The SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts will offer SPIKE-NEST Graduate Fellowships in 2026
The Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) has partnered with the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education (SPIKE Center) to support both undergraduate and graduate students to work on collaborative, sustainability-focused projects bridging the arts and sciences.
This project seeks to develop collaborative and interdisciplinary explorations of sustainability. Each awarded group will consist of cross-disciplinary small teams of graduate student collaborators that welcome and mentor an undergraduate student who will work on a media project alongside the team, resulting in a broadly-defined media project for public exhibition on campus focusing on sustainability. Example projects may include: public installations, performances, time-based or moving-image based works, sonic or audio compositions, or any other arts forms that would be within practice-based research.
Since 2017, NEST has supported over 80 graduate students, facilitating art-science exhibitions across the state, featuring new research that has manifested in film, sculpture, music, painting, video, virtual reality, and all manner of live performance, including poetry, theater, and dance. Projects have been presented at scientific conferences, in science journals, and yielded quantitative data in multiple dissertations. In 2026, NEST joins forces with SPIKE to engage more students and to think creatively about sustainability in cross-disciplinary work at CU Boulder.
The SPIKE Center formed in Fall 2025 to assist in the implementation of Chancellor Schwartz’s vision for sustainability at CU Boulder in the sphere of education. The SPIKE Center works to facilitate a shared future of sustainability education at the campus and support its realization.
“Graduate students never fail to create imaginative new methods for approaching society’s biggest problems,” said Erin Espelie, co-Founder of the NEST Studio for the Arts. “This partnership with the SPIKE Center will empower more students to explore the intersection of the arts and sustainability sciences, creating new ways to work across disciplines.”
“At the SPIKE Center we seek to support sustainability education pursuits from all academic approaches,” said Max Boykoff, Faculty Executive Director of the SPIKE Center. “Artistic performance and exhibitions play a crucial role in shaping the popular consciousness around sustainability, and we are delighted to partner with the NEST Studio on this project.”
“The SPIKE-NEST partnership reflects CU Boulder’s belief that powerful sustainability solutions emerge when artists and scientists create together,” noted CU Boulder Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock. “By supporting these summer fellows, we are investing in bold, cross-disciplinary thinking that will help shape a more resilient and imaginative future”.
The deadline for NEST-SPIKE summer 2026 proposals is March 23rd, 2026. Send proposals to nest@colorado.edu with the subject line: Summer Fellowship Application.