Penn’s Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program—which equips students to understand how individuals and groups make decisions, and how to affect those decisions—welcomed its first class of students to campus this August.

“Birds tell us a lot about the environment of which we are also a part,” shares the Director of the Bird Conservation Program at Willistown Conservation Trust and Master of Environmental Studies (MES) lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Lisa Kiziuk (MES ’04). “Half of all migratory birds have declined in the last 50 years, which is an alarming number.

Dr. Sally Willig, a lecturer and advisor in the Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program, recently brought her students on a kayak tour to explore a freshwater tidal marsh in southern New Jersey as part of her wetlands course. Field trips give MES students the unique opportunity to become fully immersed in the diverse ecosystems studied in the program. The course dives into the geological, biological, ecological, and political perspectives on wetlands.

Jesse Raines, a senior majoring in Africana Studies in the LPS Bachelor of Arts program, participated in a grant-funded filmmaking course through Penn Summer Abroad. In partnership with the nonprofit FilmAid, students made documentaries, educational videos, and virtual reality films with residents in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Jesse, an Army veteran who served three tours in Afghanistan, and previously lived and worked in western Africa, taught his classmates key phrases in Swahili.

In a recent piece in the journal Environmental Management, a team including current and former Penn students and staff, used archival materials and aerial photography to provide an account of the past 150 years of thought and effort that went into creating Penn’s current tree canopy. The endeavor was led by Master of Environmental Studies alumna Lara Roman of the US Forest Service.

“It’s a very exciting time to get involved with offshore wind power because it is a nascent industry in the US,” shares Brandon Burke, a graduate research assistant at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and student in the Master of Environmental Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania.

“With each class I take, I find what interests me is the tremendous power that business has in shaping our culture. Especially how much it can do for sustainability,” shares Meg Kramer (‘18—expected), a student in the Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program and former marketing and communications executive in the pharmaceutical industry.

With their new Behavior Change for Good Initiative, which launched in fall 2017, Dr. Angela Duckworth of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program and Dr. Katherine L. Milkman of the Wharton School have an ambitious goal: To understand and improve behavior change across a lifespan. Their method works across many domains using strategies grounded in psychology and behavioral economics.

Students from two courses in the Master of Environmental Studies program spent a day in Washington, D.C., meeting with leaders in the water sector. Throughout the visit, students were introduced to experts at the World Resources Institute, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group.

“One of the most important things I’ve learned in my Penn experience is to look at situations through a different set of lenses,” noted US Army veteran and Master of Science in Organizational Dynamics student Aronda Smith-Benson (‘19—expected). Aronda was the guest of honor and keynote speaker at Penn’s Veterans Day Flag Raising Ceremony on Friday, November 10, 2017.