Colgate-Palmolive Sends Baruch College Climate Changemakers to the United Kingdom

April 7, 2023

A team of three students representing Baruch’s Heat Island Resiliency Project have been awarded $10,000 by the Colgate-Palmolive Company in order to travel to the United Kingdom and present their original research at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR), a two-day, in-person event to be held on April 5 and 6 at the University of Warwick.

 

At BCUR, which includes over 70 colleges from around the globe, the students will bring data—both quantitative and qualitative—that offers a close look at New York City’s most vulnerable–those in neighborhoods most effected by a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect–to the world’s stage.

 

Over the past two years, Nikala D’Aguiar, Jenny Ho, and Samia Alam, under the stewardship of Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman of the Psychology Department, have collected and collated data from several low-income, New York City neighborhoods including Bronx Council District 7, the neighborhood of Kingsbridge Heights, and Brooklyn Council District 17, the neighborhood of East Flatbush.

 

Together, after analyzing two years’ worth of statistics, they have created a detailed report that provides a real-time snapshot of these rarely showcased New York City communities, profiling in stark relief the ways that climate change is taking its toll. Taken together, their research shows that metropolitan areas, and particularly those occupied by people of color, are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the materials comprising human environments, lack of amenities such as greenspaces and cooling centers, and the obscurity of municipal communication networks.

 

“Once you’re in areas where there’s asphalt, concrete, and buildings that are heat absorbent with very few trees, that is, once you’re in a highly urbanized setting,” said Professor Engle-Friedman, “you’re in a place where you are really vulnerable to being baked.” The extensive research that these students have done shows as much, and seeks to get a handle on local communication networks with hopes to help keep the families that people these communities safe.

 

With the Colgate brand found in more homes than any other in the world, and, as a leader in corporate sustainability strategies and support, the company began their relationship with Baruch’s climate change community in the fall of 2022, sending three of their executives to address the Heat Island Resiliency Team. Together, Sukhdev Saini, Global Toothbrush Packaging Lead Manager, Cecilia Coates, Lead of Global Sustainability, Climate, and Water, and DJ D’Agostino, Global Environment, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Manager, gave these students a unique glimpse of both the opportunities and the challenges presented by the prospect of integrating sustainability practices into all aspects of a business on a global scale.

 

“These students have been doing such amazing work for so long and this is really a story of the kindness and collegiality of so many unsung people at Baruch that helped us get here,” Engle-Friedman stated.

The initial connection between the students and Colgate-Palmolive was made by Starr Career Center, and the Heat Island Resiliency Team was first given the opportunity to present their research, developing a poster session and an accompanying oral presentation, at the 2022 International Conference of Undergraduate Research after receiving funding from the Office of the Provost and the Baruch College Fund. It is this same evolving presentation that the students will now bring to the University of Warwick thanks to Colgate-Palmolive.

 

“Two of the three students have never been on an airplane,” Engle-Friedman mentioned. “So, this partnership with Colgate Palmolive is making a huge difference in their lives.” As with much of the climate conversation at CUNY, the impacts stretch beyond the individual students and to the disadvantaged communities from which they come. 

 

“CUNY students are much more likely than other New York City college students to stay in the city and become its leaders of tomorrow. For Colgate-Palmolive to help them is a real contribution to these communities,” Engle-Friedman noted. “Our students have that feeling of investment that you can’t manufacture.” Though Baruch’s Heat Island Resiliency Project is now Britain bound, in a way, they’re always on their way back home.