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Climate HQ Newsletter

Volume 2, Issue 1: September 2025

For students, faculty, and staff.

Climate HQ was created to empower SF State's diverse students, staff, and faculty to become climate justice leaders. Together, we are training student leaders, fostering collective knowledge, creating empowering events, and transforming our campus to face today's greatest climate challenges.

In This Issue: Free Student Breakfast, Fall Events Calendar, Faculty Learning Communities, Mini Grants, SNAG Events, Recap of Summer Field Courses and PK-12 Education Graduate Certificate, Open Panel Discussions, Volunteer Opportunities, Meet Our New Intern, Faculty Grant Win, & Climate HQ Faculty in the News!

Welcome back to campus for fall 2025! When times are difficult, we know collective action is the antidote. We hope that as Climate HQ—the hub for education, research, and action on climate justice across the entire SF State campus—we are one place you can turn to. We have so many exciting events, opportunities, internships, classes, trips, and more to invite you to this year, join us!

Climate HQ welcomes everyone, whether you're an aspiring artist, activist, scientist, journalist, teacher, storyteller, healer, engineer, designer, policymaker, grower, filmmaker, organizational leader, or a person who wants to make a difference in any way they can.

Interested in learning more about Climate HQ? Browse our website or reach out to members of our team to get plugged into our opportunities, classes, and more. Check out our past newsletters to get a sense of what we've been up to.

What we are reading, watching, & listening to:

ENVS 690 Playlist: What music helps you meet the challenge of climate change?

16 Climate & Sustainability Fellowships to help you advance your career in 2025.

Reclaiming Climate Justice: United Call for Reform in the UN Climate Talks.

People's AI Action Plan, climate justice organizations join in signing.

"Carbon Bros" Season 13, Drilled Media: A True Crime Podcast About Climate Change.

Thank you for being a reader of the Climate HQ Newsletter. We'd love to learn where our newsletters are circulating and who they are reaching.

Climate HQ *Free* Student Breakfast

All Students Welcome!

Start your morning with good food and great connections! Join Climate HQ for a free breakfast and discover how you can get involved with our Climate Change Certificate program, explore our exciting initiatives, and meet our partner organizations making a difference in climate justice.

Whether you’re curious about sustainability careers, looking for ways to take action, or just want to connect with other students passionate about the planet — this is the perfect place to start.

Certificate in Climate Change: Causes, Impacts, and Solutions

Interested in the Climate Change Certificate? Need advising? This unique 13-19 unit program is open to students of any major and is a great way to complete your SF State Studies requirements along with many of your Upper Division and even major requirements too!

Students take 5 classes, one in each of the following areas: Foundations, Causes, Impacts, Solutions, and a Practicum course. Students gain an interdisciplinary overview of climate change issues and climate justice. This is a great way to get started in studies on climate change and is flexible to accommodate students in all majors.

We have certificate advisors across campus in every college. Contact a certificate advisor to plan your schedule to best fit your graduation timeline!

Get paid internship experience by partnering with local climate justice orgs! This is a great opportunity to build local connections, enact real-world climate justice, and grow your resume, all while doing work you care about with like-minded advocates!

Get involved this fall with Climate HQ’s calendar of events! Build community at Art and Fix It Parties, explore big ideas through panels and career connections, and take action with hands-on habitat restoration projects. Celebrate diverse voices at the Representation Matters Film Fest and learn storytelling strategies with journalist and SFSU alum Hannah Lee! Partner events with SNAG, SFE, and Save the Bay add even more ways to connect, learn, and make an impact throughout the semester.

Call for Proposals will be published in late September here!

SF State’s Climate HQ aims to strengthen climate justice teaching, research, and outreach at SF State. A key way we are supporting climate justice teaching at SF State is through Climate Justice Faculty Learning Communities (CJ FLCs). Modeled on CEETL’s Teaching Squares, these FLCs will meet regularly throughout the semester to support each other and share best practices for teaching and learning focused on climate justice pedagogies.

Deadline for submission: mid-November 2025

Purpose: The SF State CJ FLCs have 3 main purposes:

1. To support faculty members to incorporate climate change and/or climate justice into their course/project/pedagogy for the first time;
2. To support faculty members who already teach climate change and/or climate justice into their course/project/pedagogy to deepen their teaching of social justice aspects of climate change into that course;
3. To facilitate connections among faculty teaching climate change and/or climate justice in different ways across campus.

Looking for ideas? You can go to this document for examples of completed FLC projects, or you can post on this forum if you are looking to find FLC group members to work with.

Call for Proposals will be published in late September here!

Through the Climate Justice Leaders Initiative (CJLI), SF State’s Climate HQ aims to strengthen climate justice teaching, research, and outreach at SF State. Because we recognize the complexities of climate change/justice, we want to support efforts that are grounded in interdisciplinarity. As such, a key way we are supporting efforts to mitigate climate change and to address climate impacts is through interdisciplinary mini-grants that bring researchers from different fields together to address climate justice goals. These one-time mini-grants are intended to seed and support interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and creative activities: we are looking to award 3-6 grants from $5,000 to $12,000 each. 

Deadline for submission:

mid-November 2025

Purpose: The SF State CJLI mini-grants have 3 purposes: 

1. To support faculty members in incorporating climate change/justice into their Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (RSCA) for the first time. 
2. To support faculty members who are already engaged in RSCA related to climate change/justice, to deepen their inquiries or incorporate climate change/justice in a new way. 
3. To facilitate connections among faculty engaged in climate change/justice related RSCA in different ways across campus and community. 

Looking for ideas? You can go to this document for examples of completed Mini Grants projects, or you can post on this forum if you are looking to find group members to work with on a Mini Grant proposal.

This fall we are delighted to welcome the third cohort of Climate Action Fellows. Fellows had a chance to gather last April and now are engaging with one another and with Climate HQ's Prof. Kai Burrus through BIOL 681, Climate Action: Applied Learning for Real World Change. We're excited about the wide range of different projects these students are undertaking both on and off campus!

Do you have an idea for a project? The Climate Action Fellowship enables SF State students with a paid fellowship to take action to address climate change and supports the development of community and leadership among students from diverse backgrounds interested in climate justice. The Fellowship is open to undergraduate and graduate students in all fields of study; applications for the 2026-27 academic year will be due in early Spring 2026.

Photo of six Climate Action Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year and one from the 2024-25 cohort, taken at a gathering in April 2025 following the Climate HQ film festival.

Climate Week art installation from

2024 in NYC's Times Square

Students in ENVS 130 will be listening in virtually to public events during NYC Climate Week from September 21st-28th and you can too!

Launched by the Climate Group in 2009 to coincide with the UN General Assembly, this global event has grown to be the biggest of its kind and includes almost 1000 panels, workshops, films, art events, and other activities—both live and virtual.

NYC Climate Week brings together leaders from civil society, business, politics, and academia to take bold action on climate change. Whatever your interests are—sustainable fashion, food waste, urban agriculture, indigenous knowledge, renewable energy, climate justice—there is something for you.

Search events to attend virtually here!

Join students and Climate Action Fellows in

BIO 681: Climate Action: Applied Learning for Real World Change

to learn from two open panel discussions this fall. All are welcome to attend!

Monday, September 29th

Working in Climate Justice: Career Paths and Insights

Hensill Hall 501 from 2-3:30pm

Monday, October 27th

From Neighborhood to Movement: Local Climate Justice Leaders

Hensill Hall 501 from 2-3:30pm

In the summer of 2025, faculty affiliated with Climate HQ won a College of Liberal and Creative Arts "Extraordinary Ideas Grant" to seed the project "Data's Counter Stories: The Material Ecology of AI Extraction and Enclosure" during AY 2025-2026.

The project will convene a transdisciplinary collective to read, discuss, and publicly amplify informative critical conversations about the ecological and cultural impacts of AI infrastructures from environmental cultural studies and critical ethnic studies perspectives, thereby contributing to campus-wide knowledge and curricula.

The faculty consist of:

• Constance Gordon, Communication Studies, College of Liberal & Creative Arts
• Gopal Dayaneni, Race & Resistance Studies, College of Ethnic Studies
• Logan Hennessy, Liberal Studies, College of Liberal & Creative Arts
• Omar Zahzah, Race & Resistance Studies, College of Ethnic Studies
• Fatima Alaoui, Communication Studies, College of Liberal & Creative Arts
• Blanca Missé, Cinema, College of Liberal & Creative Arts

Emet Levy is a second-year graduate student in the Master's of Design program at San Francisco State. He is primarily focused on graphic design, but since beginning his coursework at SFSU, he has completed courses in data visualization, bookmaking, and interaction design. Emet received a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2021. After completing his undergraduate degree, he pursued a variety of interests including journalism, architecture, construction, and education.

Emet will be working on design and communications strategies to bring more students into our work!

Read the Article Here

Read the Article Here

Climate HQ welcomed its first cohort into the new Graduate Certificate in PK-12 Climate Justice Education in Summer 2025. This group of educators, representing expertise in fields ranging from transitional kindergarten through high school, adult, and informal education, will work together over the next year.  This summer, the first cohort participated in two 8 week courses focused on pedagogy and science to support understanding of issues of climate justice.  Highlights from the summer included teams of educators spreading out through neighborhoods in San Francisco to conduct climate resilience assessments as well as engaging in a multidisciplinary exploration of the history and science of China Camp State Park. In the fall semester, the cohort will take up issues of climate justice through a course offered through the Department of Race and Resistance Studies, and in the spring, they will engage in action research projects to implement and assess the impacts of multidisciplinary climate education in their settings.

We will begin accepting applications for the 2026-27 cohort on October 1!

“It’s … the best class I’ve taken and I would take it again if I could.”

Professors Saskia van Kampen’s and Logan Hennessy’s summer course, DES/ENVS/LS 312 Climate Issues and Activism, took students to the Sierra Nevada Field Campus for a week of hiking, field studies, great discussion, and creative thinking. Students engaged with issues facing California’s ecosystem, and drafted campaign designs for social movements. They looked at water, fish, and hydroelectricity, the legacy of mining, the link between warmer temperatures, bark beetles, and tree mortality, the presence of lichens as ecological indicators, the impacts of warming on wildlife such as birds and mammals, the role of soil biodiversity, and the devastating impacts of wildfires.

When asked if the class met their expectations one student responded: “I got a lot out of the experience. I think that going to the field campus really inspired me to be more of an activist around environmental issues.” Another student observed that “[we’ve become disconnected] from nature and each other. Losing the tech and just hanging out outside with strangers that quickly became close friends was super eye opening.”

The class will run again in the summer 2026 semester!

Professor Logan Hennessy and his students spent three weeks in Ecuador for a special Faculty-Led Study Abroad version of LS 430 Future of the Forests.

The class focused on rainforest ecology, conservation, development impacts from oil and mining, and the challenges of climate justice for indigenous peoples and frontier residents.

They spent ten days at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Yasuni National Park, as well as a shorter visit to the Intag River valley cloud forests. They met with UDAPT community leaders on a toxics tour, seeing first hand both the historical and current impacts of oil extraction, as well as women leaders of DECOIN, who successfully resisted a copper mining project in their community of Junin.

Read more in the latest issue of SF State News.

In 2021, participants across 6 of SF State's colleges joined to create what would become Climate HQ, a hub to empower SF State's diverse students, staff, and faculty to become climate justice leaders. We began by creating the Climate Change Certificate Program, open to all students in every major.

We then developed the Climate Justice Leaders Initiative, a multi-year effort to grow our impact through education, research, and action. We launched a paid opportunity for students called the Climate Action Fellows, developed Applied Climate Justice Courses, rolled out Faculty Learning Communities and Faculty Mini Grants, initiated a PK-12 Graduate Certificate in Climate Justice Education for teachers, hosted annual events like Earth Week (including an annual film fest), launched a paid Climate Justice Internship Program + more.