Over the last two decades, the Weinberg College-housed Program in Environmental Policy and Culture (EPC) at Northwestern has embraced the humanities and social sciences and cultivated a new generation of environmental stewards.
Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Fiona Lenth describes her childhood home as “environmentally conscious.” The household featured recycling bins and LED lightbulbs, but also geothermal heat pumps and solar power to reduce energy consumption and a large garden fertilized by the home’s own compost. For Lenth, respecting the planet became a cherished personal value.
Though Lenth initially planned to position herself for a career in business when she entered Northwestern University in 2021, a freshman-year course titled Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change ignited new possibilities. Inspired to explore course offerings from Northwestern’s Program in Environmental Policy and Culture (EPC), Lenth discovered a way to blend her earnest commitment to the planet with academic study and professional prospects, and she leaped into the EPC minor.
For the last 20 years, scores of environmentally minded Northwestern students like Lenth have joined the EPC Program to explore environmental issues, particularly through the respective lenses of the social sciences and humanities. As a result, EPC students have gained knowledge and analytical skills, fueling their understanding of environmental stewardship in the 21st century and positioning themselves for impact-driven, sustainability-minded lives.
“Coursework in the EPC Program provided a great foundation for me to learn more about substantive environmental problems from scientific, historical, and political perspectives. I questioned assumptions I made about environmental progress and considered how I could best make an impact on the issues I cared about,” says Renee Wellman ’16, now the executive director of Green Corps, a training program for environmental organizers.
Origins of EPC
EPC owes its start to Paul Friesema, a political science professor who began his career at Northwestern in 1968. A prominent leader in the environmental movement, Friesema amassed a library of some 20,000 Environmental Impact Statements, which he later donated to Northwestern before his 2013 passing, and championed environmental issues in and far beyond the classroom, including co-chairing Northwestern’s Environmental Council.
Stirred by accelerating undergraduate interest in environmental issues as the 21st century unfolded, Friesema spearheaded the creation of EPC in 2005 and served as its founding director for three years.
While the natural sciences dominated most environmental studies programs in higher education, EPC adopted a different approach by diving into political waters, largely a byproduct of Friesema’s work in environmental policy. The program initially relied on many practitioners as instructors, welcoming attorneys and environmental policy administrators to lead courses and share insights, challenges, and lessons from the frontlines.
Even though EPC eschewed the heavy natural sciences focus of environmental studies programs at peer institutions—an effort better addressed by Northwestern’s Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences Department—EPC largely stuck to rather traditional environmental issues like public lands, pollution, and conservation.
By the early 2010s, however, EPC began spreading its scholarly wings and welcoming faculty from across Weinberg College into its ranks. In particular, the program pushed deeper into the social sciences and humanities with courses touching areas such as history, literature, sociology, religion, and art.
“EPC affords students an opportunity to think about environmental issues as much more than technical matters that can be adequately addressed through laboratory research,” current EPC director Keith Mako Woodhouse says. “It’s a space for exploring the environment in terms of social, political, economic, and ethical issues.”
The academic diversity became a hallmark of the program, propelling its growth and fueling student interest across the entire Northwestern campus.
“I loved the opportunity to contextualize the existential issues that drove my academic interests,” says Lauren Wustenberg, a 2015 Northwestern alumnae who paired her Environmental Sciences major in Weinberg College with an EPC minor. “Diving into topics like climate accords, econometrics, environmental history, and asset-based community development allowed me to better contextualize global environmental problems and how we can understand and devise solutions.”
Broadening its reach
Over recent years, the EPC program’s evolution has continued in earnest. Most notably, EPC unveiled an adjunct major in environmental policy and culture in 2023. Spurred by the program’s welcoming spirit and push to apply classroom lessons to real-world problems, Lenth was among the earliest students to commit to the major upon its introduction.
“No questions asked,” says Lenth, who added the EPC adjunct major to her existing pursuit of a degree in economics.
In EPC, students from diverse academic backgrounds – engineering, journalism, education, and more – encounter a program consistently broadening its lens on environmental issues. In addition to touching core environmental topics like global warming and water security, EPC has pushed into areas like climate justice, energy, and food systems. Its swelling faculty roster, meanwhile, features scholars from fields such as anthropology, comparative literature, art history, and Indigenous studies – disciplines rarely found in a traditional environmental studies program.
“More and more faculty in other departments and programs are involved in EPC,” confirms Woodhouse, himself an associate professor in Weinberg College’s Department of History. “And frankly, virtually any department and any school on campus has a framework they can bring to understanding environmental issues.”
Woodhouse views such diversity as critical in the contemporary age, as environmental issues remain inextricably linked to political and social domains. In the latter half of the 20th century, he says, conventional environmental issues like clean water and wildlife preservation largely received strong bipartisan support. Today, however, even seemingly mundane environmental topics frequently spark divisive responses.
“There’s no way to design and implement solutions to pressing environmental problems today without navigating a very complex social and political world – that’s increasing, or at least becoming more obvious these days,” Woodhouse says. “While addressing an environmental problem might start with data and the natural sciences, it often ends in the political, social, and economic realms, so we have to know about public opinion, history, communications, education, cultural issues, and more.”
Therein lies the magic of EPC and the dynamic experience it provides students like Lenth, who credits her EPC studies for providing her “a holistic understanding of problems facing the environment.”
“I love the interdisciplinarity of EPC and how courses are coming at environmental issues from different perspectives,” Lenth says. “It provides a different framing on how these issues came to be and inspires unique ways to approach solutions.”
Cultivating a new generation of environmentalists
From a few dozen students in its opening years, EPC currently features more than 100 students pursuing the program’s adjunct major or minor. Woodhouse expects those figures to grow given the number of students invested in environmental stewardship.
“Remember this generation has grown up under the shadow of climate change,” he says.
A generous gift from Rich Tinberg MBA ’75 and his wife, Elaine, will help power EPC’s evolution and reach, supporting key initiatives like visiting professorships, research initiatives, events, and course offerings. Rich Tinberg says he and Elaine both feel Weinberg College and EPC can play a substantial role in helping to increase public awareness and understanding of the environment.
“We view the challenges we face with the environment to be existential, and we feel society needs to have a much better conversation about this threat so we can begin to more effectively address it,” Rich Tinberg says. “We hope our gift will increase humanity’s knowledge about this issue and helps to minimize the threat it presents to mankind.”
The Tinbergs’ generosity has only intensified Woodhouse’s excitement about the EPC Program and its future. In the coming years, Woodhouse hopes EPC introduces a free-standing EPC major, welcomes graduate students as well as pre- and post-doctoral fellows into the fold, and becomes an even greater source of support for faculty and students across campus interested in environmental matters.
“Whether through courses, events, or advocacy, we want to be the campus hub for conversations and solutions around environmental issues,” he says.
Woodhouse also hopes to strengthen the program’s relationships with the broader community, particularly by bringing students into greater contact with local organizations to facilitate learning and energize ambitions. Lenth, for instance, relished EPC-connected projects with Chicago’s Field Museum and the STRONG Manoomin Collective, a research effort working to strengthen Ojibwe resilience through enhanced scientific and environmental governance capacity.
“Those were amazing hands-on experiences that built my understanding and gave me knowledge to share with my peers,” says Lenth, who hopes to pursue a career focused on the just energy transition.
According to Woodhouse, experiential opportunities and external partnerships will help students see the diverse ways in which they can be involved with the environment as professionals, from public sector duties with agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to working in corporate sustainability offices to advocacy with activist organizations or NGOs.
“There are endless possibilities for students to work on environmental issues, including many not in the traditional environmental realm,” Woodhouse says.
“But whatever our students do, wherever they go, the diversity of the EPC education prepares them to bring environmental sensibilities into their individual roles and work for the greater good.”
In the video below, Environmental Policy and Culture professor Keith Woodhouse shares how students gain cutting-edge insights and thrive with expert mentorship and research opportunities.