First published in 2009, the book has become a cornerstone in environmental sociology curricula. It has been used in 41 states鈥攁s well as in Washington, DC, and four Canadian provinces鈥攁nd at more than 170 colleges and universities, including Brown, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Northeastern, Columbia, Stony Brook, Vanderbilt, Tulane, UNC-Chapel Hill, Notre Dame, University of Colorado, Washington State University, University of Oregon, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice of CUNY.

Unlike traditional environmental studies texts, Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology adopts a distinctly sociological perspective, offering twenty carefully curated case studies authored by experienced educators and researchers. The result is a lively, adaptable collection that distills the core ideas of environmental sociology into concise, accessible chapters鈥攎aking it suitable for students across diverse academic backgrounds.

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Sustainability is a stated value in 可乐视频鈥檚 Strategic Plan 2024鈥�2029. From research assessing climate impacts to flood-prone communities, curriculum development that emphasizes the campus as a living lab, facility upgrades, and numerous student initiatives, the college is committed to a transformative educational experience that emphasizes sustainability and providing a safe and sustainable campus.

Stalin Espinal, sustainability coordinator from the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, and Yarnelle Bauzil, coordinator for the college鈥檚 community garden, separated trash at the college鈥檚 first large campus waste audit in April 2024, which assessed recycling practices.

Most recently, the college鈥檚 Office of Environmental Health and Safety released a that highlighted composting opportunities and the impact of single-use plastics. The office also released its Annual Impact Report on Campus Sustainability that highlighted several benchmarks from key focus areas鈥攃ampus operations, environmental justice, engagement, waste minimization, academics, nutrition, and others鈥攚hile offering forward-thinking plans for the future.

Some areas where the campus shined include:

鈥� Just Transitions: Continued progress on BuildSmart 2025 Goals through improved accounting of energy savings by project, with 10 energy conservation projects completed, representing one million kWh saved. Collaborating with New York Power Authority and Sustainable CUNY, launched a project to build a decarbonization roadmap while reducing impacts to the local community and increasing resiliency.

鈥� Increased Student Engagement: More than 252 volunteers contributed 454 hours to sustainability initiatives.

鈥� Waste Reduction: Released guidelines for green events and achieved a 27.7% waste diversion rate through increased recycling and composting initiatives.

鈥� Improved Campus Operations: Converting to LED lighting in 20% of re-lamping locations, which represents 37 tCO2. Partnered with NYC Parks to establish a native plant bed. Piloted a food waste collection program.

鈥� Reduced Reliance on Bottled Water: Installed an additional five water bottle refilling stations, with more than 375,000 plastic bottles diverted from landfills.

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During his residency at the prestigious public research university, Gould gave a public lecture on Oct. 15. The lecture, examined how governments make decisions about investment after coastal disasters created by climate change.

Gould also lectured at the University of Auckland鈥檚 School of Social Sciences on “Climate Change, Disaster Capitalism & Environmental Justice: Some Implications for Island Nations鈥� and ran workshops for graduate students and early-career faculty on socio-environmental research design, and career development. While in New Zealand, Gould also gave a lecture for science faculty at Victoria University of Wellington.

Watch an interview on climate change and the ecological crisis with Gould and Professor Luke Goode from the University of Auckland .

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Paul Gertner 鈥�66 has always been fascinated by how people move through New York City.

The building industry executive and former city planner recalls how as a child he rode his bike all over Brooklyn, from his Midwood neighborhood to Marine Park, Prospect Park, and beyond. When he wasn鈥檛 biking, he鈥檇 ride public transportation, mainly the subway, far and wide. Gertner also loved geography, an atlas being his top pick at a grade school book fair. It is no wonder that when he reached 可乐视频, he was one of the first students to graduate with a degree in urbanism, or what is now known as urban sustainability.

Today, Gertner is a passionate advocate and supporter of sustainability efforts in New York City. His dedication to improving New Yorkers鈥� quality of life includes substantial gifts to his alma mater.

One such gift, initiated in 2021, is the Paul S. Gertner Student Internship Fund, which places sustainability students into internships at organizations in the field. Another, the Paul S. Gertner Fund for Urban and Environmental Studies, funds a full-time director and part-time college assistant at the college鈥檚 Center for the Study of Brooklyn, where interdisciplinary research about Brooklyn is conducted. These investments have allowed students to enter the world of urban and environmental advocacy, preparing them to be leaders in the field.

Becoming His Own Boss

After graduating from 可乐视频 and earning a master鈥檚 in regional planning from Cornell, Gertner became a county planning director in rural Colorado. Moving to the West Coast, he worked as an energy planner for the California Energy Commission, assessing emergent energy technologies and electric cars long before they became commonplace. After nearly a decade, he returned to Brooklyn and took the helm of the family business, Starborn Industries, a manufacturer and distributor of fasteners and other building-related products that his parents started in 1961.

鈥淚 loved my career in California, but I wanted to come back to Brooklyn and be my own boss,鈥� says Gertner.

Under his direction, the business grew. Patents were filed for new products, always with an aim, he says, to help people build better dwellings and to provide contractors with better ways to do things. The company became increasingly successful, and Gertner found that he had time to get involved in nonprofits. Besides his interest in urban planning,聽 he has, for the last two decades, been a board member of Roulette Intermedium, a Brooklyn based organization dedicated to supporting emerging musicians and dancers.

He also turned to something that had always been on his mind: transforming New York City streets into more walkable, bikeable, sustainable spaces.

鈥淭ransportation connects everybody to the environment and our life in the city,鈥� says Gertner, who believes a livable city goes hand in hand with sustainability. An idea he had to build a bike path over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge grew into a plan to open a 60-mile route around New York Harbor. To accomplish that, Gertner founded Harbor Ring, an advocacy group dedicated to this goal. Today, the route integrates more than 28 miles of existing shared-use paths and bikeways and more than 20 miles of bicycle-friendly streets.

Bringing in 可乐视频

Starting in 2020, Gertner, as a board member of the tri-state Regional Plan Association (RPA), an organization that focuses on quality of life and the economic health of the New York metropolitan area, funded three important studies for the association. He turned to his alma mater for the third, an extensive study of the effects of e-commerce, bringing 可乐视频 students on board to work as interns for RPA.

鈥淚t was a class project amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and they did a marvelous job creating a presentation; it was a great contribution to the RPA conference on e-commerce issues,鈥� says Gertner.

Out of that emerged the idea for an internship fund to support 可乐视频 students studying transportation, the environment, and urban sustainability. Gertner turned to Professor of Sociology and Urban Sustainability Ken Gould, then director of the Urban Sustainability Program, to help establish the Paul S. Gertner Student Internship Fund. Seeing a need to supplement the school鈥檚 Center for the Study of Brooklyn, Gertner worked with the center鈥檚 director Sociology Professor Gregory Smithsimon to establish the Paul S. Gertner Fund for Urban and Environmental Studies.

鈥淢y first love has always been to try to make the world a better place to live. 鈥� says Gertner. 鈥淐oming back to 可乐视频 after all these years, it鈥檚 emotional for me, especially seeing the students and how much they want to serve society, not just themselves鈥攈ow they want to make the borough, the city, our country a better place.鈥�

In just a few short years, the internship fund has provided students with opportunities to gain experience at organizations devoted to sustainability, such as Harbor Ring, RPA, Transportation Alternatives, Riders Alliance, the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, and Open Plans.

鈥淢r. Gertner鈥檚 support has been transformational in connecting me with an internship at Open Plans, where I was able to engage in safe streets advocacy and public space management through tabling and public presentations,鈥� says senior Wil Kitcher. 鈥淚t allowed me to engage with the community in spreading awareness for environmental justice issues. I鈥檓 thankful for his invaluable support.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 a very exciting time to be working on sustainability issues in New York City. Paul鈥檚 support allows students to gain real experience with some of the city鈥檚 most important planning issues and new initiatives,鈥� says Professor Smithsimon. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been fortunate that Paul had developed relationships with environmental, planning, and transit organizations; that has allowed us to have access. He is passionate that our students have these experiences.鈥�

Addressing Real-World Challenges

Gertner knows how valuable paid internship opportunities can be, for students鈥� career prospects and the city鈥檚 future.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important that our students get out into the environment, not just seeing what an urban planner does, but doing things like testifying in front of the MTA or attending hearings to see what happens when you鈥檝e done the research, have a plan, and present it,鈥� says Gertner. 鈥淲hat are the real-world challenges? While I loved my career in urban planning, I would have liked the kind of exposure to real life planning work environments we鈥檙e trying to give students now.鈥�

As a Brooklyn native, Gertner says that his deep love of the borough underpins his extensive commitment to the college鈥檚 sustainability programs.

鈥淥ur students are from here. They have families here. They have a vested interest. So many want to find solutions to problems such as congestion, air pollution, and flooding,鈥� he says. Significant strides have been made to convert Brooklyn鈥檚 former industrial waterfronts into green spaces, yet Gertner is keen on getting those kinds of聽 鈥渁menities鈥� deeper into the borough.

He is enthusiastic about students leading the way.

鈥淸可乐视频 students] can be a bridge from the advocates to the residents and the politicians.鈥�

When asked about the next big thing that will improve the quality of life and contribute to sustainability in New York City, Gertner does not hesitate. 鈥淥ne thing I’ve been trying to bring attention to is this idea of eVTOLs鈥攅lectric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. They are about to come to New York and displace a lot of very noisy helicopters that are taking off from downtown. But if the technology becomes widespread there could be concerning unintended consequences.鈥�

And about the future? Gertner is confident the city will be in good hands with 可乐视频 students at the helm. 鈥淗opefully, one of our students will become the head of the Department of Transportation or the Parks Department,鈥� he says.

And with supporters like Gertner, this vision can become a reality, enabling New York City to thrive, sustainably, for a very long time.

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While a student at LaGuardia High School, Derevensky enrolled in AP Environmental Science and cultivated a passion for the discipline. She also realized that she could use her own career as a path toward enacting change, so she searched for colleges that offered earth and environmental science-related programs. A friend of her mother recommended the Macaulay Honors College. Subsequently Derevensky discovered 可乐视频鈥檚 urban sustainability degree program鈥攁t that time, the only one of its kind in the city and one of only a couple in the country with a multidisciplinary bent. She knew exactly where she wanted to be.

By addressing the three pillars of sustainability鈥攕ociety, the environment, and the economy鈥攖he urban sustainability program 鈥渓ooks deeply at the societal and environmental issues that lead to climate change,鈥� Derevensky says. Combined with the curriculum offered by the Macaulay Honors College, which includes a certification program in New York City studies, Derevensky cultivated an environmental science鈥揻ocused, public-facing, and ethics-minded education that further inspired her to continue her studies at the graduate level, with the goal to prepare herself for work in the public or federal sector.

While conducting graduate research in crowdfunding at SUNY Binghamton鈥攚here she received a double master鈥檚 in sustainable communities and public administration with a certificate in nonprofit administration鈥攕he discovered BlocPower, a Black-owned, Brooklyn-based company specializing in energy efficient technology. She now works for BlocPower as the community coordinator for the Electrify Ithaca program. BlocPower won a competitive Request for Proposal from the city of Ithaca to assist in the city鈥檚 goal to completely decarbonize all buildings by 2030.

Derevensky views the future of urban sustainability in electrification, or the replacement of appliances that use fossil fuels and with electric-based ones. But this movement, she says, needs to be done in such a way that simultaneously 鈥渂rings these benefits and technologies to the people most impacted by climate change鈥� while not 鈥減ricing people out of their communities by doing so.鈥�

With BlocPower, Derevensky collaborates with stakeholders, community members, and building owners to make them aware of the costs and potential incentives of electrification, and also works to ensure that the local community is involved in the overall outreach of the program as much as possible.

“We’re learning more about the things in our home every day, and figuring out how to make things better,鈥� she says.

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Arias is now a senior at 可乐视频, where he majors in urban sustainability. Over the years, he has built upon his on-the-ground experiences through a number of academic fellowships and mentorship programs鈥攎ost notably the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, the Tow Mentoring Initiative, and the Kurz Undergraduate Research Assistantship, researching environmental justice, self-determination, resilience, and post-disaster recovery.

After working with faculty and mentors through these programs, Arias fell in love with academic scholarship and now has his sights set on continuing his education with a doctoral program in environmental social sciences. He also thinks it鈥檚 necessary to supplement his academic career with activities outside of the classroom. As president of the Puerto Rican Alliance, Arias cultivates a welcoming space for students of color and queer people to come together in community.

Arias also connected with GrowNYC, a New York City鈥揵ased environmental organization that provides green spaces, food-scrap drop-offs, fresh food access via its Greenmarket network, and sustainability-related educational opportunities. When the organization expressed interest in building a compost site near campus, he reached out to them, stayed in touch, and put in his application when the time came for the organization to put out a call.

Now a compost coordinator for the organization, Arias sets up food-scrap drop-off sites throughout the city while speaking with members of the community about composting, sustainability, and any other environment-related topics that arise.

鈥淚 try to meet people where they鈥檙e at,鈥� he says, describing his interactions with the people he encounters on site.

Though he observes that the culture of sustainability in New York is not as strong as it is in other places in the country, he says that the potential challenge makes him 鈥渕ore excited to have this opportunity to reach people and connect with them. I believe everyone has a relationship to the environment, whether they actively think about it or not.鈥�

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The overall goal of Prof. Boger鈥檚 project is to create digital geospatial tools for the digital public goods initiative to create a more equitable world. She will spend her time in Kenya and work with the United States International University Africa and the Kenya Agency to develop flexible education modules, create a Kenya-tailored citizen science app, and collect environmental data.

Let us once again congratulate Rebecca and wish her a wonderful and productive Fulbright experience. Congratulations!

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They will be working collaboratively with CUNY graduate students Scott Ferrara and Katharhy Grossman from the Graduate Center and Lehman College on this project. In his project they propose a pilot project that will bring together an interdisciplinary team at 可乐视频 with non-government and government organizations, advocacy groups, Indigenous communities, and individuals in the Great South Bay area, Long Island, New York to assess the impacts on cultural heritage from climate change through a robust community engagement process informed by storytelling and mapping. This project is motivated by the hypothesis that equitable adaptation to the impacts of climate change, in particular sea level rise and extreme events, will be more resilient and sustainable when the perspectives of various and diverse community stakeholders are involved in the co-planning, co-production of knowledge, and ultimately the co-implementation of strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on intangible and tangible cultural heritage.

Congratulations Profs. Britt and Boger!

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In her role as principal investigator, in 2020 Prof. Rabin received an NIH R15 award for her work titled 鈥淣ovel multimodal assessment of practical judgment across the Alzheimer’s continuum: Toward a better understanding of how to predict risk in the elderly.鈥� This is a three-year award for a total of $478,342.

Her success continued in 2021 when she received a three-year NSF REU award for her work titled 鈥淚ntensive mentored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in psychology and neuroscience at an urban public college.鈥� The amount of this grant is $335,505.

Prof. Rabin has also enjoyed success with eight peer-reviewed manuscripts in 2020 plus two book chapters and ten peer-reviewed manuscripts thus far in 2021. Notably, most of her publications include undergraduate and/or graduate student authors.

Rabin, L.A., Wang, C., Katz, M., Sliwinski, M., & Lipton, R. (2021, in press). Optimizing classification of subjective cognitive decline in community-dwelling older adults based on diagnostic conversion: Results from the Einstein Aging Study.聽Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.

Rabin, L., Miles, R., Kamata, A., Krishnan, A., Stewart, G., Elbulok-Charcape, & Compton, M. (2021, in press). Development, item analysis, and initial reliability and validity of three parallel forms of a multiple-choice mental health literacy test for college students.聽Psychiatry Research.

Rabin, L.A., Krishnan, A., Bergdoll, R., & Fogel, J. (2021, in press). Correlates of exam performance in an introductory statistics course: Basic math skills along with self-reported psychological/behavioral and demographic variables.聽Statistics Education Research Journal.

Guayara-Quinn, C.G., Par茅, N., Scott, R., … &聽Rabin, L.A.聽(2021, in press). Development and psychometric evaluation of the Test of Practical Judgment Alternate Form (TOP-J Form B).聽Applied Neuropsychology.

Rabin, L., Guayara-Quinn, C., Nester, C., Ellis, L., Par茅, N. (2021, in press). Informant report of judgment ability in a clinical sample of older adults with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia.聽Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition,聽 doi: 10.1080/13825585.2020.1859081.

Chi, S.Y., Chua, E.F., Kieschnick, D., &聽Rabin, L.A.聽(2021, in press). Retrospective metamemory monitoring of semantic memory in community-dwelling older adults with subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment.聽Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.

Katz, M., Wang, C., Nester, C., 鈥� &聽Rabin, L.聽(2021, in press).聽 T-MoCA: A valid phone screen for cognitive impairment in diverse community-samples.聽Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.

Guayara-Quinn, C., Nester, C.O., Katz, M. J., 鈥� &聽聽Rabin, L.A.聽(2021, in press). Re-evaluation of psychometric evidence and update of normative data for the Test of Practical Judgment.聽The Clinical Neuropsychologist.

Carmasin, J.S., Roth, R.M.,聽Rabin, L.A., Englert, J.J., Flashman, L.A., & Saykin, A.J. (2021, in press). Stability of subjective executive functioning in older adults with aMCI and subjective cognitive decline.聽Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology.

Choi, S.-E., Mukherjee, S., Gibbons, L.E., Sanders, R.E., Jones, R.N., Tommett, D., Mez, J., Trittschuh, E., Saykin, A., Lamar, M.,聽Rabin, L.A., 鈥� & Crane, P.K. (2021, in press) Development and validation of language and visuospatial composite scores in ADNI.聽Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 2020;6:e12072. doi.org/10.1002/trc2.12072.

Rabin, L.A., Brodale, D.L., Elbulok-Charcape, M., & Barr, W.B. (2020). Challenges in the neuropsychological assessment of ethnic minorities (pp. 55-80).聽 In. O. Pedraza (Ed.),聽Clinical cultural neuroscience: An integrative approach to cross-cultural neuropsychology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dick, K. &聽Rabin, L.聽(2020). Dementia. In T.M. Buttaro, P. Polgar-Bailey, J. Sandberg-Cook, & Trybulski, J. (Eds.),聽Primary care: A collaborative practice聽(6th ed., pp. 1065-1071). London: Elsevier.

Miles, R.,聽Rabin, L., Krishnan, A., Grandoit, E., & Kloskowski, K. (2020). Mental health literacy in a diverse sample of undergraduate students: Demographic, psychological, and academic correlates.聽BMC Public Health 20聽(1699). doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09696-0.

Nester, C., Ayers, E.,聽Rabin, L., & Verghese, J. (2020). Non-memory subjective cognitive concerns predict incident motoric cognitive risk syndrome.聽European Journal of Neurology, 27(7), 1146-1154. doi: 10.1111/ene.14271.

Singh, A., Zeig-Owens, R.,聽Rabin, L., 鈥� & Hall, C.B. (2020). PTSD and depressive symptoms as potential mediators of the association between World Trade Center exposure and subjective cognitive concerns in rescue/recovery workers.聽International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(16), 5683. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17165683

Singh, A., Zeig-Owens, R., Hall, C.B., Liu, Y.,聽Rabin, L., 鈥� & Prezant, D.J. (2020). World Trade Center exposure, post-traumatic stress disorder, and subjective cognitive concerns in a cohort of rescue/recovery workers.聽Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 141(3), 275-284. doi: 10.1111/acps.13127.

Jutten, R.J., Grandoit, E., Foldi, N.S., 鈥� &聽Rabin, L.A.聽(2020). Lower practice effects as a marker of cognitive performance and dementia risk: A literature review.聽聽Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, 12(1), e12055. doi: 10.1002/dad2.12055.

Jessen, F., Amariglio, R.E., Buckley, R.F., van der Flier, W.M., Han, Y., Molinuevo, J.L.,聽Rabin, L., 鈥� & Wagner, M. (2020). The characterisation of subjective cognitive decline.聽Lancet Neurology, 19(3), 271-278. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30368-0.

Elbulok-Charcape, M., Mandelbaum, F., Miles, R., 鈥� &聽Rabin, L.A.聽(2020). Reducing stigma surrounding mental health: Diverse undergraduate students speak out.聽Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/87568225.2020.1737853.

West, R.K.,聽Rabin, L.A., Silverman, J.M., Moshier, E., Sano, M., & Beeri, M.S. (2020). Short-term computerized cognitive training does not improve cognition compared to an active control in non-demented adults aged 80 years and above.聽International Psychogeriatrics, 32(1), 65-73. doi: 10.1017/S1041610219000267.

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Michael Menser, an associate professor of philosophy, urban sustainability, and Caribbean studies, lived on the Gulf Coast of Texas as a child. His familiarity with the situation is not only observational, but personal.

“Many have died. The Houston Chronicle reported that over 50 have died in Houston alone. Mostly freezing to death, mostly elderly,” says Menser, who is also a member of the board of the Center for the Study of Brooklyn whose areas of research include sustainability and resilience as well as participatory democracy.

On top of the devastating loss of human life, the tragedy has had profound economic impact, with property damage and energy bills skyrocketing to astronomical costs.

“There could be more than 125 billion dollars in damages, which would make it the most costly disaster in Texas history,” says Menser, author of We Decide! Theories and Cases in Participatory Democracy (Temple University Press, 2018).

Menser notes that Texas has seen numerous natural disasters in its recent past, many exacerbated by the effects of climate change. We talked to him about his insight into the current situation, its contributing factors, and how it can serve as an important lesson for the future.

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