A line of elephants walks across a wide, golden grassland beside a dirt track, under a sky of scattered clouds lit by a low sun.

A year later, the future of conservation takes shape at ASU with its partners

A year after ASU announced Conservation Futures at Climate Week NYC, the work is taking shape through partnerships that help determine what people learn, how they put that learning into practice and how those opportunities reach more people.

Header image: Elephants cross open grassland in southern Kenya's Tsavo region, where the Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association hosted some of the first interns placed through the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures. Photo by Orlando Cazarez.

September 22, 2026

By the numbers:

More than 30 Conservation Futures Academy courses developed in its first year
More than 1,500 enrollments in Academy courses
More than 13 courses co-built with Conservation International

Tuesday's round up

A year ago, ASU came to Climate Week NYC with an announcement. Today, we are back with partners and a year of work behind us.

This afternoon, Lukas Wenrick, senior director of learning innovations at ASU Learning Enterprise, joined Percy Summers, lead senior director for the partnership at Conservation International, and Seth Collins, co-executive director of Skill Up for Earth, at the Green Jobs Pavilion for a conversation about the skills green jobs require. Their session, "Closing the Green Skills Gap: Year One of the Conservation Futures Academy," focused on an approach ASU has spent the past year putting into practice: building learning with the organizations and people doing the work and making it accessible to people who need those skills now.

Collins opened by asking how many people in the room were looking for a job right now. Most of the audience was early in their careers, and the conversation stayed practical: which courses help you stand out, and which skills employers need.

Three speakers—Lukas Wenrick, Percy Summers, and Seth Collins—presenting a panel discussion on "Closing the green skills gap" in front of a audience seated around a table, with "Treehouse Lounge" and sustainability posters displayed in the background.

Photo above: Lukas Wenrick (ASU Learning Enterprise), Percy Summers (Conservation International), and Seth Collins (Skill Up for Earth) discuss "Closing the green skills gap: year one of the Conservation Futures Academy" at the Green Jobs Pavilion in Project Farmhouse, NYC.From the ground up

That conversation draws on a year of building. When ASU announced a $115 million investment from the Rob Walton Foundation at Climate Week last September, the gift established the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures and Conservation Futures Academy. Both were starting from the ground up.

A year later, Conservation Futures Academy has developed more than 30 courses and recorded more than 1,500 enrollments. The School of Conservation Futures has built its founding faculty. Starting in spring 2027, the school will offer a Bachelor of Science in conservation and three master's pathways. Read the degree announcement on ASU News.

Much of that work has been built with partners.

Conservation International connects learning and practice

Conservation International has helped shape Conservation Futures from the start. ASU and Conservation International have built 13 courses together, drawing on the organization's experience and expertise to help determine what practitioners need to know and be able to do.

That partnership also extends into the field.

This summer, Conservation International hosted a six-person ASU delegation in southern Kenya to learn from people working across the Tsavo, Amboseli and Chyulu landscapes.

There, the Taita Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association, which brings together 35 community conservancies and ranches, also hosted some of the first interns placed through the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures. Before arriving, the students completed four short courses Conservation Futures Academy developed with partners to prepare them for the field experience.

Eight students spent three months interning in the Tsavo region. The program brought together Kenyan and international students chosen for how their skills fit conservation work.

Watch the entire video series from the Tsavo internship.

Wenrick traveled with the delegation and wrote afterward about what the experience reinforced about ASU's role.

"Universities and external partners can contribute useful tools, learning opportunities, data and resources," Wenrick wrote. "But our role begins with listening and understanding what communities already know and what they identify as most important."

Read Wenrick's full reflection on the corridor and watch the related Tsavo internship video explaining what it takes to keep it open.

Partners help determine what learning looks like

That approach takes different forms with different partners.

A conversation with Nia Tero at Climate Week NYC in 2025 grew into a collaboration on a course focused on Indigenous Peoples' rights and the care of Mother Earth in Latin America and the Caribbean. Nia Tero shaped the substance of the course, which will be offered in English and Spanish with its first cohort starting in January 2027.

Skill Up for Earth brings another perspective, helping ASU think about how learning opportunities reach people who need new skills as their work and the conservation field change. Part of that is connecting job seekers with employers they wouldn't otherwise find. "A Google search will give you the same 10, 15, 20 organizations," Collins told the audience. "But how do you find the other 30 to a hundred to 300 who are actually really having challenges hiring because people aren't finding them?"

Together, those relationships are helping ASU build learning around what people need to do, drawing on the knowledge of organizations and communities already doing the work.

That is the model Wenrick, Summers and Collins discussed today at the Green Jobs Pavilion.

One year in, and still building

The academy's first year gives ASU and its partners something concrete to reflect on at Climate Week. It also shows how quickly the work is changing.

Wenrick pointed to how fast the work itself is changing. "You're going to require a set of skills that the conservation scientists 30, 40 years ago didn't have to learn," he told the room. "They didn't know how to fly a drone, but we're going to have to."

Summers made a related point about restoration during the session. "How can you do restoration if the ecosystem that was there now is not going to go back to where it was?" he asked.

During the Q&A, one audience member asked whether AI has become a generally accepted tool. Summers pointed to Foundations of AI for Conservation, a course Conservation International built with the academy. "It's something that we decided that we had to grab the bull by its horns," he said. The course starts with ethical use, and then learners apply AI to their own work in a capstone project, such as improving a project's monitoring system. For learners who want the technical side, the academy also offers Conservation Technology Innovations: AI, Drones and GIS, developed with Conservation International experts. You can find more courses in the full Conservation Futures Academy catalog.

That leaves open questions. Where are organizations still struggling to find people with the skills they need? What are practitioners being asked to do now that they were not prepared for earlier in their careers? Which skills can be taught through a course, and which require experience in the field? And how can learning reach more people while remaining grounded in the places and communities where conservation happens?

Those are not questions ASU can answer alone. That is why the conversations happening here this week matter to what comes next.

Tomorrow, we'll be at the Nature Hub, where ASU will join conversations about oceans and conservation and share what is next for the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures and several new programs from the Conservation Futures Academy.

See where to find ASU Conservation Futures throughout Climate Week NYC.

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