The Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education (YEAH) Network is a transdisciplinary, multi-institutional network that equips students with real-world experience of collaborative, evidence-based approaches to global environmental sustainability. In today’s students, we see agents of change for the future. The YEAH Network connects institutions of higher education from all over the globe to provide integrated knowledge to students that empowers them to address complex global environmental problems, ranging from pollinator decline and biodiversity loss to climate shifts and ecosystem transformations.
Our members are geographically and culturally diverse institutions that share a common desire to prepare and inspire undergraduate and graduate students to effectively analyze global environmental issues and contribute to policy solutions. Together, we recognize that a truly transdisciplinary approach to student training and professional development is necessary, and that it can be accomplished through a multi-institutional approach woven into the higher education experience.
The YEAH Network develops virtual classrooms at the undergraduate and graduate levels that provide environmental learning through structured and real-life experiences of international negotiations. Our modules impart knowledge that integrates science and international governance using the frameworks that guide international conversations, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Students work together in virtual, collaborative classrooms as teams with international and multicultural members whom they would not encounter at their home institutions.
Students and seasoned investigators from diverse backgrounds collaborate for a common purpose, giving them a sense of belonging, purposefulness, and continued motivation to achieve global goals. Students are introduced into the realms of policy and trained to engage actively in international collaborations tackling global environmental issues. They directly increase public scientific literacy by sharing their research at the annual COP meetings of the United Nations, at professional society meetings such as those of the Ecological Society of America, and in their local communities. YEAH participants are prepared to apply their learning across many career paths, whether scientific research, economics, business, academia, health, policy, or related fields.