Paper 5944 Changing Climates @ Colorado State: It’s Everybody’s Business

With the help of faculty from all eight colleges, twenty-seven departments, and numerous other entities on and off the Colorado State University campus, this education and outreach initiative is based on the premises that climate change is everybody’s business and that everyone has something to offer in meeting its challenges. Beginning in 2007, CC@CSU has organized some 120 talks to audiences totaling some 6,000, helping inform the student body and community and catalyzing relationships among faculty and researchers across campus. It has offered communication coaching to scientists (and others) who want to translate their expertise for the public. And it has developed a multidisciplinary website (http://changingclimates.colostate.edu) with over 450 annotated entries, all college-level content, primer-level clarity, on topics that include climate science and ecology, economics and emotions, ethics and policy, communication and activism, paleoclimate and human history, and much more. This presentation will address the basic questions of why, who, how, what, for whom, and so what, concluding with some of the key lessons learned about communicating across disciplinary boundaries on this important subject.