Program Highlights
Program Dates
May 20 – July 1, 2023
Faculty Director
Dr. Greg Gangi, Associate Director for Clean Technology and Innovation; Teaching Professor, UNC Institute for the Environment
In his teaching, Greg Gangi conveys a complex understanding of environmental challenges and explores innovative solutions. His teaching extends beyond the classroom as he leads students to many countries to learn firsthand about global change and innovation. He has organized and led several Burch Field Research Seminars to Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, South Korea, and China.
Gangi received various awards at UNC and a national award for his advising and mentoring of students. In 2014, he was awarded the NACADA Award for Outstanding Faculty Advisor. He received the Tanner Award for Teaching Excellence in 2010 and the University recognized him with the Massey Award for Outstanding Service in 2018.
In addition to his teaching, Gangi works to create networks in North Carolina between industry, academia, and government to help strengthen innovation. He also seeks to foster international networks that connect companies in the Clean Tech Sector with North Carolina. He defines clean technology broadly to include companies in clean energy, smart cities, water technologies, innovation to make transportation more sustainable, building technologies, and solutions that improve food security and agricultural sustainability. He is the lead organizer of the annual UNC Clean Tech Summit, which represents the largest event of its kind in the southeastern region of the United States.
Program Highlights
Today, Europe and its many nations leads the world in providing innovations that can build a more sustainable world order. Over the course of six weeks, this program will visit and study a few of those nations to explore how Europe contributed to the foundation of unsustainable practices and what it is doing now to counteract environmental dilemmas through city planning, green finance, renewable energy, sustainable food systems, and other areas of clean technology and policy. This program will provide a unique opportunity to learn firsthand where the future of sustainability lies.
We will spend time in various parts of Germany. Here, the program will visit one of the most important energy research institutes and a model for sustainability around the world and will explore energy, urban planning, waste management outside of landfilling, the power of co-ops, and more.
The program will travel to the Netherlands to learn about how it can be a global model in protecting coastal cities from rising sea levels, how the country is making transportation less carbon intensive, and to learn the future of food systems.
Finally, we will visit London to compare past ways of life to present day innovations by using areas like multimodal transportation and circular economy as a lens.
The Burch Seminar on Sustainability will convey a complex understanding of environmental challenges and will shine a light on a sustainable future as well as career paths for today’s students to become agents of change.
