Contact:
Kathy Bunting-Howarth, NYSG's Associate Director, E: keb264@cornell.edu, P: (607) 255-2832
Ithaca, NY, March 19, 2025 - New York Sea Grant has named Michael Brown as its Climate Stewards Outreach Coordinator. Brown comes to Sea Grant from Schuyler County Cornell Cooperative Extension, where he served as a Clean Energy Communities Coordinator for multiple counties in the Southern Tier. Brown has a terminal degree in Oceanography so it seems appropriate that he’s coming to Sea Grant in a position to support county extension educators.
At NYSG, Brown serves as a primary resource on climate science and climate solutions through developing, maintaining, and enhancing the curricula for the Cornell Climate Stewards program. Additionally, Michael supports educators in program delivery, evaluation, and reporting through maintaining and updating training materials, conducting annual “train-the-trainer sessions, and assisting with remote delivery of the program.
Cornell Cooperative Extension County Coordinators from across New York State learn the Cornell Climate Stewards curriculum during the 2022 “train the trainers” workshop in Ithaca. Credit: Kathy Bunting-Howarth
Last August, NYSG announced that in collaboration with Cornell University and Cornell Cooperative Extension, it had developed Cornell Climate Stewards — a 12-week program that teaches New York State volunteers about climate change, adaptation, and mitigation. At the completion of the program, the volunteers conduct local projects in their communities. Each Climate Steward commits to 40 volunteer hours to their local climate change-related project over the course of one year.
At the time, NYSG had trained CCE educators from 16 counties across New York State and co-instructed 2 cohorts of Cornell Climate Stewards. Between the 2021 and 2023 cohorts of Cornell Climate Stewards, we have reached and educated over 100 volunteer participants. The 2021 cohort has contributed over 550 hours towards volunteer climate change, mitigation, and adaptation projects for New York State.
Learn more about the Cornell Climate Stewards Program at our website: climatestewards.cornell.edu.
More Info: New York Sea Grant
Established in 1966, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Sea Grant College Program promotes the informed stewardship of coastal resources in 34 joint federal/state university-based programs in every U.S. coastal state (marine and Great Lakes) and Puerto Rico. The Sea Grant model has also inspired similar projects in the Pacific region, Korea and Indonesia.
Since 1971, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.
NYSG historically leverages on average a 3 to 6-fold return on each invested federal dollar, annually. We benefit from this, as these resources are invested in Sea Grant staff and their work in communities right here in New York.
Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.
New York Sea Grant, one of the largest of the state Sea Grant programs, is a cooperative program of the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University. The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.
For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org, follow us on social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and YouTube). NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which it publishes 2-3 times a year.