A Climate Activist’s Approach to Celebrating Lifelong Learning
Dr. Annalisa Raymer is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University, where she teaches courses in adult learning in the Education minor. As a Cornell Climate Stewards (CCS) volunteer, Raymer has been unable to separate her CCS climate actions from her other work, as all of her involvements have a common goal: advancing lifelong learning, social justice, and sustainability.
One of Dr. Raymer’s passions is making education more accessible and facilitating collaborative engagement among members of the campus community. Challenges, like economic inequities and language barriers, make education less accessible and can deter people from pursuing their learning goals. At Cornell, one of the programs seeking to promote mutual learning across differences is the Community Learning and Service Partnership (CLASP). As the director of CLASP, Dr. Raymer, along with colleagues Sasha Endo and Beth Korson, create learning partnerships between students and campus employees, primarily UAW members working in the service industries. Through courses in adult learning, students become educational mentors who work in relationship with employee adult learners pursuing specific learning goals. These partnerships offer reciprocal growth and professional development for the student and the adult as well as foster a sense of belonging and inclusion within the Cornell community.
Raymer has made numerous efforts to encourage community engagement. In one such attempt, Raymer reached out to the Ithaca Office of Sustainability and began exploring the possibility of a collaborative project involving her students. The City of Ithaca had begun developing the Justice50 initiative, which aims to allocate 50% of all benefits from the Ithaca New Green Deal to climate justice communities. Ithaca’s first Director of Sustainability Luis Aguirre-Torres and his colleague, Sustainability Specialist Rebecca Evans, identified their interest in participatory budgeting as an aspiration for Justice50. This created an opportunity for Dr. Raymer and her students to provide research assistance, analyze findings, and prepare a brief on participatory budgeting to inform the framing of a public dialogue on the prospect. Part of this process has been learning new methods of evidence synthesis procedures and analyzing how local government budgets are being distributed. (See Participatory Budgeting: Report of a Rapid Review of Evidence Syntheses, 2012-2022. Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/ywhj8 .)
From the CCS program, Dr. Raymer developed a better understanding of climate change efforts and the difference between adaptation (adapting to the effects of climate change) and mitigation (addressing the causes of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions). Additionally, she appreciates the CCS volunteers who encourage her whilst making climate change differences in their communities.
The climate reality is increasingly alarming, but Dr. Raymer says, whether it’s on a local or global scale, we can all make a difference in climate change. Sharing information and collaborating with one another has multiplier effects that can expand the impact of climate action and fosters a celebration of learning and preserving our natural environment and resources.
Read the full story (again!) here: https://climatestewards.cornell.edu/files/2024/10/Dr.Raymer_Spotlight.pdf
See the story on the Cornell Climate Stewards Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cornellclimatestewards