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Building upon its mission to have a real-world impact for people, communities and businesses, the University of Michigan (U-M) School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) today announced the launch of the SEAS Sustainability Clinic. Its goal: improve the ability of the City of Detroit and nonprofits serving the City to address the impacts of climate change on the natural and built environment, human health, and the city’s finances—while working to enhance sustainability policy and action.

The SEAS Sustainability Clinic is made possible through support from The Kresge Foundation, which has committed $1 million in funding over the next three years.

Jonathan T. Overpeck, Ph.D.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Kresge Foundation, which has a real understanding of the need for capacity and for institutions, such as ours, to help serve as problem solvers and bridge builders. As we begin this new chapter of resident engagement, I know that we will benefit from the Kresge legacy of community-driven collaboration,” said Jonathan Overpeck, the Samuel A. Graham Dean and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor of Environmental Education at SEAS.

The SEAS Sustainability Clinic is part of an overarching statewide SEAS initiative. Slated to launch in 2022, the statewide Michigan Sustainability Clinic will work across Michigan with the goal to support the vision that the Great Lakes State lead the nation in the implementation of 21st Century resilientinfrastructures that address climate impact, racial inequity, unemployment, and economic fallout from the global pandemic.

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The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) has launched and is continuing to develop the BuyDetroit online procurement portal. The overall goal of the procurement portal is to bring more Detroit-based, diverse, small businesses into the arena of procurement. In addition to the features on the portal which support procurement processes, the BuyDetroit portal will also contain an educational curriculum to prepare inexperienced suppliers to participate in the procurement process.

Our team’s work begins with the educational aspect of the BuyDetroit portal. Our team was tasked with designing the experience for the educational modules in the portal while considering the needs of users on both sides of the procurement process.

Before designing, our team conducted survey and interview research with small suppliers who will be the primary users of the educational modules as well as Buyers Council members who are helping fund the BuyDetroit portal and are invested in seeing suppliers learn and succeed. Next, our team conducted research on the platform on which the portal lives and therefore where the educational modules will live called Connect Space. This part of our research was imperative in understanding the constraints under which the educational module would be designed.

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Four UMSI seniors on the information analysis pathway are undertaking an ambitious project to help empower Michigan citizens through access to accurate COVID-19 data.

A year after the deadly strain of coronavirus entered the State of Michigan, policy and health experts have had to scale mountains of accumulating statistics. Data is being reported by the state and collected by third-party sources ranging from hospitals to media organizations. For everyday citizens, making sense of this deluge of information and understanding the discrepancies between each source can be overwhelming.

Kavya Pratapa, Lucas Benson, Zini Brace and Kelly Kacan are spending their final semesters at UMSI partnering with Data Driven Detroit (D3). The Detroit-based nonprofit is on a mission to “collect, analyze, interpret, and share high-quality data to drive informed decision making and increase data-driven outcomes,” according to their website.