Middlebury Environmental Science Professor to Deliver Circle Talk

Middlebury professor Jonathan Isham will deliver the spring Circle Talk scheduled for April 24, 2018. He will speak on how young people and their allies can help accelerate the goal of clean energy for all.  

Passionate about both climate change and youth advocacy, Mr. Isham teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Middlebury and served as its director from 2011-2014. In addition, Mr. Isham is also a professor for the Department of Economics and a co-founder of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE), receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland. He is also interested in spirituality, and teaches an ethics course.

History teacher Tommy Lamont knew Mr. Isham from their shared time together at both St. George’s School and Harvard University, and so invited him to speak to the community this spring. Mr. Lamont said, “We generally look for speakers not specific to a certain discipline… We’re looking for people who have broader perspectives to offer.” Mr. Isham, he said, fits the bill perfectly.

In an interview for The Circle Voice, Mr. Isham said he was drawn to economics, environmental sciences, and ethics for very different reasons, but is fascinated by how they intersect. He loves economics “because of its rigor within the social sciences,” environmental sciences because of the growing necessity for advocates “to sharpen their model of social change[GF1] ,” and social entrepreneurship because he has faith in its ability to bring about positive change. Social entrepreneurship, a term coined in the early 1970s, was concisely summarized by Mr. Lamont as “economics with conscience”. Online resources and Mr. Isham himself further describe social entrepreneurship as a branch of business where people purposefully design their ventures to both generate profit and further local or global change .

Mr. Isham firmly believes in the power of social entrepreneurship and the impact young adult voices can have. Through his own education and career, Mr. Isham said, “I have realized that we need to refine our models of social change – those say that emerged in the civil rights movement – for our times. This includes harnessing, when we can, the power of markets in the name of well-being and social justice[GF3] .”

The CSE that Mr. Isham co-founded at Middlebury College is a co-curricular center “dedicated to helping our students prepare for a life of meaning, purpose, and innovation.” The CSE provides students with fellowships, grant opportunities, and a speaker series, all of which are designed to encourage young adults to connect to, analyze, and engage with the world around them.

Between the CSE and his regular economics and environmental science courses, Mr. Isham says that he hopes to teach  his students empathy, analytical skills, teamwork, humility and deep listening. Mr. Lamont hopes that Mr. Isham can impart some of his knowledge onto Groton students, saying, “We hope students come away from Circle Talks sort of with a ‘Wow, I didn’t know that’ expression or ‘I’m glad I learned that.’ I like that he, like a lot of people in life, isn’t single-dimensional.”