Augustana University Finds Way to Offset Carbon Emissions From January Study Abroad
Augustana has made its January Interim (J-Term) study-abroad travel carbon neutral for the first time in university history, thanks to the support of generous donors and a decades-long relationship with a forest reserve in Guatemala.
“I think it’s not only the right thing to do to figure out how to offset our carbon emissions, but it’s also a strategic decision as we think about what’s important for the next generation of students who will come to AU,” said Director of International Programs & Enrollment Ben Iverson ‘04.
At Augustana, more than half of its students study away by the time they graduate — a majority of them doing so through AU faculty-led courses over J-Term. During J-Term 2023, 275 Augustana students traveled to nearly a dozen different countries as part of 13 courses — providing them with unique hands-on and immersive cultural experiences. However, these experiences come at a cost… to our planet.
“The next best thing (next to not flying at all) is trying to offset that carbon emission by supporting, encouraging, helping promote storage of that amount of carbon somewhere else by taking that carbon out of the air, and we already have a beautiful natural system that does that,” said Spencer. “If we want to go to a place that is the most efficient at doing that, it’s the tropical forests — with the tremendous amount of plant biomass found there. The plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, store it in plant biomass and release oxygen back into the atmosphere.”