The Toronto Climate Summer School (TCSS) is an intensive, six-week, full-credit undergraduate course (ENV465Y1) offered each May and June by the Toronto Climate Observatory and the School of the Environment. Open to students from any department or division, the TCSS addresses a pressing and unmet need for comprehensive climate pedagogy, emphasizing interdisciplinarity, applied impact, and climate justice.
How the course works
The course runs full-time, 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday. In the first three weeks, students take part in coursework, tutorials, workshops, and site visits while beginning work on faculty-sponsored research projects. In the second three weeks, they work on those projects full-time. Final projects are presented at a symposium organized by the School of the Environment and the Toronto Climate Observatory at the end of June.
Lectures cover topics crucial for understanding climate change in the local context, ranging from Toronto’s role as a settler colonial urban centre to the city’s mining and extraction complex, along with housing and food justice. Tutorials focus on concepts, learning integration, and skill development. Site visits give students the chance to learn directly from active local groups and organizations across the Greater Toronto Area.
Students leave with integrated physical and social science and humanities perspectives on climate change in Toronto, place-based knowledge, research skills and experience, and an awareness of the local sites, organizations, and campaigns working on climate justice in the city – as part of an engaged, interdisciplinary cohort learning to confront the climate crisis together.
Past cohorts
In the inaugural 2024 school, students worked on projects including water monitoring with Indigenous communities, climate modeling for the City of Toronto, and youth engagement in community-based climate action, and visited the City of Toronto’s Environment and Climate Division and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. Read more in Arts & Science News and in our recap of the 2025 school.
Faculty and community partners
Faculty and community partners are invited to take on mentor roles, supervising small-group research projects related to environmental and climate change. Mentors introduce students to the project in the first three weeks, then work with them as they carry out the research full-time in the second three weeks. It is an excellent opportunity to gain assistance from a small team of upper-year undergraduates on ongoing or new research while providing students with meaningful research experience. Experiential and community-engaged projects are prioritized. Mentors are expected to provide clear instructions and expectations, a minimum of a weekly check-in with students, and ongoing research instruction and mentorship. Researchers working on climate change in Toronto from any discipline or approach are encouraged to get involved.
Applying
Calls for student applications and for faculty and community mentors open each winter, with deadlines in mid-February and decisions by the end of the month. Announcements are posted in our news and newsletter.
For more details, contact Robert Soden at soden@cs.toronto.edu.