Join the UMass community for our annual celebration of climate positivity and collective action. This year’s extravaganza brings back the campus favorites you love, alongside new opportunities to engage with sustainability on campus.

The Innovation Pavilion Returns 

Back by popular demand, the Innovation Pavilion will showcase the creativity and problem-solving of our student body. Explore a gallery of solutions-focused proposals and be there for the live announcement of this year’s Student Sustainability Innovation Fund (SSIF) winners.

A Campus-Wide Celebration This event is a massive collaboration across our university network, organized by:

• Student Government Association (SGA) Sustainability Team

• Auxiliary Enterprises & Permaculture Program

• School of Earth & Sustainability (SES)

• Facilities Management

• Sustainability RSOs

The MassURC Hub is your ultimate destination for all conference-related activities: from registering for the conference to submitting, revising, and reviewing abstracts. Additionally, it will serve as your primary platform for accessing live schedules, conducting searches, receiving notifications, and staying updated throughout the conference day.

Be sure to join our mailing list so you can stay up to date with conference details.

This year's keynote speaker is Reena Randhir, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Springfield Technical Community College. Professor Randhir’s address, The Power of Scientific Thinking, will explore how scientific thinking reaches far beyond the classroom, helping us navigate challenges and uncertainty while fostering growth, resilience, and a redefined understanding of success.

Ira Klein, Spring 2026 artist in residence, will pair Renaissance-era musical motifs through a modern lens, composing new works that reflect historical echoes in contemporary sound. A Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and educator, he is celebrated for his expressive compositions that bridge Middle Eastern music, American folk traditions, and contemporary improvisation. With performances at institutions including Harvard, Yale, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and collaborations with luminaries including Claire Chase and Kevin Barry, Klein’s music carries an intellectual and emotional resonance.

The UMass Energy Transition Institute, ELEVATE program, School of Earth & Sustainability, and Integrated Concentration in STEM (iCons) program cordially invites you to a our 2026 Energy Transition Symposium with keynote speaker Secretary Rebecca Tepper of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Rebecca Tepper has served as the Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs since her appointment by Governor Maura Healey in 2023. Secretary Tepper oversees the agencies charged with facilitating the clean energy transition, improving resilience to climate change, safeguarding Massachusetts’ natural resources, and providing access to the outdoors. In this role, she successfully brokered a compromise to speed up clean energy siting and permitting practices, established new programs to protect communities from inland and coastal flooding, boosted investment in Massachusetts’ climatetech and offshore wind industries, and significantly strengthened regional ties to advance New England’s energy independence. Throughout these efforts, she’s led with an environmental justice lens and a focus on lowering costs for Massachusetts residents and businesses.

About the Symposium

The Energy Transition Symposium presents innovative research related to the needs, challenges, and opportunities of creating a just energy transition in Massachusetts, the United States and beyond. Secretary Rebecca Tepper's keynote address will be followed by poster sessions featuring clean energy, energy equity, sustainability, and climate resilience research by graduate and undergraduate students from UMass and surrounding colleges. The symposium is free and open to the public.

Schedule

2:30 - 3:30 pm | Welcoming Remarks and Keynote by MA EEA Secretary Rebecca Tepper

3:30 - 4:15 pm | Research Poster Session 1

4:15 - 5:00 pm | Research Poster Session 2

To attend or present a poster, please register here. If you have any questions or would like to request information about participating in the poster session please email jstarr@umass.edu and zgetmanp@umass.edu

Join UMass Dining Sustainability for a special Dining for a Cooler Planet event with sustainable seafood expert and chef Barton Seaver, co-author of The Blue Food Cookbook. Chef Seaver will lead a presentation and discussion on the cookbook and how the foods we choose from the ocean can support climate action, environmental stewardship, and delicious, nourishing meals.

The event will include a cookbook giveaway and free dish samplings inspired by recipes from The Blue Food Cookbook. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with one of the leading experts in sustainable seafood; we hope to see you there!

A talk by Colin Hoag, co-editor of the journal Environmental Humanities and Professor of Anthropology at Smith College.

The UMass Energy Transition Institute, School of Earth & Sustainability, and Clean Energy Extension invites you to the Campus Decarbonization forum!

Colleges and Universities often aspire to be leaders and innovators in the transition to clean energy.  However, with their district heating and power plants, these institutions face decarbonization challenges that are particularly expensive and disruptive to implement. At this event we will explore the challenges and look at what a few Universities have done, or plan to do, to transition their campus to clean energy. Presenters include: Alex Barron (Smith College), Suzanne Wood (UMass Chan Medical School), Shana Weber (virtually - University of Michigan, formerly Princeton), and Ezra Small (UMass Amherst). Presentations will be followed by Q and A. Kindly RSVP here if you plan to attend.

Join us for a screening and discussion of the documentary film, All That Breathes.

The Guardian review of the film notes: "All That Breathes is already internationally recognized, nabbing the grand jury prize at Sundance, best documentary at Cannes, as well as Bafta and Oscar nominations."

RSVP for Screening and lunch here:

Program includes:

• Poster presentations

• Lightning talks

• Professional headshots

• Networking with alumni

• Presentation awards with prizes up to $250!

Submit an abstract by the EXTENDED DEADLINE Friday, February 13, 2026 

Register to attend by Friday, March 20, 2026

The 2026 CNS Graduate Research Symposium is an opportunity to showcase the innovative work being conducted by our CNS graduate students. The event will feature 2 poster presentation sessions, and selected abstracts will be invited to deliver 4-5min lightning talk presentations. The event will conclude with a networking reception, where our graduate students will have a chance to meet with CNS alumni and all attendees can connect over light refreshments. Presentation awards will be announced during the networking reception. Award prizes will range in value up to $250. 

The goal of this event is to provide CNS graduate students with a supportive opportunity to strengthen their written, visual, and oral communication skills by presenting their work for peers, faculty, alumni, and the broader UMass community. The Office of Professional Development at the Graduate School will be hosting workshops to support and prepare graduate students in these efforts - check out their upcoming workshops. Graduate students are also encouraged to reuse past posters if available. 

The UMass Dining Sustainability Team is excited to kick off the spring 2026 semester with a Dining for a Cooler Planet film screening at the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall on Wednesday, February 25, 2026. The film WASTED! The Story of Food Waste dives into the negative implications and the deliciously innovative possibilities of food waste. Doors to the Events Hall will open at 6:00pm and the film screening will start at 6:30pm. This event is open and free to all UMass community members. Popcorn will be provided!

This 1 hour workshop is focused on hope and action. We will explore scalable, real world solutions across various sectors. There is an emphasis on personal and collective agency, highlighting what participants can do within their spheres of influence. 

Click here to learn more about the School of Earth & Sustainability Climate Literacy Program

RSVP to the training here - Climate Solutions Workshop

Learn more about this unique opportunity at this info session held on zoom.

Link to join: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/9890289841?omn=97003670139

Learn more about this unique opportunity at this in person info session.

This exhibition, Seeds of Time, explores the microscopic world of seeds and what they can teach us about ecology, anatomy, agriculture, and evolution. The images, taken through macrophotography and scanning electron microscopy, highlight the complex evolutionary history of seeds and the role of seed anatomy in the propagation of plants. The diversity of shapes, sizes, and textures of seeds enables us to identify them, even when burned and buried thousands of years ago, allowing archaeologists to draw insights into the complex relationships between people and plants in the past.

This exhibit explores the powerful, often overlooked connections between the earth’s most persistent plants and the creatures that sustain them. This group show, featuring work from Artists in Residence and current RoE Fellows, highlights the vital role of pollinators—bees, butterflies, birds,—in nurturing ecosystems, while celebrating the resilience of “weeds” and medicinal plants that have adapted, persisted, and transformed across centuries. By juxtaposing botanical and pollinator specimens with original art and interactive experiences, the exhibit reveals how these persistent species (long categorized as nuisances) hold knowledge of survival, regeneration, and balance that resonates today, as ecosystems face escalating pressures from climate change and human intervention. “Resilient Roots” invites visitors to reconnect with the natural world and consider how insights from the early modern world—its plant lore, ecological observations, land management practices, and human/nonhuman relationships—can inspire new ways to repair and restore the fragile environments that sustain us all.

Featuring work by Missy Dunaway, Aliza Fassler, Bo Kim, and Suzette Marie Martin.

This premier networking event connects students, faculty, and industry partners dedicated to building a more sustainable future. The UMass School of Earth & Sustainability Career Fair is the perfect opportunity to discover the next generation of leaders and innovators, explore career paths, and forge meaningful connections.

This is your chance to meet with leading organizations in the fields of environmental science, clean energy, climate resilience, and more. Whether you're seeking a summer internship, a co-op, or a full-time position, you'll find a wide range of opportunities to launch your career.

You'll connect directly with employers from the private, public, and non-profit sectors who are actively recruiting students with skills in areas such as:

• Environmental Science

• Natural Resources Conservation

• Biology

• Sustainable Food and Farming

• Environmental Engineering

• Civil Engineering

• Horticultural Sciences

• Arboriculture

• Applied Plant & Soil Sciences

• Turfgrass Management

• Geosciences

• Business Management

• Environmental Humanities

• Communications

This hybrid, 90-minute event will highlight the student-centered impactful work happening across our sustainability initiatives by SES as well as faculty and student leaders. While student presenters and campus leaders will gather in-person, we welcome all interested faculty, students, and community members to join us virtually via Zoom! Attendees can look forward to learning firsthand about our student leaders, their projects, and calls for collaboration, support, and action.

The showcase will feature quick talks on high-impact campus projects by undergraduate and graduate student leaders from across the Colleges of Education, Engineering, Humanities and Fine Arts, Natural Sciences, and Social & Behavioral Sciences—including our 2025-2026 Renaissance of the Earth Fellows Aliza Fassler and Bo Kim!

Click here to learn more and register to attend via Zoom.

This Interdisciplinary panel will feature this year's ASA participants, joined by scientists, activists, and journalists.

Art Sustainability Activism (ASA) is a collaboration between the Fine Arts Center, the MFA for Poets and Writers/Environmental Humanities, and the School of Earth & Sustainability.  The series works to create deliberate opportunities to connect artists, scientists, and changemakers. ASA embraces a cross-disciplinary approach as a way of elevating awareness about climate change, recognizing climate grief, and catalyzing meaningful change.

Link (forthocming)
More information here.

Poet Layla Long Soldier will give a reading followed by a Q&A.

This event is organized in collaboration with Art Sustainability Activism and the MFA's Visiting Writers Series.

Art Sustainability Activism (ASA) is a collaboration between the Fine Arts Center, the MFA for Poets and Writers/Environmental Humanities, and the School of Earth & Sustainability.  The series works to create deliberate opportunities to connect artists, scientists, and changemakers. ASA embraces a cross-disciplinary approach as a way of elevating awareness about climate change, recognizing climate grief, and catalyzing meaningful change

Come learn from pollinator experts and UMass grounds staff about best practices for protecting pollinators in the winter and how UMass manages fall cleanup for pollinators. We will also cover how different kinds of insects spend the winter, look at good overwintering habitat, and look to see if we can find any signs of overwintering pollinators! 

When: Friday 11/7/25 at 3:00PM (rain date 11/14)

Where to meet: Meet at the UMass Governor's Drive Pollinator Garden , parking may be available location TBD. Please email abolesfassle@umass.edu if you need parking. 

What to bring: Bring comfortable clothes/shoes for a ~1mile or less walk.

Accessibility: This will be an outdoor event primarily in the Governor's Drive Pollinator Garden which has an ADA accessible path, the walk may also take us through grassy areas, and trails into the woods. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to accommodate you at this event by reaching out to abolesfassle@umass.edu. For any questions please reach out to abolesfassle@umass.edu.

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScPWxtcol_HhOpG5cf_zDQVJ8njTqcjLvq8LQdlFlyZJhrxVA/viewform?pli=1

Madeline ffitch is a fiction writer, essayist, and activist. This event is organized by Art Sustainability Activist

Art Sustainability Activism (ASA) is a collaboration between the Fine Arts Center, the MFA for Poets and Writers/Environmental Humanities, and the School of Earth & Sustainability.  The series works to create deliberate opportunities to connect artists, scientists, and changemakers. ASA embraces a cross-disciplinary approach as a way of elevating awareness about climate change, recognizing climate grief, and catalyzing meaningful change.

Five College Renaissance Seminar with Rick A. López, Anson D. Morse 1871 Professor of History and Professor of Environmental Studies, Amherst College discussing his forthcoming book with Nicola Courtright (Professor of Architectural Studies and Art and the History of Art, Amherst College). 

Since the first moment of conquest, colonizers and the colonized alike in Mexico confronted questions about what it meant to be from this place, what natural resources it offered, and who had the right to control those resources and on what basis.

Focusing on the ways people, environment, and policies have been affected by political boundaries, historian Rick A. López explores the historical connections between political identities and the natural world. López analyzes how scientific intellectuals laid claim to nature within Mexico, first on behalf of the Spanish Empire and then in the name of the republic, during three transformative moments: the Hernández expedition of the late sixteenth century; the Royal Botanical Expedition of the late eighteenth century; and the heyday of scientific societies such as the Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural of the late nineteenth century.

This work traces how scientific intellectuals studied and debated what it meant to know and claim the flora that sprang from Mexican soil—ranging from individual plants to forests and vegetated landscapes—and the importance they placed on indigeneity. It also points to the short- and long-term consequences of these efforts. López draws on archival and published sources produced from the sixteenth century through the start of the twentieth century and gives special attention to the use of visual images such as scientific illustrations and landscape art. López employs the term “visualization” in recognition of the degree to which officials, botanists, and draftsmen produced imagery and also how they and others viewed nature.

Rooted in Place reveals how scientific endeavors were not just about cataloging flora but were deeply intertwined with the construction of identity and the political landscape at three pivotal moments in Mexican history.

Rooted in Place: Botany, Indigeneity, and Art in the Construction of Mexican Nature, 1570–1914 (University of Arizona Press, 2025)

Join Renaissance of the Earth Teaching Fellows, Kiran Jandu and Michael Medeiros, for a workshop that invites participants to reconnect with earth-based practices through fieldwork and hands-on making as we move across a diversity of landscapes on campus. Meeting at an area of the Tan Brook with one of the most geologically-significant clay deposits in western Massachusetts, we’ll learn methods to identify and ethically harvest wild clay, then take a guided walk across campus with Rozy Bathrick (College of Natural Sciences) to better understand our local ecology, linking cycles of soil, water, forest, and geological change. Our walk concludes at the Kinney Center’s meadow with a clay workshop, using local terracotta. As we walk through campus and traverse geological time, we’ll explore how traditional clay practices forge connections  with the natural world, grounding us in both the deep past and living present.

Rain Date: November 7

Additional support for this event comes from: the Creative Conservation Corps Initiative, the UMass Amherst Advancing Community, Democracy and Dialogue Grant, and the UMass Amherst Natural History Collections Curatorial Project

Have you ever wondered what food may be found in the fields and forests around us? Join seasoned forager Dan Bensonoff for an educational foray on the outskirts of the UMass campus as we learn about the many virtues of our wild edible plants and mushrooms. 

RSVP Here! (We'll send you location in the email)

Hosted by Professors Evan MacCarthy (Music History) and Marjorie Rubright (English)
Bezanson Recital Hall
An Elements & Renaissance of the Earth Listening Room

A combined lecture/recital inspired by the multi-year Arts and Humanities project, Elements.

Music by Antonin Dvořák: Silent Woods and Cypresses; Robert Schumann: Waldszenen (Forest Scenes); George Frideric Handel: Ombra mai fù (Never Was a Shade) from the opera seria Serse (Xerxes); Imogen Holst: Fall of the Leaf; Franz Liszt: Waldesrauschen (Forest Murmurs)

Performers: Emmet Chilton-Sugerman, piano; Christian Bearse, voice; Sarah Johnson, cello; Rishi Ramsingh, piano; Maria Gabriela Mendez Martinez & Thea Weinbeck, violin; Allie Schumacher, viola; Madeleine Guillaumot, cello

Free and open to the public.

UMass, Amherst's new Bee Campus USA Committee is hosting a guided Summer Pollinator Bioblitz event on Sunday, 8/3 from 11:00 -1:00 on the UMass, Amherst Campus.

The event will begin by documenting pollinators on the wild edges of campus behind lot 12  using nets to catch and release pollinators and phones to submit images to iNaturalist, where they will automatically be added to our UMass pollinator-monitoring project. If time allows, we will then make our way to the nearby Governor's Drive Pollinator garden to document species there. Our goals are to have fun, learn, and document as many different pollinator species as we can.

This event will be a great opportunity to learn more about wild pollinators with experts and help us document pollinator species on the UMass campus so we can better support them!

Sign up here

Scout Turkel, Renaissance of the Earth Teaching Fellow

During this generative working group, we will read and write in critical relation to concepts of descent and extraction in poetry — falling into, getting stuck below, and leaving behind “the earth.” In comparative conversation with the Kinney Center’s rare book collection, we will consider an array of poets who move beyond and below the earth-as-surface to critique representations of extraction and descent in geologic, mythic, and poetic history. Texts to be examined include Adam Lonicer's Kreuterbuch (1564), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1632 edition), Alice Notley’s book-length epic The Descent of Alette (1992), and Muriel Rukeyser’s poem sequence “The Book of the Dead,” first published in U.S. 1 (1938). These texts will provide starting points for responding to the notion of "descent," across disparate centuries, in the mode of poetry.

This working group is designed to provoke conversation, writing, and thinking in trans-historical and trans-spatial dialogue among poets, scholars, and community members. Experience with writing poetry is not required for participation, but a willingness to write and think in a collaborative and poetic mode is necessary.