Blog Post #26

May 1, 2024

Faculty Fellows

In October 2023, the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) launched a new fellows program, working closely with Georgia Tech's Sustainability cluster of IRIs – the Strategic Energy Institute, the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, and the Renewable Bioproducts Institute – along with the Social Equity & Environmental Engineering Lab. The goal was to bring together faculty working on energy equity, community benefits, and environmental justice, and to give them the space to build real relationships with each other and with community partners.

Twenty-two Georgia Tech faculty and two external fellows joined the first cohort. Part one of the program ran from October 2023 through May 2024. The activities were built around three goals: getting fellows familiar with the mission and programs of local sustainability partners, helping them build relationships with those partners around shared research interests, and supporting relationship-building among the fellows themselves, especially across disciplines.

Each fellow also worked on an individual deliverable tied to their own research goals, as well as a group deliverable aimed at strengthening the community-engaged sustainability research ecosystem at Georgia Tech more broadly. Given how much value fellows found in the program, it was extended through December 2024, making the pilot roughly a full calendar year. Twenty of the original fellows chose to continue into the extension.

Learn more here.