Penn State’s annual Colloquium on the Environment brings renowned sustainability champions to the university for in-depth dialogues and explorations with students, faculty and staff, alumni, and the general community. Offered since 2004, the Colloquium series was founded by the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE).

For our spring 2025 Colloquium, Penn State welcomed Eric Klinenberg, Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University and author most recently of the bestselling “2020: ONE CITY, SEVEN PEOPLE, AND THE YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED.” Klinenberg examined how the Covid pandemic explains so much of our recent history and our increasingly factionalized responses to key issues in public life. Using key insights from his sociological research, he offered examples of how we can move forward to find more productive and empathetic engagement as a society and of the power of becoming engaged in broader social networks to improving people’s health, happiness, and sense of purpose.

The 2025 Colloquium was co-sponsored by the Penn State Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and supported by the Student Initiated Fee at University Park.