2025 Earth Week Event Showcases Student Research and Operational Progress

The Office of Sustainability provided updates on the state of Plan 2030, with a special focus on its Campus as Lab (CAL) initiative.

Speakers:

• Jessica Prata, Assistant Vice President, Office of Sustainability
• Daniel Allalemdjian, Director for Sustainability and Transportation, Office of Sustainability
• Mina Petracca, Campus as Lab Intern, Office of Sustainability
• Yoon Kim, Data Analytics Intern, Office of Sustainability
• Julia Widmann, Graduate Student Intern, Office of Sustainability

• Vanshika Kishore, Data Science Intern, Office of Sustainability

Jessica Prata kicked things off by sharing Columbia's Plan 2030 implementation pathways — Building Net Zero and Living Net Zero —as well as the six key operational areas of the plan, with a focus on CAL. Plan 2030 offers student learning opportunities through the CAL initiative, in the form of capstone projects, internships/fellowships, thesis research, student club projects, and more. Prata also announced the Office of Sustainability's newly released Progress Report, which was published on Earth Day.

Daniel Allalemdjian spoke next, explaining how CAL expands Columbia's capacity to solve campus-based sustainability challenges while giving students real-world skills like data acquisition and analytics, finance and budgeting, benchmarking best practices, and stakeholder engagement. Allalemdjian also shared some examples of capstone and thesis projects to date that have spurred campus sustainability efforts.

Each of the office's interns presented their work from the prior semesters and shared their takeaways as the Spring semester comes to a close.

After the presentations, attendees celebrated student research at the Spring Research Showcase poster session. Students from various programs in The Climate School presented their research from the semester to their peers, as well as to staff attendees working in sustainability across the University.