In Senegal, fewer than 1 percent of adults speak French as their first language. Yet this West African country, home to 39 living languages, has traditionally required students to learn in French from their first day of school.

The consequences are stark. Almost 70 percent of students can’t read a simple sentence by age 10, according to the World Bank, and by middle school, UNICEF finds that only 9 percent are reading at the minimum proficiency level.

Research has long shown that first-language-based bilingual education, which uses a student’s first language as the foundation for learning additional ones, yields better academic outcomes. But multiple government reform attempts to embrace the use of local languages had fallen short.

In recent years, that changed: A particularly effective pilot program by the Senegalese nongovernmental organization Associates in Research and Education for Development helped convince policymakers that bilingual education could be successfully implemented. The program demonstrated that a bilingual model with French and local languages not only improved math and reading scores in local languages, but also helped participants build stronger French language skills than their peers in French-only schools.

Now, policymakers are in the process of scaling bilingual education across Senegal. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have studied how the country made that shift, and what it can teach policymakers about turning evidence into lasting educational reform. Their study traces how locally generated evidence helped overcome skepticism about bilingual education and create political momentum for change.

Published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the research offers lessons for countries working to improve the quality of educational outcomes in low-resource, linguistically diverse contexts.

“Globally, there is growing evidence that this approach to bilingual education improves learning outcomes, but it is rarely adopted or implemented at scale,” said lead author Erina Iwasaki, a postdoctoral research associate at the Pulte Institute for Global Development, part of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “This raises a crucial question: How can this policy become a political priority in more countries that would benefit from it? Our work provides answers.”

Reform that resonated

The researchers studied Senegal, which presents a compelling case study on how and why bilingual education was able to garner political support when most other similar contexts have failed to do so. For years, educators and policymakers had seen global evidence on this approach and knew, in theory, that it was a better option.

But two government-led attempts to teach students in national languages, from 1977 to 1984 and from 2002 to 2008, both struggled and were perceived as failures. The programs collapsed because of inadequate teaching materials, insufficiently trained teachers and parental skepticism, researchers found, undermining decision makers’ confidence that bilingual education could work in practice.

Then, from 2008 to 2019, Associates in Research and Education for Development partnered with the Senegalese government on a program that taught students bilingually across nine school districts, reaching more than 10,000 students. The program supported languages such as Wolof, spoken by approximately 80 percent of Senegal’s population, and Pulaar, the country’s second-most widely spoken language.

The organization deployed this program under the leadership of Executive Director Mamadou Amadou Ly, whose pioneering education work has gained global recognition. In 2025, Ly received the prestigious Yidan Prize for Education Development and Time magazine named him to its list of the 100 most influential people of 2026.

“When we began working with students, we encountered skepticism from certain government officials who had been educated in French,” Ly said. “They feared a backlash from parents, given past experiences. Some argued that neighboring countries — which had introduced national languages into their systems long before Senegal — did not, in their view, possess educational systems that outperformed Senegal’s.

“But one evaluation after another showed the same results: Students who learned in their own language performed better. The results vindicated our approach.”

Key findings from Senegal’s success

Researchers made several findings that are important for the broader field of multilingual education:

Difficulty implementing bilingual education reforms is a key barrier that prevents them from being politically prioritized. The efficacy of first-language-based bilingual education is now widely accepted in global policy circles, but in Senegal, repeated implementation issues had raised doubts about its feasibility.

Local evidence is key to making reform happen. Researchers found that effective, locally grounded proofs of concept functioned as a “causal hinge” between longtime advocacy for bilingual education and broader political prioritization. Researchers said the pilot addressed a reluctance to change the status quo by showing that bilingual education was not only theoretically preferable, but practically feasible.

Political advocacy, on its own, is not enough to effect change. Researchers found that the collective power of supporters — including the decades-long advocacy of scholars, civil society leaders and government officials, as well as the support of international partners — was necessary but not sufficient. International partners tended to play a secondary support role in the often contentious political debates around language of instruction, they said.

“Although policymakers pay attention to the global evidence, it is not the deciding factor in changing policy,” said study co-author TJ D’Agostino, associate professor of the practice in the Keough School and a core-affiliated faculty member of the school’s Pulte Institute. “International organizations played an essential role with funding and technical assistance but, in the end, it was local leaders like Mamadou Amadou Ly and local proofs of concept that made the difference.”

Informing multilingual education policy and practice

Senegal’s experience can help inform broader multilingual education reform, researchers said. The study is part of a larger Notre Dame research project led by D’Agostino, Language of Instruction Transition in Education Systems, that explores how education systems can successfully facilitate students’ transition from learning in a local language or bilingually to learning primarily in an international language. The study spans six countries: Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and the Philippines.

Researchers recommended that national reform prioritize quality implementation alongside efforts to seize the political momentum to drive reforms forward. They noted that poor implementation can erode support and cause policy reversal — as happened in the Philippines, where rapid scale-up outpaced the quality of implementation.

In addition, they recommended that interventions make adjustments quickly to keep implementation on track.

“Our study underscores the benefits of implementation research, realist evaluation methods and design-thinking approaches,” D’Agostino said. "This can allow reformers to learn and fail fast and small rather than failing at scale."

Researchers also underscored the need for sustained support from the donor and policy communities.

“Our work shows that advocates need to build support for new policies across one or more local pilot programs before they can have real policy traction.”

“Our work shows that advocates need to build support for new policies across one or more local pilots before they can have real policy traction,” Iwasaki said. “This suggests a longer view of development and policy impact. We can't work on the five-year funding cycles that used to be the norm. We need to think across 20 to 30 years to really have something that can make systemic change.”

The study received funding from USAID and from the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative, which supports research partnerships with communities around the world to study poverty from every angle and help find what works to build lasting opportunity.

The research aligns with the broader work of D’Agostino, a fellow of the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute and the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. He studies how literacy interventions can improve educational outcomes and life opportunities in contexts that include sub-Saharan Africa as well as South Bend, Indiana.

D’Agostino’s work with Ly and Associates in Research and Education for Development has continued with support from the Poverty Initiative. He recently co-authored a study of the nongovernmental organization’s summer remedial learning program. This study’s lead author, Fernanda Soares, assistant research professor with the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, part of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, recently presented results at Oxford University’s What Works Hub for Global Education.

Additional co-authors of the Senegal education reform study included several researchers affiliated with the Keough School’s Pulte Institute and linguistics experts from Senegal: Maria Teel, the late Moussa Daff, Mbarou Gassama Mbaye, Aliou Ngoné Seck and Fary Silate Ka.

Originally published by Josh Stowe at keough.nd.edu on October 05, 2026.

Each year, approximately 700,000 children worldwide die from diseases that vaccines could have prevented, nearly all of them in low- and middle-income countries. New research from University of Notre Dame economist Santosh Kumar Gautam finds that India’s national childhood immunization program helped address this persistent global health challenge, producing substantial reductions in child deaths.

The study, published in the Journal of Population Economics, also found that the immunization program had mixed long-term effects on educational attainment. While exposure to the program reduced primary school completion, it increased secondary school completion, suggesting that improvements in child survival can influence education through multiple pathways. Findings underscore the importance of coordinating health and education policies so that gains in child survival are matched by investments in schools and learning.

“Vaccines are one of the most cost-effective investments a country can make in improving child health and human capital,” said Gautam, professor of development and global health economics at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “I wanted to understand not only how India's immunization program saved lives, but also how it affected educational trajectories and human capital development.”

An experiment that reduced infant mortality

India launched its Universal Immunization Programme in 1985 and implemented it district by district, reaching full national coverage by 1990. Because some districts received the program years before others, and because only children under age 1 were eligible for the vaccines, Gautam was able to compare children born just before and just after the program arrived in their district.

Drawing on a national survey of nearly 900,000 children, Gautam found that the program reduced infant mortality by 0.4 percentage points and under-five mortality by 0.5 percentage points — substantial gains at a time when nearly 1 in 10 infants died before their first birthday.

Those mortality gains were concentrated among children in rural areas, from poor households and from historically disadvantaged caste groups. Children from wealthier, urban or higher-caste households saw little change, Gautam said. This may be because many already had access to vaccination before the program arrived.

Mixed educational outcomes

The study also found nuanced effects on educational attainment. While the immunization program reduced primary school completion, it increased secondary school completion among surviving children.

Gautam said the results may reflect who survived because of the program. Some children who benefited from vaccination may not have reached school age otherwise; and, as a group, they tended to have poorer underlying health. That change in the student population may have lowered average primary school completion rates.

Meanwhile, children who would have survived regardless but were healthier because of vaccination were more likely to complete secondary school. Strained school infrastructure may also have reinforced the pattern, Gautam said. A sudden increase in surviving children can crowd classrooms and stretch already limited resources, particularly in the early grades.

Designing health and education policy together

Ultimately, Gautam said, the research shows health and education investments work best when they are planned holistically rather than treated as unrelated priorities.

“This study illustrates how health and education planners can strengthen their coordination and produce better outcomes by working together,” Gautam said. “In addition to focusing on saving lives, governments should design policies that follow children into the classroom.”

The study also challenges the assumption that large public health campaigns in developing countries are inevitably undermined by weak implementation, Gautam said. Despite documented problems with medical absenteeism and service delivery in India’s health system, the program still produced a measurable reduction in child deaths.

The research contributes to Gautam’s broader work as an economist who studies how investments in early child and maternal health can reduce poverty and help people thrive. It is particularly relevant for resource-constrained settings, where smarter policy design is critical to improving outcomes amid limited funding.

“Effective immunization policy requires measuring not only who vaccines protect, but also how they shape broader human capital and support the best use of scarce public resources,” Gautam said.

A development and global health economics expert at Notre Dame, Gautam is the director of doctoral studies for the Keough School’s Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and directs the sustainable development major in the school’s Master of Global Affairs program. He is an affiliate of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health and the Building Inclusive Growth (BIG) Lab (part of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development) and a faculty fellow at the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute.  

The study received open access funding from the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries.

Media Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Originally published by Josh Stowe at keough.nd.edu on July 14, 2026.

A new University of Notre Dame study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that human-caused climate change is actively worsening this public health crisis, acting alongside structural socioeconomic disparities that already challenge the next generation’s ability to thrive.

“A single degree of warming alters the foundational conditions of child survival.”

Analyzing 16 years of data from 34 African countries, researchers from Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs have found that every 1°C increase in anthropogenic (human-caused) temperature anomalies is directly linked to a 3.45 percent rise in childhood stunting. The finding highlights opportunities to reduce childhood stunting through policy interventions that address socioeconomic inequality while strengthening maternal education, sanitation and household resilience in poorer communities.

The ‘invisible threads’ of climate-driven stunting

“A single degree of warming might sound negligible in a daily weather report, but on a global scale, it alters the foundational conditions of child survival,” said Arun Agrawal, Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy and co-author of the study.

“We are seeing a direct physical translation of global emissions into child undernutrition. When extreme heat limits food availability and drives up prices, young children are the very first to suffer the biological consequences. Their developing brains and bodies simply do not get the fuel they need, cementing a cycle of intergenerational poverty before they even reach their fifth birthday.”

To uncover these trends, the research team used a two-step approach. First, they used the observed daily near-surface temperatures from ERA5 weather reanalysis data to map real-world climate variability. Then, they paired these numbers with state-of-the-art climate simulations from the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project to strip away natural fluctuations and look directly at human-caused warming.

What they discovered was a striking divergence. While general weather variability showed no direct correlation to stunting, human-induced warming showed a clear and statistically significant relationship.

“This isn't an abstract problem for the future,” said Nabin Pradhan, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development and the study's lead author. “These findings underscore the importance of reducing inequality and investing in education, sanitation and household resilience to protect child health in a warming world.”

For the general public, the mechanism connecting a global emission spike to a toddler's development can seem abstract. The study highlights that global warming acts through “invisible threads,” disrupting local agricultural cycles, altering food yields and leading to localized nutritional deficits that leave families unable to eat adequate meals.

The ‘double whammy’ of local inequality

While climate change directly increases stunting rates overall, the study reveals that structural socioeconomic inequality operates as an equally stubborn, parallel threat. The data revealed that community-level inequality is a consistent predictor of stunting. However, climate change does not strictly use inequality as a “bridge” to cause stunting; rather, the two issues stack on top of one another.

“Climate change is not a standalone threat that exists in a vacuum,” said Agrawal, who directs Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative. “It acts as a threat multiplier on top of existing social fractures. If a community is already deeply unequal, a climate shock — whether it's a heatwave or a sudden drought — acts as an inescapable trap for the poorest children. The wealthy can buffer against a bad harvest by purchasing food elsewhere, but poorer households are pushed completely off the edge, losing income and losing access to basic services simultaneously.”

The study shows that the direct effects of global warming are most pronounced in rural areas and places with low service accessibility. Families living far from cities, with restricted access to clean water, reliable sanitation and healthcare networks, bear the brunt of the shifting climate.

“When you combine low-service access — like a lack of improved sanitation or maternal education — with a sharp temperature anomaly, you get a worst-case scenario,” Pradhan said. “The groups that contributed the least to global emissions are the exact groups whose children are being structurally disadvantaged by stunting.”

Designing a blueprint for the future

The researchers said that their findings provide a clear, integrated roadmap for international aid organizations and local governments. Because environmental stress and structural inequality are deeply interconnected, treating climate adaptation as a purely environmental issue — such as simply building a seawall or distributing heat-tolerant seeds — is bound to fail.

“If we want to protect the next generation, we have to look at the problem through a holistic lens,” Agrawal said. “Any successful climate initiative must simultaneously be a social inequality initiative. Investments in household resilience, maternal primary education, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure are powerful public health interventions that double as climate adaptation tools.”

The researchers also said that empowering mothers through education yields immediate dividends on the ground. Educated mothers are better equipped with the knowledge of optimal nutritional practices and are more likely to seek out medical support during early childhood illnesses. Similarly, reliable access to clean drinking water and sanitation directly reduces repeated infections, a primary biological driver that prevents a child’s body from absorbing nutrients.

Moving forward, Pradhan said the researchers plan to take this macro-level data back into the field.

“While this observational, model-backed data gives us a robust global picture, the next step is establishing deeper causality through long-term, household-level experimental studies,” he said. “Future research should examine how climate change and structural inequalities interact to influence childhood stunting, helping identify interventions that improve child health and resilience in a warming world.”

Elizabeth Ludwig-Borycz, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Center for Health Equity, was also a co-author of the study.

Media Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on June 09, 2026.

Susan Ostermann, Associate Professor of Global Affairs and Political Science at the Keough School and a Liu Institute Faculty Fellow, moderated the discussion. Panelists were Suraj Parajuli, a Master of Global Affairs student at the Keough School; Monisha Choudhary, a Gen Z activist and lawyer who helped draft the agreement between the Government of Nepal and Gen Z representatives; Dipin Subedi, a research program associate at the Center for Social Change in Nepal; and Salina Kafle, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Human Rights and Justice Centre in Nepal.

Panelists traced the uprising to long-standing grievances over corruption, inequality, and the politicization of state institutions. A viral TikTok campaign, the "Nepo baby trend," exposed the lifestyle gap between political elites and ordinary Nepalis, many of whom had migrated to the Gulf for work. A subsequent government ban on 26 unregistered social media platforms brought public anger to a head. Protests began on September 8, and after police killed 19 students in school uniforms, the coalition government collapsed within 36 hours. Sushila Karki, a former Chief Justice endorsed by Gen Z organizers through Discord-based voting, became Nepal's first female prime minister and led a cabinet that built multi-party consensus for the March elections, in which former Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah defeated sitting Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli by more than a threefold margin.

The panelists offered a cautious reading of the new government's early months. Subedi and Kafle pointed to encouraging signs: a 100-point action plan focused on digital governance and institutional efficiency, consultations with opposition parties on a shared national agenda, and a formal apology to Dalit communities. Choudhary noted that the new government has embraced the movement's anti-corruption energy. Concerns, however, remain. A social media user was reportedly arrested for criticizing the prime minister. The 100-point plan does not address human rights abuses from the 1996 to 2006 conflict period, which panelists warned could perpetuate impunity. And the RSP's limited local presence may leave citizens without clear channels to raise grievances.

Participants situated Nepal within a wider pattern of youth-led movements in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, with Bangladeshi organizers sharing a fifty-page document warning Nepali counterparts against "political co-optation." Social media enabled transnational coordination but also introduced algorithmic amplification and deepfakes into the March election. Technology platforms have largely stayed silent on their role, even as roughly 300,000 movement-related videos were removed from TikTok after the protests.

Broadly speaking, the panelists observed, somewhat optimistically, that a leaderless movement can topple a government, but also struck a more cautious note: enforcing a reform agenda requires structured leadership and specific demands. Whether Nepal's new government can convert the uprising's energy into durable institutional change remains an open question.

The event was co-sponsored by the Keough School's Liu Institute, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Pulte Institute for Global Development, with support from Notre Dame's Democracy Initiative and the Department of Political Science.

This flash panel was part of research funded by Notre Dame's Democracy Initiative, in partnership with researchers from Kathmandu University. Keough School faculty Susan Ostermann, Madhav Joshi, and Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat together with Pulte Institute research staff Shriniwas Gautam, Lila Khatiwada, Poulomi Ghosh, and the McKenna Center's Amna Batool are involved in this project.

Migration to the United States from Central America has generally been understood as an outward departure towards a perceived new beginning—financially, socially and personally. That paradigm is shifting.

Deportations from the United States now outpace new arrivals, transforming migration into a condition defined increasingly by forced return. Such change presents new challenges for individuals, communities and institutions in the countries where poverty, ineffective governance and stymied local capacity exist in tandem.

The Pulte Institute, in collaboration with the Central America Research Alliance (CARA) and the Institute for Development and Economic Studies (INCEDES) in Guatemala, is advancing a study focused on reintegration in Guatemala. Previous investigations by CARA partners focused on Honduras and El Salvador—the two other northernmost countries in Central America with the largest historical migration to the U.S.—and the well-being of individuals who have returned to their home countries over the past decade.

Tom Hare, the project’s lead researcher and associate director with the Pulte Institute, said his team chose to focus on Guatemala based on the establishing work in Honduras and El Salvador in order to inform and guide their process and to serve as a benchmark against which they can compare new findings. The research in Guatemala focuses on what happens after return or deportation: specifically, how returnees attempt to rebuild their lives in these new communities, how municipalities respond and how national policy frameworks need to change in order to translate into effective local action.

Supported by the on-the-ground expertise of Irene Palma and colleagues at INCEDES, a working group of CARA member researchers led by Hare developed a framework to evaluate present conditions for reintegration across more than 200 municipalities in Guatemala. Sites were then selected for case studies. Palma notes that the municipal approach to reintegration is being addressed in only a small portion of the country’s 340 towns, underscoring the need to create dialogue and raise awareness to position the issue more broadly.

Examining each case study location and its realities and community leadership closely, Hare and his colleagues moved beyond national averages to understand reintegration as place-specific, a process shaped by local social dynamics, governance and economic opportunity.

Key to understanding both the process of deportation and the experience of returnees in the current moment is the difference in the collective identity of members of the new population of migrants. Traditionally, migrants crossing into the U.S. were encountered at the border, detained for a few weeks and then sent back. Now, a majority of those being deported have lived in the United States for years or decades, if not most of their lives. Hare explains, “It is both the experience of coming back to a place that many thought they would never return to and all the challenges of integrating into that place, coupled with the trauma of leaving the only home that many of them knew, or one that they had established with a lot of work over the decades.”

This shift contradicts the prevailing understanding that a focus on the economic aspect of reintegration is enough to provide individuals with stability, he notes. Reintegration, in this context, has more to do with one’s integral human development; how one is able to flourish holistically as a human being, navigating relational ties, social barriers and mismatched expectations.

At the community level, reintegration is further complicated by social dynamics and long-standing migration patterns. Many rural and remote communities in Guatemala are receiving a large number of returnees, adding to competition for employment and already-scarce resources. Remittances, or the sending of cash earnings or goods as support to one’s family, have contributed to social stratification and resentment between those who left and those who stayed. Governance gaps have compounded these challenges. While national frameworks acknowledge reintegration as a policy concern, municipalities often lack the resources, clarity or authority to respond effectively.

These findings align with the poverty research agenda of the Pulte Institute, emphasising how systems and structures can either mitigate or exacerbate poverty. Pulte Institute Director Tracy Kijewski-Correa explains, “Migration is one response when a society’s structures and systems are inadequate to provide economic opportunity and security.”

While poverty has historically been a primary driver for migration, the abrupt return of deportees to home countries from which they have been removed for years risks deepening poverty and social disparity for both returnees and the communities that receive them. From this perspective, reintegration is not a peripheral migration issue, but a core development challenge. The Institute’s emphasis on place-based research is central to addressing this challenge.

“Policies can have unintended consequences when they fail to truly understand an issue,” Kijewski-Correa notes, underscoring the importance of combining rigorous research with local knowledge. Grounding inquiry in community realities, she maintains, ensures interventions address the right problems and avoid institutional blind spots.

This emphasis is echoed by practitioners working directly with communities in Guatemala. Palma’s work reinforces the reality that municipalities face deeply constrained conditions: limited budgets, fragmented governance structures and high youth migration aspirations all put significant pressure on policy effectiveness. In her assessment, the root causes that promote human mobility—and especially migration to the United States—have not changed and continue to act as a force of expulsion, particularly among recent returnees.
The question of perceived opportunity is especially acute for younger returnees. Under current conditions, Palma observes that the youth population in Guatemala largely views the future with great uncertainty. Young people do not yet perceive conditions that objectively allow them to assess whether opportunities exist to meet basic needs without relying on resources derived from migration—whether that is work for themselves or remittances from someone else. Until communities are equipped to generate income-producing employment that allows for the satisfaction of basic needs and the development of viable life plans, re-migration will remain a rational calculation rather than a failure of individual resolve.

Research suggests economic programs alone are insufficient in approaching migration, deportation and poverty reduction. Fostering rootedness, according to Hare, is dependent on the ability of people to imagine a future for themselves.

“We have found in past studies that when an individual feels like they have no voice, and they have no agency to help shape their reality, that is when they are less rooted,” he says.

As return migration poses an issue, reshaping countries in Central America and beyond, this research underscores the need to rethink reintegration as a priority of development, a challenge demanding locally grounded evidence, institutional coordination and policies that center dignity, agency and long-term poverty reduction.

For a fuller treatment of these findings and concrete policy recommendations across Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, see the related policy brief by Fuentes and Hare.

To ensure candid and authentic discussion, the team trained and collaborated with Gen Z Nepalis to facilitate these focus groups in late February. While participants currently live in Kathmandu, many had relocated there from communities across Nepal. The focus groups were intended to hear from Gen Z directly about their thoughts on democracy, democratic quality and their role in it; the resulting conversations proved to be complex and wide-ranging.

Focus groups revealed that, despite the electoral dominance on March 5 of the party most closely allied with the younger generation, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), Gen Z is far from monolithic. Some believe party politics and the RSP are the way forward; others think the RSP will run into the same problems as other parties when it tries to govern. Some participants expressed love for the RSP prime ministerial candidate, Balen Shah, precisely because of his sometimes-combative style of leadership, while others worry, soberly and pragmatically, he may not be ready to handle diplomacy for a nation surrounded by India and China.

Researchers noted that, on the issue of democracy, Gen Z members rarely mentioned elections themselves, indicating a conviction that these would continue to be held. Instead, discussants spoke about freedom, rights, and, interestingly, responsibilities and duties. Participants recognized that they would have to hold the RSP accountable for its promises, and some were already involving themselves in these efforts. For a generation often associated with laziness, colloquially, and, in the academic literature, with “slacktivism,” the observations were in opposition to popular perception of the demographic.

Democratic quality, according to many participants, must be measured by outcomes: by good governance and by development progress. Gen Z Nepalis do not expect a miracle, with several mentioning that if the RSP proves unable to rein in everyday, petty corruption, party leaders will not be the only ones to blame; they also bear responsibility for the health of their democracy.

Democracy is an iterative process, requiring regular engagement, not one-off participation and a singular outcome.

The University of Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability (JTS) Initiative has partnered with the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education to establish the Global Alliance for Laudato Si’, an international network dedicated to supporting integral ecology and global sustainability. The alliance will serve as a hub for connecting, amplifying and spearheading research, curriculum and action initiatives for supporting a sustainable future, as inspired by the principles articulated by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) and embraced and amplified by Pope Leo XIV as he begins his papacy.

The Global Alliance was created to strengthen cooperation among universities worldwide and connect sustainability leaders in academia and beyond to advance a shared vision for transformative change. Responding to Pope Francis’ call to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” the partners hope their combined efforts will effectively address global environmental degradation, inequality and ecological injustice.

The alliance launched with an inaugural meeting March 9-10 at the Laudato Si’ Village in Castel Gandolfo, the pontifical summer residence outside of Rome. Nearly 100 researchers and institutional leaders — representing more than 60 universities across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa, as well as major international organizations — gathered to develop a shared research and action agenda and a long-term vision for the alliance.

Speakers and participants stressed the need for collaboration that connects the natural and applied sciences with philosophy, anthropology, the social sciences and theology — building research networks that generate cutting-edge knowledge, inform public debate and contribute to the development of policies and strategies for sustainable development.

“We emerge from this first gathering of the Global Alliance with a renewed sense of purpose and hope,” said University of Notre Dame President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. “These interdisciplinary research and education initiatives reflect our commitment to an integral ecology that recognizes the deep connections between environmental sustainability and human dignity and flourishing. We look forward to the many ways this collaboration will serve the common good and advance care for our common home in the days ahead.”

Representatives from both Notre Dame and the Vatican attended the meeting at the Laudato Si’ Village, including Cardinal Fabio Baggio, director general of the Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and one of the founders of the Global Alliance, and Sister Alessandra Smerilli, secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and member of the board of directors for the Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education.

The convening will serve as a catalyst for significant positive action at the local, regional and global levels, and the insights that emerged will provide a roadmap for the alliance to follow.

“This enthusiasm must now be translated into concrete objectives through working groups that will continue beyond the conference, launching a lasting process of collaboration among research centers and institutions,” Cardinal Baggio said.

Arun Agrawal, founding director of Notre Dame’s JTS Initiative and the Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, said Notre Dame’s research expertise and mission-driven approach to addressing environmental issues make it uniquely suited to help advance this effort.

“We feel that Notre Dame, a leading Catholic research university, is positioned to assist the Holy See in its objective to seek transformative change in a manner consistent with the best available science, as well as the foundational elements of integral ecology and integral human development,” Agrawal said.

Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., vice president and associate provost for undergraduate education and professor of theology and global affairs, said that it was important for the alliance members to gather together as a global community because the issues being faced are shared. “The environment is something that affects all of us,” he said. “We can come together as a human community before God and reflect on how we can work together to preserve our common home.”

“It’s also important to see how Notre Dame can be at the service of the Church,” Father Groody added. “We can connect the research engine of Notre Dame with the research needs of the Church, especially as we’re looking at the problems of the world and helping those who are afflicted, particularly the most vulnerable members of our human community.”

Together, the Global Alliance hopes to advance three main goals: to form a global network of leaders and institutions focused on sustainability, to create thematic working groups for developing research plans and educational curricula on sustainability, and to strengthen Catholic visibility and contributions to international sustainability dialogue.

Six interdisciplinary working groups will advance the main research areas of the Global Alliance in the coming years. Their work will focus on strategic priorities that include:

• • removing barriers to access to water, energy and food security
  • transforming economic systems toward more sustainable and just models
  • developing best practices and tools to promote collective action

“There is already so much inspiring work being done all over the world,” Agrawal said, “and the goal of the Global Alliance is not to substitute for any of that work, but rather to share, to learn, to connect and to support what is already going on and to provide a space in which anyone who is interested in sustainability and integral ecology can learn from what others have done and to build on that.”

A key element of Notre Dame’s strategic framework, the JTS Initiative is the University’s far-reaching response to the urgent and cascading effects of sustainability challenges on food, energy, water and infrastructure — all of which threaten the well-being and dignity of people everywhere. The initiative brings together interdisciplinary scholars, dedicated students and action partners from around the world to advance transformative solutions for a more just and sustainable future.

“We look forward to cultivating these new relationships with other global leaders in the sustainability field and operationalizing the interdisciplinary research needed to effect this deep and lasting change in our world,” Agrawal said.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Originally published by Notre Dame News at news.nd.edu on March 13, 2026.

Housing affordability remains a top economic issue globally, and especially for American households, with homeowners’ and renters’ budgets strained by rising costs.

To address this crisis, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently convened an expert panel, selecting Tracy Kijewski-Correa, the William J. Pulte Director of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development, to advise on the promise and limits of new building technologies. The GAO provides fact-based, nonpartisan analyses to assist Congress with the oversight of federal programs. Recommendations from the expert panel will inform a public report that will be sent to members of Congress later this year.

Convening with high-level government officials, business leaders and representatives from the nonprofit sector, Kijewski-Correa, professor of global affairs and the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Structural Engineering and Hazard Resilience, shared expertise related to housing planning and design, construction methods and building materials.

Key policy shifts for affordability

Kijewski-Correa said two policy changes are needed to increase housing availability and affordability: zoning reform and adaptive re-use.

“Current zoning regulations in many cities ‘box out’ diverse housing solutions that could address low-income demand, especially what we call the ‘missing middle,’ such as low-density multi-family housing,” she said. “Allowing a wider variety of housing types, including tiny homes, is essential to grow supply.”

Promoting mixed-use development and the conversion of commercial properties — such as abandoned schools, factories and warehouses — into housing could tap into existing inventory, especially for highly vulnerable populations, Kijewski-Correa said.

“This approach is not only cost-effective but also helps to revitalize areas suffering from blight.”

Overcoming resistance to new technology

A civil engineer with interdisciplinary expertise in homeowner responses to housing policy, Kijewski-Correa emphasized the role of behavior change in driving the adoption of new building technologies by homeowners, builders and building officials who oversee regulatory instruments and processes such as building codes and permits.

“New technologies can be very disruptive,” Kijewski-Correa said. “People in the industry may be afraid that they will be replaced by them.”

Kijewski-Correa highlighted the importance of “skilling up” workers through education and job training, citing an Integration Lab (i-Lab) project with Habitat for Humanity in Mexico City and Chennai, India. Working with local masons, a student team used behavior change insights to promote new, safer and more resilient construction methods — such as pre-fabricated home kits — to improve housing quality for low-income families in disaster-prone regions.

Kijewski-Correa also referenced the importance of a comprehensive, lifelong “K-to-grey” workforce development approach that spans from elementary education through a worker’s entire career.

“Through career and technical education programs such as Project Lead the Way, young people interested in the building trades can receive early exposure to new technologies,” she said.

Actionable solutions: regional hubs and resilience

To overcome local barriers to adopting new building methods such as 3D-printing and modular construction, Kijewski-Correa also recommended forming “regional hubs of excellence.”

“Many small municipalities are understaffed and lack the engineering capacity to evaluate and approve new technologies. They will either resist change, or if change is imposed on them, experience significant delays in zoning, permitting and inspection of these new housing models,” she said. “These regional hubs would provide local officials with the necessary training, guidance documents, and even plan review services to confidently update their processes to accommodate new housing technologies.”

Kijewski-Corea leveraged her extensive experience with the Structural Engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) network to emphasize the benefits of technology beyond upfront cost, specifically regarding societal resilience. Through post-disaster surveys, StEER has documented how manufactured housing often performs better than site-built homes in extreme weather events.

“This real-world evidence is critical for dispelling reservations and demonstrating that advanced, factory-built housing is not only safe but can outperform traditional construction,” she said. “In addition, it’s important to remember that life-cycle costs matter. Don’t trade resilience for affordability. Housing that might be cheap to purchase on day one can leave families incredibly vulnerable if it is burned down in a wildfire or destroyed by a hurricane.”

The final takeaway: housing as infrastructure

Ultimately, Kijewski-Correa’s key recommendation for federal agencies and Congress was to fundamentally rethink housing, prioritizing the well-being of residents and the resilience of communities over a purely profit-driven approach.

“Housing is infrastructure, not a commodity,” she said. “It is a foundational component of the nation’s economic, health and educational systems, and by recognizing this, we pave the way for a more equitable and resilient future for all.”

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on March 09, 2026.

This annual event, now in its 32nd year, will take place Thursday, March 5 at 4 p.m. in McKenna Hall, Rms. 215-216, and will be livestreamed.

On the Intersection of Ethics and Policy

Q: Your lecture is part of an annual series founded in 1995 and honoring Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., former president of the University of Notre Dame and a global champion of peace and justice. In this spirit – and in today's complex geopolitical landscape – what do you believe is the most critical public policy challenge facing the next generation of global leaders?

A: My heart goes out to the next generation of leaders because we live in the age of the so-called “poly-crises,” where the challenges of global hunger, spiraling conflict, extreme poverty, climate change, and even the latest technological revolution are interlinked. It is easy to feel small or powerless when staring out at the magnitude of these challenges. The key is for the next generation to recognize that, while they are inheriting a very messy world, they each have a key role to play in making a difference. That will almost certainly entail “shrinking the change” and seeking to impact a specific aspect of a specific challenge, but I would encourage students to take their pick – there are sadly plenty of problems-in-need-of-solving to go around!

On the Future of Democracy and Technology

Q: How can universities like Notre Dame help ensure that emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, protect rather than undermine democratic values?

A: I would probably start by generating more awareness – and seeking to forge greater consensus – around the democratic values themselves. For example, if we can agree on the importance of the integrity of information as a foundation for informed democratic choice, then perhaps there can be an embrace of labeling deep fakes. If we can agree on the importance of deliberation across political divides, maybe voters will be more alert to the risk of tech companies using LLMs (Large Language Models) and their algorithms to precisely tailor information to fan prejudices or push people to extremes. In the near term, it seems easier to imagine constructive actions by institutions and citizens than by gridlocked and often captured individuals in Congress or the White House. The technology will be as democracy-eroding or democracy-enhancing as the American people demand.

On Lessons from Global Development

Q: Drawing on your experience as Administrator of USAID, what distinguishes foreign assistance that builds long-term resilience from aid that delivers either short-term results or long-term dependency?

A: Let me first note that it has been more than a year since Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantled USAID, an agency that since it was created by President Kennedy in 1961 had been eradicating poverty and disease and supporting education and the rule of law around the world. A peer-reviewed estimate in The Lancet estimates that "feeding USAID to the wood-chipper" (as Musk described it) will result in the deaths of around 14 million individuals between now and 2030. This destruction is inflicting colossal short-term pain, but it is also doing nothing to build long-term resilience. We had instituted a set of reforms at USAID that had the agency on a solid path – increasing private sector contributions by 42%, scrutinizing our investments to be sure they were cost-effective, sunsetting key programs and shifting more resources toward host governments and local organizations and away from large international organizations and U.S.-based contractors. Emergency humanitarian assistance is important because it keeps people alive amid conflicts like those in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, but longer-term investments in development are the kind that helped eradicate smallpox and nearly rid the world of polio. They are also the kind that helped spur India’s Green Revolution and were positioning USAID to support farmers around the world to withstand the horrific effects of increased flooding and drought. Without these development investments, the world is not only less compassionate – it is becoming a lot more dangerous.

On Individual Agency and Public Service

Q: In your memoir, “The Education of an Idealist,” you address the question, "What can one person do?" What specific advice would you give to Notre Dame students as they go out into the 'real world' after graduation, especially those interested in pursuing a career in public service? How can they maintain resolve to be a force for good in the world, and not become disillusioned or overwhelmed by the many global crises and unrest at play today?

A: As I described in “The Education of an Idealist,” I have been blessed to have had many kinds of rewarding roles outside of government – war correspondent, magazine columnist, human rights advocate, and professor. But no role has been more meaningful than the opportunities I have been given to serve my country – first as a human rights adviser to President Obama, then as UN Ambassador and most recently as USAID Administrator. Some people go into public service out of a sense of responsibility – perhaps abiding by the biblical saying from Luke, “those to whom much is given, much is required” – and that is admirable. But one way people can maintain resilience through the ups and downs is to focus on the joy one feels working with colleagues to solve the toughest problems of our time and to try to improve the circumstances of others. Waking up every day and knowing that the work you do has a chance to matter to specific individuals can put a spring in your step, no matter how slow progress can sometimes feel. When I was at USAID, and my kids would ask me where I was going in the morning, instead of saying, “I have to go to work,” I would say, “I get to go to work.” I believe that spirit – of joy and gratitude – can carry a person through even dark and difficult days. But I admit it can sometimes take discipline to summon that spirit.

On the Future and Focus of American Peacebuilding

Q: The Kroc Institute is convening a gathering at the Keough School of Global Affairs office in Washington, DC on March 10 called "American Peacebuilding at a Crossroads." From your perspective having worked inside and outside government, where should the U.S. focus its efforts to best support local sustainable peace today?

A: Both Democratic and Republican administrations have focused on the three Ds – Defense, Diplomacy, and Development – essential for peace around the world and our own national security. If we care about peace and security, we need to make investments in all three domains. General Jim Mattis once famously said, “If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.” He and other military leaders have echoed this perspective when it comes to foreign assistance. Yet the current administration has made mammoth cuts in both diplomacy and economic development overseas, at the very time that China is expanding its engagements. I would offer a few reflections.

First, we obviously need to do a better job bridging our partisan political divides – and cooling temperatures – here at home. Political disagreement is not only increasingly entrenched; we are seeing a growing number of acts of political violence. We have to nip that in the bud, and our political leaders have to add balm – not gasoline – to our disagreements.

Second, while it is important to adapt our diplomatic training and our development assistance to better meet the current moment, that is a medium-term enterprise. We cannot await significant structural change before we show up for vulnerable communities in the way that we had been for more than six decades. When U.S. officials play a key role in brokering a ceasefire, as they did in Gaza, we need to be able to make swift investments in order to rapidly improve conditions on the ground. One reason the Gaza ceasefire is fraying is the U.S. had destroyed the infrastructure at USAID that could have supported the peace.

And third, peace can’t only be the work of governments. The United States government must use its convening power to enlist the private sector, diaspora groups, and other nations in this demanding cause. I always felt my responsibility at USAID was to turn every taxpayer dollar into at least $3 dollars by leveraging our investments to get others to contribute. I believe that hustle and “development diplomacy” will be essential going forward given the scale of the challenges and resource demands confronting the world.

The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, established the annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy in 1995 to honor the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of Notre Dame, a global champion of peace and justice, and the founder of the Kroc Institute. Each year a distinguished scholar, policymaker, and/or peace advocate is invited by the Kroc Institute director to deliver a major lecture on an issue related to ethics and public policy in the context of peace and justice.

Originally published by Kate Chester at kroc.nd.edu on February 26, 2026.

The two-year grant will fund targeted technical assistance to governments seeking to integrate evidence-based agricultural solutions into major public programs designed to increase farmer incomes and improve food security. In particular, the funding will support AIM for Scale’s work with governments to develop clear plans for national expansion and to deploy national and international consultants who work alongside government teams during critical phases of multilateral development bank project design and implementation, helping ensure large public investments are effectively designed and funded.

AIM for Scale works with governments to help integrate proven agricultural solutions into large, nationally funded programs that can reach millions of farmers.

“Strong evidence already exists for many agricultural innovations that can improve farmer livelihoods,” said Winters, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Sustainable Development at the Keough School and executive director of AIM for Scale. “This grant allows us to work directly with governments to turn that evidence into scalable, nationally embedded programs that can reach millions of farmers.”

As AIM for Scale’s engagement with target country governments — Bangladesh, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, India, Peru and other partner countries — has progressed to support the scaling of the initiative’s first two innovation areas of focus, Weather Services for Farmers and Digital Advisory Services for Agriculture, a common challenge has emerged: many governments have clear priorities and strong evidence, but lack the technical capacity to turn those priorities into large, investment-ready programs that can be supported by multilateral development banks.

This grant directly addresses that gap.

Through targeted technical assistance, the project will support governments during critical phases of multilateral development bank project design and implementation. The goal is to ensure that proven innovations are not only incorporated into major public investments, but embedded in ways that are context-specific, evidence-based and sustainable within national delivery systems.

Initial country engagement will focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda, where major public investment programs are already being designed and the demand for technical support is high.

The grant will finance a combination of global coordination and country-level delivery activities, including technical expertise and staffing within the AIM for Scale Secretariat; specialized consultants to support governments and multilateral development bank task teams; embedded country-level technical assistance; and workshops and convenings to co-design interventions, align stakeholders and share lessons across countries.

Approximately half of the grant will be allocated to a sub-award for C4Impact Advisory Group, a Rwanda-based social enterprise founded by Agnes Kalibata, former minister for agriculture and animal resources of Rwanda and former president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. C4Impact brings deep experience supporting governments, regional institutions and development partners across Africa.

Through the dedicated $1.28 million subaward, C4Impact will lead in-country delivery, working closely with government counterparts to conduct readiness assessments, support government-led action plans, broker partnerships and financing and ensure innovations are politically supported and embedded within national systems.

Together, these investments are intended to act as a catalyst to help governments unlock and shape much larger multilateral development bank-financed programs and accelerate nationwide adoption of proven agricultural innovations at a national scale.

Originally published by April Toler at keough.nd.edu on February 24, 2026.

“Appointment to an endowed chair recognizes outstanding contributions to research, teaching, and service,” said Patricia J. Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering.

“Professor Kijewski-Correa’s leadership in hazard resilience research, her ability to mobilize global engineering communities, and her deep commitment to translating science into action, have made a real difference in addressing some of the world’s most pressing infrastructure and climate-related challenges.”

Kijewski-Correa’s interdisciplinary research focuses on recovery after major disasters and how communities around the world can implement climate-adaptive measures when threatened or impacted by such events as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and windstorms. To advance stakeholder-engaged research, policy and practice, she looks for ways to effectively integrate field observations, simulations, and experiments.

While much of Kijewski-Correa’s recent research as a Notre Dame faculty member has focused on Haiti and hurricane-affected communities in the United States, she holds leadership roles in several organizations dealing with responses to disasters worldwide. One is the National Science Foundation’s Structural Extreme Event Reconnaissance (StEER) network. As its inaugural director, she leads efforts collecting perishable data on building performance through coordinated post-disaster field reconnaissance to evaluate the impact of disasters and accelerate learning from them. These experiences informed her recent work as a member of a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine consensus study on the effect of compounding disasters along the Gulf Coast.

Wind is a major driver of damage in natural disasters worldwide. As president-elect of the American Association for Wind Engineering (AAWE), the Americas division of the International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE), Kijewski-Correa helps set the research priorities and professional standards that guide how engineers assess wind hazards and design more resilient buildings and infrastructure.

She also leads the development of regional simulation tools for hurricane risk assessment through the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Computational Simulation Center (SimCenter) and is a co-PI for the National Full-Scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events (NICHE), a proposed major research infrastructure to experimentally simulate the impacts of climatological hazards and adaptation solutions for frontline communities.

Additionally, Kijewski-Correa, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2003, has received accolades as an educator, including the 2015 Dockweiler Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising and the 2016 Edmund P. Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Read more: Notre Dame researcher champions local leadership for life-saving disaster assessment

Originally published by Mary Hendriksen at engineering.nd.edu on February 6, 2026.

In a study published in the journal Science, University of Notre Dame researchers Emily Grubert and Joshua Lappen argue that fossil fuel systems might be far more fragile than current energy models assume.

“Systems designed to be large and growing behave differently when they shrink,” said Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and a faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development. “Ignoring this shift puts everything at risk, from the success of green energy to the basic safety and reliability of our power.”

The researchers introduced the concept of “minimum viable scale,” a threshold of production below which a fossil fuel system can no longer function safely or economically. They provided examples of vulnerabilities in three major sectors:

• Petroleum refineries: Most refineries are incapable of operating normally at low capacity and likely have “turndown limits,” or a minimum operational capacity, of roughly 65 to 70 percent. If gasoline demand drops sharply due to electric vehicle adoption, for example, a refinery might become incapable of providing other products such as jet fuel or asphalt.
• Natural gas pipelines: As customers switch to electric heating and cooling, those remaining on the gas grid will have to shoulder the fixed costs of maintaining miles of pipelines. This can create a “death spiral” where rising costs drive customers away.
• Coal generation: The authors highlighted a “managerial constraint” where the fate of coal mines and power plants is inextricably linked. A single plant closure can make a local mine unprofitable. Conversely, a mine closure can leave a power plant without its specific, geographically dependent fuel source, leading to a cascade of failures.

The researchers reported that the decline of fossil fuels is unlikely to follow the smooth, linear path often depicted in hypothetical decarbonization scenarios. Instead, they identified a series of physical, financial and managerial “cliffs” that could trigger localized energy crises, price shocks and safety threats long before fossil fuels are retired. Policymakers have focused intensely on the build-out of green energy while largely ignoring the managed decline of the current systems that still provide 80 percent of global energy — a critical oversight, they said.

“None of these systems were designed with their own obsolescence in mind,” said Lappen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Pulte Institute who studies how energy networks grow and shrink over time. “None of the engineers, founding executives, economists or accountants involved ever imagined a system that would gradually and safely hand off to another.”

The danger, according to the authors, is that these systems are “networks of networks.” If one piece fails — a pipeline, a specialized labor pool or a regulatory body — the entire regional energy support system could dissolve.

“If you are leaving decisions about things staying open or closing to individual operators who are not coordinated in any way, this can be incredibly dangerous,” Grubert said.

How to manage decline

To avoid disruption of services, the researchers argued that the current U.S. approach of bailouts and bankruptcies is inefficient. They recommended four key solutions for policymakers and energy modelers:

• High-resolution modeling: Energy modelers should develop tools that provide high-resolution representation of fossil fuel assets to identify when specific facilities reach their minimum viable scale.
• Coordination across ownership boundaries: Policymakers must establish management structures that coordinate decisions across ownership boundaries to prevent a single failure from triggering a cascade of collapses.
• Public management for public need: As systems become unprofitable, they may require significant new investments to remain safe and reliable in the short term, while still committing to closure. Such decisions should be managed by government entities.
• Guaranteed liabilities: Governments should create mechanisms to guarantee the payment of long-term liabilities — “bills” due at the end of a project such as safely tearing down power plants, cleaning up polluted soil or paying out pensions to workers — to ensure that declining systems are not simply abandoned by private operators.

Without such intervention, the authors warned, the “mid-transition” period to zero carbon energy could be defined by instability. If the decline is unmanaged, the resulting price spikes and reliability issues could undermine public trust in the energy transition itself, potentially stalling progress toward meeting important climate goals.

“We will be more creative and more successful if we think about the process outside the moment of crisis,” Grubert said. “Focusing more attention on the behavior of fossil systems under decline can help put timely solutions into place.”

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on January 29, 2026.

Kijewski-Correa’s research enhances the resilience and sustainability of hazard-exposed communities. Her team develops holistic responses to infrastructure vulnerabilities, using tools that enable diverse stakeholders to make science-informed decisions.

In her role as inaugural director of the National Science Foundation’s Structural Extreme Event Reconnaissance (StEER) network, she has helped mobilize hundreds of engineers globally to evaluate the impact of disasters using advances in data science. By leveraging open data sources, she leads the development of regional simulation tools for hurricane risk assessment through the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Computational Simulation Center (SimCenter).

“Wind and water are, simultaneously, two of our planet’s most generative yet potentially destructive phenomena,” said Kijewski-Correa. “While they have not always received the attention they deserve in the scientific community, that is starting to shift with concerns over climate change.

“Now, changes in the intensity and frequency of windstorms are colliding with migration patterns that put communities in areas of highest risk and vulnerabilities in our building and infrastructure systems. Windstorms are currently the top driver of insured losses in the U.S.—averaging $45 billion a year.”

Lake Charles, Louisiana, which experienced back-to-back hurricanes in 2020, and Haiti, the site of frequent natural disasters, have been key focus areas for Kijewski-Correa’s research.

In her statement to AAWE members outlining her platform as president-elect, Kijewski-Correa acknowledged current uncertainties in federal funding and emphasized her intention to position the organization as a steadying force. Her goals include clearly communicating the wind engineering community’s importance to key stakeholders in order to strengthen investment and collaboration. She also plans to examine workforce development needs to ensure the next generation of wind engineering professionals is prepared to meet the challenges ahead.

“I am honored to begin this leadership role within the premier organization in the Americas for advancing knowledge in the field of wind engineering and promoting international cooperation among scientists, engineers, and other professionals,” said Kijewski-Correa.

She will work to implement her goals in the next two years as president-elect. Then, in 2028 and 2029, she will assume the presidency of AAWE.

In 2023, Kijewski-Correa was selected as director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development within Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. Previously within the Keough School, she was founding co-director of the Integration Lab (i-Lab).

Previous AAWE presidents include Kijewski-Correa’s Notre Dame colleague, Ahsan Kareem, the Robert M. Moran Professor of Engineering, who was elected in 1994.

Originally published by Mary Hendriksen at engineering.nd.edu on January 28, 2026.

In recent years, Nepal has been heralded as a global leader in community-based forest conservation. By handing over nearly a third of its nationally owned forest to local villagers in the 1980s, the country reversed years of deforestation and effectively doubled its forest cover between 1992 and 2016. For many in rural Nepal, these forests are a lifeline, providing essential subsistence resources such as firewood for cooking and fodder for livestock.

But a new study from the University of Notre Dame suggests these environmental successes may exclude Nepal’s most vulnerable groups from their accompanying economic benefits. The National Science Foundation-funded study, published in Nature Sustainability, analyzed data from more than 500,000 households to reveal that while the program has reduced overall rural poverty, it also widened the gap between the country’s social elite and its marginalized populations. Researchers found that the benefits of forest decentralization — ranging from timber sales to microloans — flowed disproportionately to dominant ethnic and caste groups.

“When we hear the success stories, it’s remarkable what Nepal has achieved,” said study co-author Krister Andersson, Notre Dame Professor of Sustainable Development in the University’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “At the same time, the program doesn’t always impact everyone equally and can leave some of the poorest households behind.”

Among the study’s several co-authors are on-the-ground collaborators from Forest Action Nepal and the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies. The study focuses on the country’s local government-supported forest management groups, which oversee the forests, collect fees and reinvest profits into their communities.

The 'gatekeeper' effect

Nepal’s community forestry program was built with equity in mind. Government guidelines mandate that marginalized groups be represented on executive committees and that 35 percent of forest income be allocated to poverty alleviation programs.

Yet the data reveals a different reality. The researchers found that while the program reduced poverty among historically advantaged groups such as the Brahmin, Chhetri and Newar, the impact on marginalized Dalit or Janajati households was significantly smaller or, in some cases, barely noticeable.

“Caste membership is closely correlated with education, income and economic indicators,” Andersson said. “The ones who gained the most were those in high-caste groups. Lower-caste groups weren’t negatively affected — nobody became worse off — but they were left behind.”

The study points to a “gatekeeper” effect: Members of dominant social groups are often better equipped to navigate the bureaucratic hurdles of forest management.

“If you are richer and have more education, you are more likely to have contacts when it comes to the commercialization of products, for example,” Andersson said. “People who know how to navigate the system will see opportunities when those changes come. They don’t necessarily exploit, but they take advantage, and that increases the gap.”

A growing divide

The research comes at a pivotal moment. Since the study’s primary data was collected, Nepal has transitioned to a federal state, and many rural villagers have moved away from forest-dependent livelihoods due to international migration.

Despite these shifts, the problem of “elite capture” — where local leaders monopolize resources — remains a persistent challenge. In areas with the forest program, this wealth gap was about 15 percent larger than in areas that did not have the program at all.

The researchers noted that while the program does not necessarily make marginalized populations worse off, it enriches advantaged groups at a much faster rate, creating a local increase in rural inequality. Andersson compared the policy shift to an “external shock.”

“Similar to when a natural disaster occurs, these kinds of changes tend to widen the gap between those with education and resources and those without those things,” he said.

Reimagining forest conservation

These findings are likely to be of interest to countries beyond Nepal, co-author Nathan Cook said, since community-based natural resource management is a cornerstone of global sustainability efforts.

“The solution is not to abandon decentralization, but to reform it,” said Cook, assistant professor in the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Indianapolis. In the study’s conclusion, the researchers suggested that stricter monitoring of equity provisions and the introduction of targeted payment schemes could help level the playing field.

As Nepal moves toward the commercialization of its forests through newer programs, the risk of excluding poor populations may grow, the researchers said. High-value timber production often prioritizes the needs of the wealthy over subsistence needs — such as firewood or livestock fodder — that marginalized groups rely on for survival.

For the international community, which has funneled millions into Nepal’s forestry model, the study serves as a sobering reminder, Andersson said.

“A forest can be thriving even as community members managing it are not benefiting from it equally,” he said. “But there’s still potential for programs like Nepal’s to be improved so they alleviate poverty and inequality. Future research and policy work should focus on this goal.”

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on January 20, 2026.

For decades, global efforts to combat climate change and protect biodiversity have relied on a high-tech promise: that satellite-derived maps can tell us exactly where the world's forests are.

But a new study from the University of Notre Dame reveals that these digital baselines are often in sharp disagreement, creating confusion that threatens to undermine effective climate funding and international development efforts. Because these maps determine everything from carbon storage estimates to the enactment of conservation policies, even small discrepancies can have serious consequences for both people and the planet.

The study, co-authored by Daniel C. Miller, the Coyle Mission Collegiate Associate Professor at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, reveals major differences among the world’s most widely used forest datasets. When comparing eight of the most popular datasets, the researchers found that their identification of forest locations concurred only 26 percent of the time.

The problem stems from how different researchers define “forest” and the digital technology they use to view forests, said Miller, a core faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development.

“When land is viewed from the sky, it’s difficult to know at a global scale whether something is a forest or not,” he said. “Some might consider a small patch of trees to be a forest, but for others only a large, dense area of trees will count.”

The study found that the discrepancy among datasets creates major uncertainty, sometimes by a factor of 10. For example, some maps might count a savanna interspersed with trees as forest based on a 10 percent canopy cover threshold, while others require 50 percent. These small definitional differences can flip millions of hectares from “forest” to “non-forest” in an instant.

The researchers used case studies from Brazil, India and Kenya to show how these digital maps affect human lives and global policy challenges. In India, for example, the estimated number of people living in poverty near forests fluctuated from 23 million to 252 million depending solely on which map was used.

A framework for the future

To help policymakers, journalists and others navigate this “digital wilderness,” the researchers created a flowchart to help non-experts determine which data sets are most appropriate for their specific region or goal. Miller said that future work should integrate hybrid data that combines on-the-ground views with satellite data.

“By bridging the gap between satellite technology and on-the-ground reality, we can provide more accurate, inclusive data that truly supports both the planet and the people who protect it,” he said.

Real-world stakes

Miller warned that if forest definitions continue to vary, countries could overestimate — or dangerously underestimate — their carbon sequestration potential.

“It could make a real difference in climate finance commitments and how much vulnerable communities gain,” he said.

Co-author Sarah Castle of the University of Wisconsin–Madison emphasized that accurate data is a prerequisite for trust in global markets for environmental goods like carbon and timber and underscored the need for better standardization and transparency so the global community can agree on common reporting metrics.

“If we cannot establish a reliable baseline for forest area, it undermines trust in nature-based markets and makes it nearly impossible to accurately measure the role forests play in supporting people’s lives and livelihoods,” Castle said.

In addition to Miller and Castle, the study was co-authored by Peter Newton of the University of Colorado Boulder, Johan A. Oldekop of the Global Development Institute and Kathy Baylis of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Funding for the study was provided by Notre Dame Research and the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development through the University of Notre Dame Poverty Initiative.

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on January 12, 2026.

Experts at a recent conference in Rome suggested that theology may offer insights into some of these global problems. In particular, they emphasized how theology can reorient and reshape public conversations about migration by centering them on human dignity.

“Migration, a Pilgrimage of Hope” was held Oct. 21-23 at Pontifical Urban University in partnership with the Scalabrini International Migration Institute and the University of Notre Dame. The conference brought together more than 200 scholars, theologians, and religious leaders as well as representatives of NGOs, faith-based organizations, and migrant and refugee communities from every continent.

Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., played a leading role in organizing the conference, which was held under the auspices of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, the International Union of Superiors General, and the Union Superiors General.

“Migration is one of the most challenging, complex, and important issues of our times. It is complex because it is studied by virtually every discipline, but it is simple because it speaks to the core of the value of human life,” said Groody, the University of Notre Dame’s vice president and associate provost for undergraduate education as well as a professor of theology and global affairs.

Groody said theology is often left out of conversations about migration, but it can play a crucial role by providing moral and ethical frameworks for studying the issue, spiritual resources to respond to migrants with compassion, and a counternarrative to those who dehumanize, demean, and degrade migrants. “Theology can enrich the discussions around migration,” he said, “by focusing on human dignity and the call to understand what it means to be human before God.”

Several partners from Notre Dame, led by the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights and its multidisciplinary Migration Research Initiative, supported the conference. Other partners included the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Kellogg Institute in the Keough School as well as the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative.

‘An extraordinary opportunity’

“Migration, a Pilgrimage of Hope” featured two days of multidisciplinary panel discussions at Pontifical Urban University plus a third day dedicated to site visits in Rome. Conference attendees visited Casa Scalabrini 634, a place of welcome where refugees can find help starting their new lives, and Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo, which is dedicated to ecological education and inspired by Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ encyclical.

“Forced migration is fast becoming normal, but let us not forget it is forced,” Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization and Grand Chancellor of Pontifical Urban University, said at the conference’s opening session. “In this context, the Church is called not only to react but to be present in a prophetic way — offering places of welcome, human promotion, paths of integration, and words of hope.”

Cardinal Tagle added that people of faith are also called to learn from migrants, as they can teach important lessons about hope. “Migration, in fact, is not only a challenge but an extraordinary opportunity to renew the Church’s missionary enthusiasm, to live the Gospel of encounter more authentically,” he said.

Several experts from the Keough School of Global Affairs built on these theological insights by explaining how dignity-first perspectives can translate into concrete policy and educational strategies.

On the conference’s first day, Associate Professor of Global Affairs Abby Córdova, Professor of Migration Amy Hsin, and Erin Corcoran, an associate teaching professor and executive director of the Kroc Institute, spoke on interdisciplinary panels about welcoming, protecting, promoting, and integrating migrants. The panels also included Alexander Kustov, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who will join the Keough School faculty this spring.

Córdova presented her research on correcting misperceptions about undocumented immigrants in Mexico, where the government has taken an increasingly militarized approach to immigration enforcement. She emphasized the importance of highlighting migrants’ economic contributions as well as their resilience. “They thrive under very hard conditions,” Córdova said.

Hsin shared findings from a study of undocumented young adults in New York City, showing how education can serve as a democratizing force by offering undocumented youth the opportunity to realize their potential, even within a system that often marginalizes them. At the same time, punitive immigration policies — especially those that expand police surveillance and immigration enforcement — create fear and discourage students from participating fully in college life.

“Schools promote human dignity by recognizing potential over immigration status,” Hsin said. “This shows that when you give people opportunities, they are able to flourish and contribute to the community in meaningful ways.”

Kustov delved into research that was the basis for his recent book, In Our Interest: How Democracies Make Immigration Popular. He described the rise of far-right political parties in Europe and the United States, and the connection between that rise and anti-immigration sentiment.

Still, he noted, “For a lot of people, their opposition to immigration is not categorical; it's conditional. ... A lot of people support immigration when they truly believe it’s beneficial to their country and their communities.” He said this research shows the importance of communicating national benefits effectively when trying to persuade people to support immigration.

A need for ‘new moral leadership’

Corcoran discussed how the global crackdown on migrants and the increased securitization of immigration policy have spread fear in immigrant communities. “The ‘othering’ of immigrants is dangerous,” she said. “I think the rhetoric leads people to become numb to the treatment of immigrants.”

This is a moment for faith leaders to step up, Corcoran added.

“What’s happening in the United States is coming from the highest levels of leadership,” she said. “There needs to be an awakening of new moral leadership, and I think the Church has an important role to play in that.”

The second day of the conference included discussion groups that aimed to foster dialogue among theologians, social scientists, and scholars from related fields on the complex realities of migration.

Tom Hare, program manager in the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development and co-director of its Central America Research Alliance, discussed “the right to stay” as a theory of migration and its roots in Catholic social thought. Josie Soehnge Cohen, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Notre Dame, presented her research on the role of faith-based groups along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rev. Joseph Corpora, C.S.C., also attended the conference and shared his reflections from working with immigrants as a parish priest, at Notre Dame, and on the southern border. “When we do not welcome immigrants and refugees, not only are we refusing to live the Gospel, and not taking seriously the teachings of the Church,” Corpora said, “we are depriving ourselves of riches and blessings and gifts and graces that come from immigrants.”

Jennifer Mason McAward, associate professor of law and director of the Klau Institute, said the conference made it possible for a global group of scholars to build solidarity across borders and form new partnerships that will lead to valuable research and policy proposals in years to come.

“Migration is a fundamentally human issue that affects the world’s most vulnerable people,” McAward said. “It’s absolutely vital that we respond to these realities in ways that protect human dignity and promote integral human development.”

Watch sessions from the conference on the Scalabrini International Migration Institute’s YouTube channel.

Originally published by Kevin Allen at klau.nd.edu on November 20, 2025.

Forced displacement has surged in recent years, fueling a global crisis. Over the past decade, the number of displaced people worldwide has nearly doubled, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. In 2024 alone, one in 67 people fled their homes.

A new study co-authored by University of Notre Dame researcher Helge-Johannes Marahrens shows that analyzing social media posts can help experts predict when people will move during crises, supporting faster and more effective aid delivery. The study highlights how powerful computational tools can help address major global challenges to human dignity.

“Traditional data, such as surveys, are extremely difficult to collect during forced migration crises,” said Marahrens, assistant professor of computational social science in Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “As early warning systems evolve, artificial intelligence and new digital data can help improve them. Ultimately this can help strengthen humanitarian responses, saving lives and reducing suffering.”

Providing timely aid to displaced people

The study, published in EPJ Data Science, analyzed three case studies. In Ukraine, 10.6 million people were displaced following Russia’s 2022 invasion. In Sudan, approximately 12.8 million people were displaced following a civil war that broke out in April 2023. And in Venezuela, about 7 million people have been displaced in recent years because of multiple economic crises.

Researchers reviewed almost 2 million social media posts in three languages on X (formerly Twitter). They found that sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) was a more reliable signal for predicting when people were about to move than emotion (joy, anger or fear). Sentiment was particularly helpful at predicting the timing and volume of cross-border movements.

After comparing several approaches for analyzing social media posts, researchers found that pretrained language models provided the most effective early warning. These AI tools are trained on massive amounts of text using deep learning, a method that helps computers learn patterns much like the human brain.

“Our findings will help researchers refine models to predict how people move during conflict or disasters,” Marahrens said.

Social media analysis seems to work best in conflict settings such as Ukraine, Marahrens said, but not as well in economic crises such as the ones Venezuela experienced, which unfolded more slowly.

He cautioned that such analyses can trigger false alarms. They are most valuable as an early trigger for deeper investigation, he said, particularly when combined with traditional data sources such as economic indicators and on-the-ground reports.

Future work could explore connections between sentiment and emotion, focusing on where they connect and diverge, Marahrens said. It could also examine how automated translation services could help researchers analyze more languages. Finally, future research could include data from additional social media networks.

“Together, these improvements could help strengthen these tools,” Marahrens said, “making them more helpful for policymakers and humanitarian organizations that work with displaced people.”

Marahrens, who joined Notre Dame this fall, works on a variety of issues related to globalization and inequality, applying his computational social science expertise to a range of research projects. He is affiliated with the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development as well as the University’s Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society.

The study received funding from the National Science Foundation and from Georgetown University’s Massive Data Institute.

Originally published by Josh Stowe at keough.nd.edu on Nov. 17.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Since its founding, the University of Notre Dame has sought to address the world’s most pressing challenges through scholarship, partnership and service. Responding to the growing urgency of environmental change requires precisely this kind of collaboration, bringing together universities, researchers and communities to create solutions that are just, sustainable and grounded in shared responsibility for our planet.

Inspired in part by Pope Francis’s call in Laudato si’ to care for “our common home,” Notre Dame has participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) for more than a decade. The University recognizes that the decisions and collaborations emerging from COP have a profound impact on global research, policy and innovation.

This November, COP30 will convene in Belém, Brazil. Capitalizing on Notre Dame’s presence in São Paulo, Notre Dame Global and Notre Dame São Paulo will host a conference together with Notre Dame Research and the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership (NDDCEL), the week before the international climate summit.

The two-day program is titled “Bridging Worlds: Cultivating Research Partnerships for Climate Hope,” a nod to the University’s 2025-26 forum theme of “Cultivating Hope,” and it aims to bring together faculty from across departments at Notre Dame and universities in Brazil to explore the role of research in shaping just and hopeful climate solutions. The conference will be held at the University of São Paulo (USP), one of the leading universities in Latin America, and will feature representatives from several Notre Dame units including the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, Environmental Change Initiative, Notre Dame Research, the Center for Research Computing, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Mendoza College of Business, the College of Engineering and the College of Science. Panelists and speakers include the following Notre Dame faculty: Alvaro Acosto Serrano, Diogo Bolster, Jessica McManus Warnell, Jarek Nabrzyski, Ray Offenheiser, Sandra Vera-Munoz and Danielle Wood.

Notre Dame São Paulo Director Thaïs Burmeister de Campos Pires shared: “Hosting the ‘Bridging Worlds’ program here in São Paulo highlights the University of Notre Dame’s commitment to building meaningful global partnerships. Notre Dame São Paulo serves as a bridge between Notre Dame and leading Brazilian institutions, enabling faculty and students to connect and collaborate on innovative solutions for pressing global challenges. We are proud to provide a space for shared research, dialogue and impact.”

Notre Dame faculty and faculty from preeminent institutions across São Paulo and Brazil will have the opportunity to build and strengthen research partnerships through working sessions and networking events. The sessions will prioritize collaborative work between the faculty members, while alumni and other friends of the University from the region will engage around the conference themes and stakeholder partners.

The evening before the conference begins, the Notre Dame Alumni Association and the Notre Dame Club of Brazil are sponsoring a Hesburgh Lecture on the theme of ethical leadership and sustainability to be held at Insper, a nonprofit higher education research institution. The lecture will feature Rex and Alice A. Martin Faculty Director of the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership Jessica McManus Warnell and director of the McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business Ray Offenheiser. An Insper faculty member will serve as a respondent, offering reflections and local perspectives on the themes of ethical leadership and sustainability.

The lecture will provide the ideal introduction to the conference, inspiring conversations about climate risk assessment, sustainability, adaptive livelihoods, just transitions and more in the days to follow. Ultimately, the “Bridging Worlds” program hopes to be a catalyst for impactful research and partnerships between Brazil and Notre Dame.

“Notre Dame’s identity as a global Catholic research university compels us to engage in these conversations,” said Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization at the University of Notre Dame. “Our faculty members and those of our partner institutions possess a wealth of knowledge on the subject of climate and sustainability, and by bringing them together, we are working towards a deeper understanding of how our local and global systems are intertwined.”

Originally published by Jessie Carson at saopaulo.nd.edu on Oct. 27.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu, and Jessica Sieff, associate director of media relations, 574-631-3933 or jsieff@nd.edu

“The Global Development Scholars experience a uniquely Notre Dame approach to understanding and addressing issues related to poverty in global communities,” Keough School Associate Professor and Pulte Institute Core Faculty Paul Perrin said. “The students are not only given opportunities to meet and discuss poverty through the lenses of human dignity, flourishing, and integral human development. They also put these ideas into practice through mentored participation in real-world projects, seeking to increase well-being in various ways across the world.”

The Global Development Scholars of 2025-26 (pictured left to right) are: 

Christina Ayón, ’27

Pursuing a double major in global affairs and political science with a minor in Latino studies, Ayón brings experience as a student research associate in Chile as part of the ND Bridge program and as a volunteer helping to establish a food pantry at a community center in her home in Long Beach, California.

As a Global Development Scholar, Ayón is currently working with William J. Pulte Director Tracy Kijewski-Correa on an upcoming paper on post-disaster rebuilding and resilience of Haitian communities. Ayón plans to use her experience at the Pulte Institute to develop her own thesis, possibly at the intersection of migration, disaster and resilience with a regional focus in Latin America.

“The mentorship and community provided by the Global Development Scholars program will be invaluable in helping me channel my passion and curiosity into tangible, impactful work,” Ayón said.

Leticia Cardoso Queiroz, ’26

With combined interests in business and global research and with demonstrated leadership skills, Queiroz joins the Global Development Scholar program initially working with Assistant Professor of the Practice TJ D’Agostino on active projects focused on early education interventions. Currently, she is helping translate one of D’Agostino’s academic papers into a user guide to improve its accessibility with academics and practitioners.

Queiroz says she applied to become a Global Development Scholar because the opportunity connects her two primary interests: academic research and hands-on development work. “I see this as a chance to contribute to meaningful social impact while strengthening my ability to translate data into practical solutions,” she added.

Queiroz is also collaborating with D’Agostino on a policy consulting project with long-time Notre Dame local partner Building Tomorrow in Uganda. She is a major in global affairs at the Keough School with a second major in business analytics at Mendoza.

Josethy Perez, ’26

Perez joins the Pulte Institute having recently conducted her own independent research exploring Haitian migration and integration in Santiago, Chile. With support from the Kellogg Institute, Perez was able to examine how a family-centered accompaniment model aids the long-term resilience of Haitian migrants. She is a global affairs major with a concentration in international development studies.

During her first rotational placement with the Pulte Institute, Perez is working with Associate Professor Paul Perrin to analyze digital and print materials of various NGOs to determine if human dignity is clearly prioritized in the core values they express.

“I am excited to be part of the Global Development Scholars program because it allows me to connect my research and field experiences to meaningful projects, while strengthening my skills to support marginalized communities and prepare for a career in international development and human rights law,” she said.

More than 375 sustainability professionals gathered at the University of Notre Dame on October 20–23, 2025 for the second annual conference of the National Sustainability Society. The theme running through every session, informal conversation and keynote address was clear: a just and sustainable future requires the flourishing of both people and the planet.

“It was deeply inspiring to see our participants, representing so many diverse disciplines and sectors — come together here at Notre Dame to share knowledge and imagine new paths toward sustainability,” said Arun Agrawal, Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy and inaugural director of Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, who chaired the NSS conference committee.

“Hosting this gathering on our campus was an honor and a joy,” Agrawal said. “The ideas exchanged over these few days reminded us that while the challenges ahead are immense, our collective commitment, creativity and care for one another make a just and sustainable future not only possible, but already underway.”

In keynote addresses that ranged from deeply spiritual to rigorously data-driven, sustainability leaders urged audiences to close the widening gap between environmental and human well-being and to see that the same forces that are exhausting ecosystems are diminishing the people who inhabit them.

Closing the inner-outer gap

Lisa Graumlich, a dean emerita of the University of Washington’s College of the Environment and an ordained Episcopal deacon, began the conference’s opening keynote address not with charts or models, but with solemn reflection on the current ecological crisis.

“There is a gap that exists,” Graumlich said. “We are treating a dual crisis — inner and outer — as if it were only an outer, technical problem.”

A professor at Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences whose pioneering research illuminates how human activity reshapes climate systems, Graumlich wove together scientific and spiritual insights, drawing from diverse traditions including Buddhism, Christianity, eco-spirituality, Indigenous wisdom, Islam and Judaism. She also quoted Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical Laudato Si’: “The external deserts of the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast.”

Graumlich’s assessment of the current crisis was unsparing: the “violence of speed,” she said, has become a cultural virtue.

“Fast is good. Faster is better. But living systems require slowness to function.” She urged participants to recognize that the idea of a separation — between self and planet, science and spirit, individual and collective — is “ecologically false.”

Graumlich identified five forces maintaining what she called “the gap”: psychic numbing, the tyranny of optimism, the illusion of individual sufficiency, cultural stories that normalize harm and unprocessed grief.

“Grief is not the opposite of hope,” Graumlich said. “Numbness is. Honoring our pain for the world opens us to act more powerfully, not less.”

Graumlich called not for despair but for wholeness.

“Truth-telling and transformation must go hand in hand,” she said. “We must bring our whole selves, slow down enough to feel, refuse false solutions, and do it together.”

In her closing remarks, Graumlich issued both an assurance and a challenge. “The ‘great turning’ is already here,” she said. “The world needs you — all of you. The gap is closing, and the turning is real.”

A conversation with university deans

While Graumlich’s keynote focused on sustainability’s inner dimensions, a panel discussion with deans from the Midwest, the deep South and the West Coast examined its institutional face: how colleges and universities can cultivate a generation capable of integrating sustainability into their studies.

Moderated by Nicole Ardoin of Stanford University, the panel brought together three university deans — Patricia Culligan of Notre Dame, Joseph Messina of the University of Alabama and Christopher Boone of the University of Southern California.

Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of Engineering at Notre Dame, cited the College of Engineering’s mission of “engineering a better world for all.”

“A sustainable world is a world where everybody benefits,” Culligan said. “We have to frame sustainability not as a set of challenges, but as a message of hope.”

Culligan emphasized the importance of care for and education of the whole person, an approach that is often applied to undergraduate students but not as frequently extended toward graduate students — an oversight that Notre Dame Engineering is trying to remedy.

“We cannot care for the Earth well if we are not caring for ourselves,” Culligan said. “At Notre Dame, we talk about engineering a better world for all — that means creating environments where people and planet thrive together.”

Messina, a population and environment geographer, highlighted how embedding sustainability across the curriculum requires navigating political and structural realities.

“We’re at an inflection point in higher education,” he said. “If we want students to understand the importance of sustainability, we can’t just make it a requirement and risk backlash — we have to make it attractive, relevant and woven through every field of study.”

Boone, formerly at Arizona State University and now dean of U.S.C. 's Price School of Public Policy, recalled the early skepticism about sustainability as a discipline.

“When the first schools of sustainability were founded, people said students wouldn’t get jobs,” he said. “Now, employers are snapping up these students. The lesson? Doing the right thing can also be the smart thing.”

The conversation turned to the integration of artificial intelligence in sustainability education. Culligan, who previously helped found Columbia University’s Data Science Institute, described AI as “the next level in the big data world” — both transformative and unsettling.

“We can’t graduate students who don’t understand how to use AI responsibly,” she said. “Ethical grounding must be as essential as technical skill.”

When asked about research funding cuts and data restrictions, Messina warned that the loss of open data could “hobble evidence-based policy for years.” Boone added that the reliability of federal data “underpins trust in policy itself,” noting that even the U.S. Census has become politicized.

Farming for a flourishing future

While three of the nation’s deans shared strategies for institutionalizing sustainability, researcher Laura Vang Rasmussen shared a vision for applying it on the ground.

Rasmussen, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the 2024 Science journal paper awarded the prestigious 2025 Frontiers Planet Prize, delivered the conference’s closing keynote. “Joint Environmental and Social Benefits from Diversified Agriculture.” Her address showcased how redesigning farming systems can simultaneously regenerate ecosystems and enhance human well-being.

“Our food systems are transgressing planetary boundaries,” Rasmussen said. “The way we produce food is driving climate change, biodiversity loss, and malnutrition. Fifty percent of the world’s calories come from just three crops — rice, maize, and wheat — and one in three people is malnourished. Something is fundamentally wrong.”

To explore solutions, Rasmussen and a team of 58 co-authors compiled data from 2,655 farms in 27 countries, from strawberry fields in California to maize plots in Malawi. The overarching research question was deceptively simple: What happens when farms diversify — when they add trees, cover crops, livestock or pollinator strips?

The results, Rasmussen said, were “extremely promising.” Farms that employed multiple diversification strategies showed joint environmental and social benefits, including higher biodiversity and better food security.

“The yield trade-offs people worry about didn’t dominate,” she said. “Livestock diversification and soil conservation were especially positive.” Farms that employed multiple diversification strategies showed joint environmental and social benefits, including higher biodiversity and better food security.”

Rasmussen recalled the story of Malawian farmers who integrated fruit trees into maize plots: mango, papaya and custard apple, among other types. The integration did not raise maize yields but improved families’ overall nutrition dramatically.

“When you measure food security through dietary diversity,” Rasmussen said, “you see how nourishment can rise even without yield gains.”

Beyond the data, Rasmussen emphasized the human networks that make transformation possible.

“In northern Malawi, more than 6,000 farmers across 200 villages are experimenting together,” she said. “It’s farmer-led, grounded in local knowledge, and built on trust. That’s where transformation begins.”

Rasmussen connected the study to the conference’s overarching theme: sustainability as the flourishing of both people and planet.

“To transform farming systems,” she said, “we need new ways of thinking and new structures — access to land, credit, training and, above all, community.”

Reflecting on the research process, Rasmussen said the enormous scale of the collaboration had seemed daunting at times.

“Bringing together all those datasets, all those disciplines — it required us to believe in one another,” she said. “Like the farmers who must be brave and resilient in the face of uncertainty, we as researchers must also be brave and resilient. That is how we make progress.”

During more than 70 parallel sessions, participants in multiple disciplines and sectors shared their work in sustainability. Topics covered in panel discussions, symposia and posters ranged from energy transitions, agricultural transformations, humanities approaches to sustainability, the role of AI in sustainability and more.

“The smaller sessions captured much of what made the conference special,” said Dan Brown, president of the National Sustainability Society and director of the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. “That’s where people discovered shared aspirations, formed new collaborations and recognized that sustainability isn’t just a professional goal — it’s a shared endeavor. The connections and community that were forged made this gathering especially meaningful.”

From the smallest conversations to the largest gatherings, the convenings at the 2025 National Sustainability Society conference formed a collective credo: caring for the people and the planet are not parallel pursuits, they are the same work — and they must be carried out in community.

Originally published by Renée LaReau at keough.nd.edu on October 28, 2025.