By Olivia Greenspan, Fieldwork Design, Fordham Social Innovation Collaboratory.
On Wednesday, March 22nd Dr. Jane Lubchenco took a tour of the Fordham Social Innovation Lab at the Rose Hill campus.
The esteemed Dr. Lubchenco is the former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She is an American environmental scientist and ecologist and a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, among many other highly recognized awards, honors, and appointments.
Dr. Lubchenco stayed at the Social Innovation Lab to listen to several selected Collaboratory student leaders about their work. For example, Jackson Brietzke, GSB ’18, shared his work creating an online badges platform to track and reward badges to students for their work in the social innovation sphere.
Dr. Lubchenco remarked that the visit to the Social Innovation Lab was one of the highlights of her visit. The Lab was part of a tour of Fordham’s Rose Hill campus before her highly-anticipated Dodransbicentennial Sapientia et Doctrina Lecture: “Making Waves and Bringing Hope: Our Role in Charting the Future of the Ocean.”
During her lecture, Dr. Lubchenco shared that unprecedented changes in the ocean due to human activities—collapsing fisheries, dead zones, acidification, coral bleaching, and plastic pollution—paint a grim picture of an ocean in jeopardy. The good news is that innovative solutions to these challenges are bubbling up around the world. Lubchenco discussed the holistic and ethical approaches that can bring hope to the struggle for ocean sustainability.
The lecture and presentation was held in honor of U.N. World Water Day.
Photo: Chris Taggart