tUrn Week to Bring Climate Change Action and Awareness to Campus

Students look at a selection of fresh vegetables from the Forge Garden at the Good Market during tUrn Week in 2023. (Mako Watanabe/The Santa Clara)

From April 20 through April 26, Santa Clara University will hold the tUrn Climate Crisis Awareness and Action week on campus. Organized by child studies and theater professor Kristin Kusanovic along with 15 students from Santa Clara University, the week features 20 events and talks from a breadth of backgrounds, professions and cultures.

“We’re supposed to be preparing students for life and reality, and this is a very big aspect of our reality going forward,” said Kusanovic while speaking on the climate crisis.

The key goals of the week are centering vulnerable voices, advancing diversity, cultivating interdisciplinary awareness of the climate crisis, raising alarm and a productive sense of urgency, inspiring broader engagement, and guiding people toward more focused and informed action. These priorities have remained strong since its founding. 

Kusanovic approaches the week with the goal of not downplaying the climate crisis. 

“I’m trying to get tUrn week to be a place where things are not understated, not hidden, not swept under the rug, but the latest information is with us, and it’s very harsh information,” said Kusanovic. “Yeah, when you take it in, it’s just devastating, but I think if we don’t take it in, and we don’t start to learn how to process it, then we’re going to stay in a very shut off place, and then nothing will get done.”

These events allow disciplines such as arts, sciences, education, business, law, philosophy and psychology to all mix.

This year’s speakers include Santa Clara University professors, a hydrologist giving a Spanish language session about glaciers, and events such as the Laudato Si’ reading and an eco anxiety workshop.  

“These conversations aren’t really taught, things a little bit more beneath the surface, like I haven’t had a lot of classes, or just, I feel like you don’t really hear about this from the media,” said Hanna Tedla ’26, one of the interns at tUrn. 

They are also including some new events such as a collaboration with the University Villas RLC, and an activism panel.

This is also the first time tUrn week extends into the weekend, with events in Castle Rock State Park on both Saturday and Sunday. 

All tUrn week events are free and open to the public. According to Kusanovic, this past tUrn week there were about 250 people a day that attended. 

“I am excited for tUrn week this year because of all the eco-friendly, environmental justice, and overall environmentally informative talks and events,” said Emma Middleton ’28. “Last year I wasn’t super involved, but after picking up a sustainability minor and becoming more involved with Surfrider this year I am excited to see what tUrn week has to offer.”

Partly inspired by the large climate protests back in 2019, Kusanovic started tUrn back in 2019.

“In 2018 and ’19, kids were leaving school in every single continent and I was just very moved by that,” said Kusanovic. “I was moved by the fact that we’ve basically failed the children, and they’re terrified and they’re sad, and when all the children are terrified and sad, I believe society has failed.”

She was also inspired by Jeffrey Bennett, an astrophysicist who gave a physics lecture hosted by the University physics department. 

“He talked about how the basic science of the greenhouse gas is getting thicker around the Earth, blanketing the earth, preventing the sun’s heat from leaving,” said Kusanovic. “And it just struck me that there’s nothing to make that U turn down unless we all do something like it’s not going to go down. There’s nothing to slow it down. It’s going to get hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. And I just felt it so viscerally, and I could imagine it, and it was terrifying.”

There are 20 events spread across the week, to ensure no overlaps between speakers and events, and to give members of the Santa Clara University community an opportunity to attend a variety of events.

“If you have a free class period, there’s probably a headliner during that class period,”  said Kusanovic. “I think it’d be really cool if people look at their calendars and see when they don’t have a class, and then try to go to a turn headliner and just hang out with us.”