The world is urbanizing with more than 50% of the global population currently living in cities. Cities only make up about 3% of the world’s land surface, yet they emit more than 75% of greenhouse gases. Along with greenhouse gas emissions, impacts from pollution and the urban heat island force mayors to act on these urban environmental challenges. Collaboration among cities through networks like C40 or the United States Conference of Mayors to work towards solving urban environmental problems describes one way of sharing models for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These collaborations can further benefit including academic institutions and higher education. Using cities as living laboratories, researchers can leverage their immediate surroundings to focus STEM education on impactful transformative research that allows graduate students to address environmental problems. Through this approach, university programs can offer transformative research opportunities that double as career pathway experiences with partner organizations to solve particularly challenging aspects of urban environmental assessments. Integrating internships into STEM education that focus on urban science can result in mutual benefit for all partners.
Results/Conclusions
Here we present success stories of students completing internships as part of their graduate training in our National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health at Boston University and share how these experiences can shape graduate education and impactful climate action.