Eight faculty members have been named awardees for the 2020 John C. Mascaro Faculty Program in Sustainability.

The one-year awards from the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) were created to enhance the University’s mission of interdisciplinary excellence in sustainability research and education. They are open to faculty members from all disciplines.

John C. Mascaro Faculty Fellow in Sustainability ($20,000 award): 

David Finegold, Graduate School of Public Health, who proposed to better incorporate sustainability into the curriculum and academic culture of the Graduate School of Public Health.

Mascaro Faculty Scholars in Sustainability ($10,000 award): 

• Tony Kerzmann, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, who plans to provide project development and mentorship in a Sustainability Capstone Experience course, which is an interdisciplinary, open-ended, hands-on projects for students in the Sustainability Certificate and the Masters in Sustainable Engineering program.

• Sara Kuebbing, Department of Biological Sciences, who plans to will expand sustainability research and education at Pitt by developing a robust research relationship with the local sustainability group Tree Pittsburgh.

Mascaro Faculty Lecturers in Sustainability ($5,000 award):

• Joshua Groffman, Division of Communication and the Arts, Pitt Bradford, plans to extend his current research and pedagogy in the realm of ecomusicology, which investigates “music, nature, and culture in all the complexities of those terms”

• Katherine Hornbostel, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, who will use the money to support the development of a course on carbon capture and sequestration for fall 2020.

• Robert Kerestes, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who wants to make sustainable design more accessible to electrical engineering students through the sustainability certificate.

• Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, who plan to enhance knowledge of issues relating to sustainability among indigenous people, especially in the Pacific Island countries which are sometimes neglected in the literature and are facing severe environmental problems owing to climate change and rising sea levels.