The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education SPIKE Student Scholars are co-creators and change agents in sustainability education
After a successful launch in Spring 2026, the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education Student Scholars Inaugural Cohort, we welcome 12 students to form a new cohort this academic year. The SPIKE Student Scholars cohort engages in student centered learning experiences that support students as they co-imagining the world they want by drawing upon our diverse lived experiences and ways of knowing.
Student Scholars will listen to and gather perspectives from students across their respective schools and colleges and bring those perspectives to faculty, administrators, and other decision-makers to help shape how sustainability is integrated into curricula, programs, and educational experiences. The cohort will engage in creative, embodied practices to partner in the creation ofsustainability education through curriculum. They form a community of co-teachers and co- learners exploring generative approaches that nurture this work. In doing so, they will continue to create a porous, welcoming, loving, radically accepting community for all students to be involved in the development of sustainability education.
The cohort is made up of interdisciplinary students. Each college or school at CU is represented by at least one SPIKE Student Scholar. By working within their respective schools and colleges, Scholars will help explore what sustainability means within different disciplines, from music and law to engineering, business, psychology, political science, and beyond and what students want sustainability education to look like within those fields. This provides students with opportunities to reach the broader student body within their respective colleges and work alongside a range of sustainability focused centers and offices.
Student Scholars serve as portals for student perspectives within their schools and colleges. They will create opportunities for students to share what they want faculty to understand about sustainability education, including how sustainability can be meaningfully integrated into disciplines and fields of study where it may not traditionally be centered. Beyond individual courses, Scholars will also explore the broader institutional culture and systems that shape what students learn about sustainability, both explicitly and implicitly. SPIKE Student scholars have a role in designing and imagining sustainability education beyond that of being a recipient of it.
"Having recently transitioned from serving as the faculty advisor for CU’s Center for Teaching and Learning, I am so excited to be applying all that I learned from that amazing team to student centered learning for sustainability education”, says SPIKE Center Student Engagement Associate Director Beth Osnes-Stoedefalke.
AY2627 SPIKE Student Scholars
The new cohort of student scholars includes:
- Mariah Rosensweig: School of Education, double majoring in Leadership and Community Engagement and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
- Larissa Harrison: College of Music, majoring in Music
- Carly Simmons: Leeds School of Business, majoring in management
- Annaleise Kealiher: Engineering and Applied Sciences, ATLAS Creative Technology and Design, Social Impact Track
- Kylie Clabaugh: College of Communication, Media, Design, and Information, majoring in Sustainability Planning and Urban Design
- Rachel Summers: Colorado Law, Law
- Naomi Jepkemei: College of Arts and Sciences, Masters of the Environment
- Samuel Spotts: College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in chemistry
- Juniper Davis: College of Arts and Sciences, major Political Science
- Samantha Versie: College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Psychology
- Paloma Lozano: College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Cinema Studies
- Curtis Anderson: College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Together, these student leaders represent a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, underscoring the SPIKE Center’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and inclusive approaches to sustainability education at CU 鶹ӰԺ.
For more information on various ways students may play a role in the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, please visit: /center/spike/students