Graduating Senior Felicia Wang Leaves Impact Through Climate Cafe Programming

Felicia Wang (T ’25) is an artist and Mathematics major with a double minor in Computer Science and Political Science. Her career interests converge in climate policy, and she leaves behind something special at Duke: Climate Cafes. 

Climate Cafes are campus meetups where students can discuss themes around emerging issues of climate change. Bryan Koen the Assistant Director for Education & Experiential Learning at the Nicholas Institute, remembers, Wang discussing the need for students outside of the pre-professional career tracks in the energy industry or environmental science to be engaged with climate discussions. “What Felicia did was seek out the funding through the Office of Climate Sustainability to create the Climate Cafe’s infrastructure. She also relentlessly worked to create the themes for these events. She reached out to organizations on campus to secure participation from leadership. She created conversation prompts. She ordered event catering from minority owned businesses. There's a lot of fine details that go into creating community space” Koen said.

We sat down with Wang to ask her about Climate Cafes, the community spaces she has found at Duke, and her fondest memories at Duke and Durham.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What is one of your fondest memories of Duke? 

My fondest memories of Duke is “Project Earth.” I was one of the project directors for one of our orientation programs, and, through it, I got to meet a lot of awesome first-year students, as well as other undergraduates that were interested in climate sustainability. And so, this year for example, I talked to several first-years who were really into insects. We made this group chat called “COOL INSECTS,” in all caps, and whenever we saw a cool insect on campus we would take a photo and send it to each other. We would go on insect walks in the Duke Gardens together looking for cool insects.

Was there anything that surprised you about Duke?

I didn't realize before coming to Duke just how tight knit the community is and I think that’s partly because of the basketball culture. I love Duke basketball! I've gone to most of the games, and I even went down to San Antonio for the Final Four. I think it's a great way to bond with people, especially people you don't typically talk to.

I think the Experiential Orientation program is also really unique in creating the strong community foundation that I was surprised to find at Duke. Because of this community, I've been able to explore several of my different academic interests away from computer science — which I still do sometimes, but I now study math, which is really fun. I love going to the “math teas,” which are another community space where a lot of the math majors, grad students, professors and staff will come together and drink tea and eat snacks and talk about math together. I also got involved in the American Grand Strategy Program, which brings in speakers who talk about national security strategy.

You have also helped create a tight-knit community through your Climate Cafe programming, can you say more about how it works?

Each Climate Cafe has a different theme and a different set of partners or co-hosts so that we can target different groups across campus. I love collaborating with these different partners because I get to learn their perspectives on the climate crisis, how it's impacting them, as well as all the people in their community. When we're preparing for a climate cafe, I'll usually sit down with the co-host and talk about the theme. What are some things that we want to communicate in this climate cafe? How are we going to design the facilitation prompts? How are we going to design the grounding exercise? For example, a recent climate cafe was on long term climate induced disaster recovery and resilience. 

During your four years at Duke, what have you experienced in Durham?

I love Durham as a city! I could totally see myself living here in the future. It's so artsy, it's so loving, it's so welcoming, and it has so much history. I love all the murals around downtown. And I love the markets. I think the markets also really facilitate the Durham community — there’s the Farmers Market, the vintage markets and secondhand clothing markets, as well as art markets and Asian markets. I love talking to people there. I love learning about the history of Durham as a place in the civil rights movement and climate justice movements. 

Also the Scrap Exchange is the best thing ever because you can donate anything to the scrap exchange, and they'll break it down, and artists and other people can come get it. For Climate Cafes, I thrift all my sticky notes from the scrap exchange. I think that Durham has really great initiatives.