Julia Kim-Cohen
she/they • senior lecturer, University of Illinois Chicago • Chicago, IL
2024 Climate Wayfinding facilitator
“It’s no exaggeration to say that Climate Wayfinding was life-changing for me. Approaching climate engagement from the position of power and joy is an immensely more productive approach than the anxiety, grief, and anger I felt before.”
How do you teach hope as the world burns? As a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, Julia Kim-Cohen was dedicated to shaping young minds, but she worried about how to invoke future climate realities with her students. “How can I communicate the urgency of the climate crisis in a way that gets my students to engage with the problem rather than shutting down?”
Enter Climate Wayfinding, and a new way for Julia to navigate climate emotions with her students and peers. Inspired by All We Can Save, she sought out fresh approaches for teaching the psychology of climate engagement and joined the inaugural cohort of Climate Wayfinding facilitators at the Omega Institute in June 2024.
The experience transformed her view of what’s possible in climate education, opening her to how closely woven the topic is with every discipline. “Before Climate Wayfinding, I felt that my field and my role as a psychology educator were secondary to the ‘hard’ science of climate change,” Julia confesses. “In fact, I now see how any field and anybody can play a significant role in climate engagement.”
After integrating Climate Wayfinding into her undergraduate course, “Psychology and the Climate Crisis,” she’s noticed positive changes in her students’ engagement with the world—and their own futures. Most importantly, though, she sees the seeds of deep relationship and community being planted between them. “Several students have already made strong connections,” she reports, “which makes me very happy.”
Training as a Climate Wayfinding facilitator has brought Julia closer to her colleagues and her university. “I’ve been more willing to reach out to people on my campus to try to build the kind of climate community I experienced at Omega,” she shares. She’s met with the dean of her college to encourage more climate education in the curriculum and has shared Climate Wayfinding with her colleagues.
But the workshop didn’t just impact her professional life—it transformed her personally. “Climate Wayfinding allowed me to experience the best example of community building so that I can better foster those experiences for others,” Julia says. “It turned my grief into love, my rage into joy, and my anxiety into hope.”
