F R O M T H E PR OGRAM

I hope this newsletter finds you someplace warm and welcoming. It’s been a fairly mild winter in Lex — only a couple brief cold snaps and no snow as of yet.

There’s lots to share in this year’s newsletter, so I’m not going to take up precious space with my ramblings. It’s been an eventful year since our last reflection. We learned that two iconic ENV faculty, Greg Cooper and Jim Kahn, will be retiring at the end of this academic year. The university allowed us to search for a new, fulltime assistant professor in ENV and we were able to recruit and hire an outstanding environmental sociologist, Mauricio Betancourt de la Parra. Professor Betancourt de la Parra will expand our course offerings in exciting new directions — you will be hearing more about him in next year’s newsletter.

We will be graduating our largest senior class in May, with 34 students set to complete the major or minor. These students represent an amazing diversity of perspectives and interests within the field of environmental studies. Their capstone projects range from original artwork to sustainable investing strategies. An equally diverse and talented (and nearly as large) group