In June 2024, the Decarbonization Academy at UVA started with a meet and great breakfast with UVA undergraduates and graduate students, faculty members, and staff members in Monroe Hall. Over the 8-week program, students from various disciplines worked to advance UVA's sustainability goals by focusing on projects like designing on-Grounds forest patches, influencing social norms, and greening the university fleet.

The academy was started by Engineering Professor Lisa Colosi Peterson and this year was led by Ethan Heil, program director and sustainability engineer at UVA’s Office for Sustainability. It's designed to be an immersive learning experience for students who are interested in working towards UVA’s sustainability goals of being carbon-neutral by 2030 and fossil-fuel free by 2050. This year’s group of 16 fellows (third years, fourth years, and one graduate student) come from a variety of disciplines: engineering, environmental science, architecture, environmental thought and practice, and other majors. Below are the teams and fellows.

Forest Patch team: MaeEllen Megginson, Mai Friedman, Elizabeth Woodward, Anika Gupta, and Elisabeth Doty

Social Norms team: Ellie Roberson

Buildings team: Jessica Wey, Abigail Corish, and Charlotte Flynn

Green Fleet team: Grace Hessberg and Stephen Hotchkin

Morven team: Angelia-Anne Irvine, Austin Chinn, Jackson Barnard, Ryan Faddis, and Owen Himmel

Share this Story

Advancing our bold goals