Conscientiously advising an undergraduate sustainability club in a climate of pandemic change

A pandemic, a conversation with Maine’s youngest legislator, and a trail run in summer 2020 INSPIRED me to steer our small campus Sustainability Club in a new direction—toward cultivating an inclusive virtual learning environment through which students can collaborate from anywhere to address urgent social, environmental, and public health challenges. Now empowered with a Way Forward Grant, Club members are partnering with Maine’s young environmental activists and Wabanaki cultural knowledge keepers in conversations about the intersectionality of Indigenous and contemporary Western experiences of global change, and co-creating strategies for empowering underrepresented youth who have been impacted by global change.