Matthew Burgess, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, an Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Economics, and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the inaugural Teaching Award winner. Burgess is an environmental scientist who believes in exposing students to a wide range of perspectives. He advocates for a bipartisan, truth-informed approach to climate change, saying, “any approach to addressing climate change that doesn’t pursue and follow the truth will fail. Any approach that is not bipartisan—nor gains broad public support—will fail in a democracy.”
He developed the course Envisioning Sustainable Economies, bridging concepts from macro-economics and ecological economics, which are rarely put in conversation with one another. In this course, Matt explicitly shared the importance of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement with his students; and, he developed a syllabus that explored tribalism, conflict, and inequality as it related to economics and the environment.
