Penn Climate Insights, a new website platform for sharing and acquiring trusted information about climate knowledge and related research, is now accessible to the entire Penn community.

Initiated and led by Andrew Hoffman, dean of Penn Vet, the platform was launched after a year of research and development, including surveys and focus groups from the Penn community conducted by Sam Nguyen, Penn Vet’s climate innovation coordinator. Climate Insights is a new tool designed to help educators access and integrate rigorous climate information contributed from Penn faculty and community experts into their teaching and learning experiences. It will also be a resource for the rest of the Penn community to increase climate engagement, literacy, and—its founders hope—take action.

Anyone with an active PennKey can access the site to explore the Insights Library of articles, recorded lectures, and slides; collections of insights are also available. Those with expertise, or co-authoring with experts, can also offer submissions. The insights—concise, accurate information modules about climate change impacts, adaptation, mitigation, and resilience—have intentionally been kept brief to facilitate easy use. Text articles are no longer than about 500 words. The limit on audio and video files is about 15 minutes. There will also be toolkits with materials to support educators in incorporating climate insights into their coursework.

On October 13, during Climate Week, Penn Climate Insights held a “ribbon-cutting” to preview and celebrate the platform’s official launch. The website is open to contributions, with the goal of 500 insights by the end of FY26. The team has begun inviting experts to contribute to the website, hoping for a strong community response.  

Dean Hoffman and early website supporters Katie Unger Baillie, director of Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII), and Sarah Kagan, professor of gerontological nursing, both of whom have already contributed information, will share their outlook for the new platform and why they believe it is needed.

Even before he thought about building a website, Dean Hoffman believed more education was key to climate agency and action. “My interest and the interest of our community in building education about climate and sustainability was not really backed by the availability of trusted knowledge, educational platforms, or toolkits for educators,” exploring climate education, said Dean Hoffman.

Research has shown that educators face significant barriers to environmental information due to siloed curricula, limited resources, and misinformation.

As research for the website, the Climate Insight founders administered a survey about climate and sustainability to faculty, staff, and students across Penn’s 12 schools. Ninety percent of its respondents said they seek out climate information. However, over a fifth reported a lack of accessible resources, and about as many said they lacked confidence in their climate knowledge.

The vast majority said they would use a ‘knowledge-sharing website created by the Penn community that offers searchable, peer-reviewed information on climate.’ That website is now Penn Climate Insights.