Leading climate scientists visit Hamilton as Morris Fellows, host lectures and workshops
By Stella Essenmacher ’25, Staff Writer
On Thursday, April 6, and Friday, April 7, Dr. Julia Cole and Hamilton alumnus Dr. Jonathan Overpeck ’79, two leading climate research scientists from the University of Michigan, engaged with students from the Hamilton Geosciences and Environmental Studies departments in a series of lectures and workshops.
Thursday began with a series of question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions. The conversation centered around graduate school opportunities and which degrees students might find most useful based on their long-term goals. It was very beneficial for students to discuss these options with people who not only got PhD’s themselves, but who also now look over graduate school applications. Both scientists also regularly speak on radio shows, write Op-Eds for newspapers, and speak with lawmakers, farmers and businesses. This multifaceted perspective meant that the expertise they had in different industries was invaluable.
Others got the chance to go to dinner with the speakers that night. Amelia Brown ’25, a geosciences and environmental studies double major, shares, “the dinner was two hours long, which sounds like a long time, but the conversation was very natural and they were very open to our questions. They both asked what we were interested in, so they tailored advice to us specifically. I was talking to Dr. Overpeck about how I have an internship in the Senate this year but I don’t have a government background. He calmed my fears and said, ‘we have a lot of politicians in the government, but we don’t really have a lot of scientists.’”
That evening Overpeck gave a lecture on how storms, droughts and wildfires are getting more intense. He focused part of his talk on megadroughts, which are periods of drought that last longer than 20 years. Towards the end of his presentation, he shared why, despite the depressing statistics, people should have hope. A big takeaway for Brown was that “the science is already here, and we can solve the climate crisis today. If we immediately switched over to renewable energy, we’d stop emitting so much. What just needs to happen is societal change.”
On Friday afternoon, Dr. Cole held a workshop about science communication. Cole hopes to train the next generation of scientists to be better at sharing conclusions they make through research with an audience who has the power to make change, like lawmakers or the general public. In the three-hour workshop, students practiced translating complicated scientific papers to be widely accessible, learned how to handle challenging questions during the Q&A portion of a lecture, and even worked on marketing themselves through mastering the art of the elevator pitch.
As the final portion of the visit, Cole hosted a lecture Friday night about her work determining climate change’s impact on the El Niño ocean patterns. Each year that El Niño occurs, it leads to heavy rain on one edge of the Pacific Ocean and drought on the opposite edge. She displayed a picture of a coral core, which she had extracted while scuba diving. Corals have ring-like markings that resemble tree rings, and can also be used to chart climatic patterns since they are created in regular intervals.
This opportunity truly showcased Hamilton’s strengths as an institution that empowers students to take part in intimate learning environments and become strong communicators and writers, whether that be in the sciences, politics, business or any other field. The messages on climate change shared by the speakers were also inspiring. Brown notes, “It feels like the world is caving in and there’s too much to do [to solve climate change] since you’re just one person.” However, Brown learned that “there’s so many unique ways to contribute to solving climate change, and you really need to focus on how you can contribute.”
