Cheyney University Climate Education

Cheyney University Climate Studies

Founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania is the oldest historically black university, serving an extensive rural and urban community of African-American college students. In 1913 Cheyney University began educating future teachers, today our university still graduates teachers, but many students also enter such fields as science, medicine, law, communication, and government. The university has also evolved to become one of fourteen state universities and is operating under the policies and procedures of the State System of Higher Education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Cheyney University has continued to educate African-Americans above and beyond the vision of its founder Richard Humphries. Currently about 97 percent of the undergraduate students enrolled are African- Americans. One of the important steps to slow down the adversely changing climate of the planet is to educate current and future citizens and leaders of this planet. While there are some environmental awareness embedded in some programs, Cheyney University can join in with other institutions and organizations to play more active part in educating it's students about the climate changes and how to slow down the adverse effect on the planet. To facilitate climate education to general students of the University, a general education course on changing climate of earth will be designed and will be submitted to the curriculum approval process in the university in the fall of 2015 with the plan to offer the course in fall of 2016. Additionally an upper level course on climate that existed in university catalog decades ago, will be revived and included as a required course for Environmental Science program that is in the process of getting out of moratorium. Cheyney University opened it's new Science Center that was funded by the Pennsylvania State, in the fall of 2014. The center is equipped with state of the art classrooms and teaching laboratories in biology, chemistry, physics and computer science. It is also outfitted with a Spitz Digital planetarium system with 30 feet dome and research suites for faculty and student research in chemistry, biology and computer science. The university can complement it's climate education activity with the help of the planetarium. The digital system includes a software titled Layered Earth, that can be utilized to make presentations to K-16 students to make them aware and interested in the issue of climate change.