This week, WSU Skagit County Extension kicks off its second Climate Stewards course to promote literacy, science and action.
In 2021, Washington approved and passed the Climate Commitment Act. In response, Washington State University staff from every extension program, one for every county, met and decided to take real action towards climate solutions. The county that had room to implement such a program was that of Skagit County, and the Climate Stewards program was born with its first cohort graduating last year.
The next class of Climate Stewards kicked off this week. In 10 two-hour class sessions, students will hear presentations from guest speakers, receive access to course materials curated by Washington-based scientists, and walk away with a Climate Steward certificate. Beyond class time, they also attend 5-6 place-based tours around Skagit and Island counties.
When Alisa Terry of Mount Vernon went back to school as an adult, she didn’t expect to assist leading a climate course. As a public health student, she interned for Diane Smith, a WSU associate professor of food and consumer sciences last summer and quickly learned how public health is often based on social and environmental health.
“I wanted to make sure I was making a change and so education, especially as a certified health education specialist, is one of the best ways to help people move from ‘oh no’ to ‘here we go’,” Terry said.
Together, they launched the Climate Stewards program: students who are uniquely equipped to bring hope and expertise to their neighbors and communities through awareness about the inherent stressors of climate change on day-to-day life, as well as local sources of climate anxiety for the North Puget Sound community.
The inaugural session of Climate Stewards ran for three months in Fall 2025 with 14 students, based out of WSU’s Skagit County Extension facility. Students learned Washington-specific climate literacy tools and came away with adaptable skills that translate beyond environmental advocacy into diverse fields, including energy, project management and speech therapy.
With help from other scientists at the University of Washington and WSU, Smith and Terry adapted the program from its origins at the University of California, Davis, for an audience in the Skagit Valley, while ensuring its accessibility to global learners, WSU’s online platform.
The program has three pillars: climate literacy, climate science and climate action. Together, they work to build students into effective communicators who can speak confidently to audiences outside of the classroom or scientific community.
In a press release, Smith said that students “(gained) an understanding of the impacts, and (explored) mitigation and adaptation strategies to address climate change at the local level,” and that “the Climate Stewards program provides the tools, connections and confidence people need to lead in this space.”
The Anthropocene and the soil
For Bruce Lindsay, a retired soil scientist, the anxiety that younger students feel about climate science is an old companion. He recalls a class during his second master’s degree in the ‘90s where he was “laughed at with scorn by the class and the professor” for suggesting that “humans have had as much impact on the planet as any ice age.” He chuckled that later “some famous geologist came along and said the same thing, and he called it the Anthropocene.”
After 27 years of mapping soils for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lindsay said that the Climate Stewards program was particularly helpful in understanding climate adaptation on a local level. “It’s really been the last six years living here in Skagit County that I’ve really seen climate change kick in,” he noted, mentioning the 2021 heat dome and “bomb cyclones.”
“I’m encouraged that there are people who are actually interested in doing something about it and have capable skills to know how to do things,” he said. His capstone project in the class was the creation of a brochure about the psychology behind communication that included resources for social-emotional support and self-care.
Canaries in the mine
The connection between emotional resilience and hard climate science is especially apparent for Eleanor Wildermuth, a management information systems student who also volunteers with the National Park Service removing invasive English ivy near Mount Baker. She sees climate problems not as isolated data points, but as a complex web.
Wildermuth’s journey to the program was deeply personal. After the birth of her children, she spent several years unable to walk because of medical complications. Her recovery led her back to the mountains. While her studies in cybersecurity provided some stability during a challenging time, she felt disconnected from her community. This class and her volunteering were a way for her to reconnect.
For her capstone, she transformed technically complex information about bioindicators, species strongly affected by local environmental conditions, into an accessible and easy-to-learn image matching memory game. She used photos of Chinook salmon and peeper frogs to illustrate the invisible connections in her own backyard in Spanaway. She’s one of WSU’s online global learning students, and while making it to the Skagit Valley for the field trips was a 4–8 hour round trip challenge, she enjoyed the locations they visited as a class.
While on one such field trip, she noticed Costco staff unloading pallets of expired produce at a Skagit soil and compost facility. Later, at a professional development opportunity, she spoke with Costco’s IT staff about the backend systems that make waste diversions like composting possible for a company as large as Costco.
A just transition
Systems thinking isn’t new to other students in the class. Oluoch Were has worked to provide renewable energy alternatives to communities in Nairobi, Kenya, for 11 years. He’s a local representative for K&M Advisors and leads project planning and coordination for solar energy projects in Kenya. He joined the class for a better understanding of American climate policy.
For Were, the program’s extensive data was incredible. With over 50 years of climate data, he sees the connection between the recent atmospheric rivers and flooding in Washington, and the deadly floods that have recently killed dozens in Kenya. Were hopes to bring what he describes as a “just transition” to the upcoming second cohort of Climate Stewards.
“I’ve seen solar changing lives,” said Were. He’ll be their inaugural speaker and plans to tell the class about his experience visiting village and seeing the opportunity a solar-powered lamp can bring to a child. In villages Were visited, seven children in ten experience pain and can even develop cancer from smoky kerosene lamps used to study at night.
To guide such a wide variety of final projects, Smith and Terry used a Japanese concept of “ikigai,” or “finding your purpose,” said Smith. By encouraging students to find the intersection between personal passion and course content, the instructors aimed for students to walk away with a deeper understanding of what it could mean to be a Climate Steward.
— By Alex Meacham
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Commentary: Working toward an affordable, climate-resilient future,” Oct. 17, 2025
• “Islanders help shape county climate resilience plan,” Oct. 6, 2025
• “PNW Climate Week kicks off with climate solutions,” July 17, 2025
• “Eminent climate scientist named director of Whale Museum,” March 31, 2025