���ճԹ�

Freiburg, a city in Germany’s Black Forest, has been dubbed the “Green City” because of its extensive use of solar power—for everything from city hall to a new soccer stadium—and a raft of projects to create climate-neutral homes and buildings. On city streets, bicycles outnumber cars. It’s the perfect living laboratory for studying climate protection efforts in action.

This past summer, three ���ճԹ� students did just that, thanks to paid internships created through a partnership between Freiburg’s Innovation Academy and the College’s Career & Civic Engagement Center and Department of Environmental Studies. Innovation Academy organizes excursions and educational tours around the themes of innovation and sustainable development.

The internships grew out of the relationship ���ճԹ� built with Innovation Academy as part of the 360 program course titled Climate Change: Science & Politics. Since 2010, this signature program has enabled students to participate in a cluster of courses focused on common problems, themes, and experiences for the purposes of research and scholarship.

Professor Carol Hager, who co-edited Germany’s Energy Transition: A Comparative Perspective (2016), first reached out to Innovation Academy when planning a trip to Freiburg as part of the Climate 360 program in 2015—and they’ve been a steady partner ever since.

“Last fall, the Academy told us they wanted to pilot a summer sustainability internship with a few trusted schools, ���ճԹ� among them,” recalled Hager. “Thanks to Katie Krimmel and Jennifer Prudencio in the Career & Civic Engagement Center, we were able to get the internship set up for this summer.” Hager said she hopes to see the number of placements expand in the coming years.