quality threats and the steps needed to address those issues. Hint: the solution involves looking beyond the lake at its watershed.
Tuesday, April 1 • Online • Bringing Severe Weather into Your Classroom
Spring is the main severe weather season in the US, so we joined Dr. Cody Kirkpatrick of the IU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to learn about ways you can add severe weather content to your science courses. We spanned topics from weather basics to data to practical safety rules and discussed the impactful weather phenomena you're interested in, and also where to find and how to use real-time data to monitor those phenomena. We also looked at some activities on the web that you may consider incorporating into existing lessons.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025 • The Amazon: Regional and Global Implications of a Transforming Rainforest
This presentation provided an overview of the social and environmental transformation of the Amazon during the past 50 years and highlighted current pressures affecting the region, including deforestation and mining, social inequities and illegal economies, and the impacts of climate change.
This program was facilitated by Dr. Eduardo S. Brondizio, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Brondizio directs the Center for the Analysis of Social Ecological Landscapes and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025 • Online • Science Advocacy in the Age of Misinformation and Science Distrust
How have the 2024 elections affected the future of Earth’s climate, environment, and public health—and what can scientists and educators do about it? Dr. Michael Hamburger and Dr. Steve Vigdor, scientists and leaders of the science advocacy group Concerned Scientists @ IU, explored the role of scientists in public policy, recent news from the newly elected national and state governments, and their potential impacts on the state of our planet and our region. We explored ways that scientists can become involved as advocates for science and ways that these challenging issues can be discussed in the classroom.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024 • Online • Coral Reefs and Climate Change
Coral animals live symbiotically with microscopic plants in their tissues – corals provide shelter, and the plants provide food, keeping corals strong to build tissues and skeletal structures. The coral reef ecosystem has persisted in shallow waters for 550 million years but is being affected by waters that are becoming warmer and more acidic. During this presentation, we discussed how the corals respond to climate changes and how we can help in their survival. This program was led by Dr. Claudia Johnson, IU Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
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Tuesday, November 12, 2024 • Online • Ice at the Poles: How Remote Ice Sheets Have Global Effects
Though ice sheets move and change slowly, their sheer size means they have global implications through their effect on sea level. We explored why predicting ice-sheet behavior is so difficult but critically important, since melting ice will affect millions of people globally over the next century. This program was led by Dr. David Lilien, IU Assistant Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
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Tuesday, October 1, 2024 • In Person • Action Ready Communities: Empowering Stakeholders to Combat Extreme Heat
Extreme heat, amplified by climate change, is one of the main public health crises facing American communities. Increased frequency of extreme weather events intensifies the need for communities to determine how best to prepare, respond, and recover from environmental disasters. Given the urgent need to prepare communities for the challenges of climate change, Dr. Habeeb discussed how she and her team are working to increase a communities’ preparedness to extreme heat and how they are leveraging data-driven solutions to combat extreme heat and increase community resilience. Through the collection and documentation of plans, identification of best practices, gaps and opportunities, she discussed heat management frameworks and actions that communities can take to respond to climate change. Creating supportive frameworks, toolkits, databases, and protocols can help cities in the development and implementation of comprehensive heat management plans, strengthening our overall resilience to the climate change crisis.
This First Tuesday program was led by Dr. Dana Habeeb, Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. Her research explores how climate responsive design can help mitigate climate change and address environmental challenges to improve the health of individuals and communities.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 • Online • Hurricanes and Climate Change: Understanding and Quantifying Impacts
In this online program, participating teachers looked at hurricane data that demonstrates trends and changes in hurricane patterns over time. They also investigated case studies of recent hurricanes and their impacts in the context of climate change.
This First Tuesday program was led by Dr. Chanh Kieu, Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University where his research interests include tropical cyclones and numerical weather prediction.
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Tuesday, May 7, 2024 • Showers, Bananas, and Climate Change: Our Climate from Several Viewpoints
Climate change happens slowly and for this reason is difficult to visualize or to comprehend. Fortunately, new studies of the changing climate are now able to help disentangle human caused changes in climate from natural changes. We looked carefully at climate from several points of view: the science, impacts, both global and local, and our response. Identifying our human involvement in climate change sharply focuses our response.
About the presenter: Dr. Ben Brabson is Professor Emeritus, Physics, at Indiana University. His research interests include experimental elementary particle physics and the physics of climate change.
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Tuesday, April 2, 2024 • Four Minutes in April: A Total Solar Eclipse in Indiana
For four minutes on April 8, 2024, millions of Americans witnessed darkness at midday as the moon’s shadow passed across Indiana. In this session, participants learned about the total solar eclipse and how they could use this celestial event to teach students about our planet and solar system.
About the presenter: Dr. Caty Pilachowski is Distinguished Professor and Daniel Kirkwood Chair of Astronomy at Indiana University where she teaches and conducts research on the evolution of stars and the chemical history of the Milky Way Galaxy from studies of chemical composition of stars and star clusters.
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Tuesday, March 5, 2024 • Cultivating Climate Champions: A Dynamic Approach to Teaching Climate Change Across Subjects
Particpants discovered and explored inquiry-based ideas to help their students investigate climate change across different subject matter areas, and learned how media literacy strategies can help them and their students meet the climate change challenge.
About the presenter: Dr. James Damico is Professor of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education in the School of Education at Indiana University. Dr. Damico’s scholarship and teaching centers on critical literacies and inquiry-based approaches for working with digital media and complex topics, especially climate change.
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Tuesday, February 6, 2024 • Successes and Challenges from the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on Climate Change
Participants learned about the successes and challenges from the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For two weeks in November, much of the world’s attention was focused on Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27. Indiana University sent an official delegation to COP27, led by Dr. Jessica O’Reilly, environmental anthropologist, and Associate Professor of International Studies. In this session, Dr. O’Reilly shared her experiences and insights from the conference.
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Tuesday, December 5, 2023 • Online • Earthquake Disasters in Turkey and Morocco: Making Sense of the Incomprehensible
This year, we have seen two devastating earthquake disasters—a series of earthquakes near the Turkey-Syria border in February 2023 and one in Morocco in September. Together, these two disasters left over 60,000 dead and hundreds of thousands left homeless. In this presentation, I examined the causes, impacts, and implications of these devastating earthquakes. We discussed the unusual geologic and seismological aspects of these natural disasters, and explored the geographic, social, and political context that often contribute to the widespread devastation associated with these disasters.
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Tuesday, November 7, 2023 • From Oil to Soil: Global Carbon Flux and Soil Respiration
Ecosystems play a central role in the global carbon cycle, removing CO2 via photosynthesis and releasing CO2 back to the atmosphere via autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration. Thus, there is great interest in understanding which factors control carbon uptake and release, and how these factors vary within and among ecosystems, and respond to climate change. This First Tuesday event provided a primer on soil respiration and the role it plays regulating our atmosphere, including the drivers of soil respiration.
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Tuesday, October 3, 2023 • Some (Don’t) Like it Hot: Climate Change and the Summer of ‘23
The summer of 2023 was probably one that many Americans would prefer not to repeat—record-breaking high temperatures across the country, wildfires in Canada setting off air-quality warnings in cities across the northeast, ocean temperatures that made beach vacations feel more like a hot tub. What’s going on here? Are they just some odd “black swan” event or are they signs of our climate future. Atmospheric scientist Paul Staten explores the climate science behind these weather-related phenomena, exploring the role of natural variability, anthropogenic climate change, volcanic eruptions, and short-term variations like the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. Participating teachers came away with a clearer idea how to distinguish between these various processes and ways to bring this state-of-the-art science into your classroom discussions.
Tuesday March 7, 2023 • Take Me to the River: Researching River Flood Plains
River floodplains and deltas are some of the most dynamic surface environments on Earth. However, because these landscapes are flat, it is difficult to perceive with the naked eye how fast they change over time, and how they are responding to a warming climate. Dr. Eric Barefoot will showcase some of the techniques geologists use to measure the impact of changing climate on these sensitive landscapes. The methods range from the high-tech (lasers mounted on satellites and drones), to the extremely low-tech (shovels and sticks). By combining different methods, we will see how seemingly flat, quiet marshlands transform in slow-motion, sometimes with disastrous outcomes.
Tuesday, February 7, 2023 • The Future of Nuclear Power
"The Future of Nuclear Power." Two professors of nuclear physics, Dr. Tim Londergan and Dr. Steven Vigdor will present “the future of nuclear power”. Nuclear power is one among several alternatives for carbon-free energy production to address global climate change. There are two basic types of nuclear power, utilizing the fission of heavy nuclei or the fusion of very light nuclei. Past serious accidents at fission reactor plants and the daunting engineering problems facing attempts to harness thermonuclear fusion in power plants have led to great public skepticism about the future role of nuclear power. However, renewed interest in the design of small modular fission reactors and recent technical breakthroughs in achieving fusion energy have spawned a new nuclear industry featuring many start-up commercial companies. This program will describe the advances, challenges, and prospects for modular fission reactors and nuclear fusion power plants and how they can play an important part in our carbon-free energy future. For more information, please contact Adam Scribner (jascrib@iu.edu).
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Tuesday, December 6, 2022 • Three Billion Missing Birds, What Can We Do?
"Three Billion Missing Birds, What Can We Do?" Dr. Ellen Ketterson and researcher Sarah Wanamaker will share their knowledge of the extent of the decline in bird populations in North America and globally over the past 50 years including the causes of the decline and information on what individuals can do to help. They will also share tools for students and adults to identify birds by sound and sight. For more information, please contact Adam Scribner (jascrib@iu.edu).
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Tuesday, November 1, 2022 • The Pandemic, Natural Disasters, and the Teachable Moment
Dr. Michael Hamburger, Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University will present “The Pandemic, Natural Disasters, and the Teachable Moment”. This program will help teachers turn recent disasters -- whether in our city or a thousand miles away – into meaningful classroom discussions for our students. The program’s driving questions are how can we be prepared, as teachers, to discuss these recent events, to share the science behind them, and to use these events to connect our students to the science that we study? To attend, please RSVP to Adam Scribner (jascrib@iu.edu).
