Living and Learning in the “Green City”

New summer internship program immerses students in a German city that’s serious about sustainability

By Matt Gray

Freiburg, a city in Germany’s Black Forest, has been dubbed the “Green City” because of its extensive use of solar power—for everything from city hall to a new soccer stadium—and a raft of projects to create climate-neutral homes and buildings. On city streets, bicycles outnumber cars. It’s the perfect living laboratory for studying climate protection efforts in action.

This past summer, three Bryn Mawr students did just that, thanks to paid internships created through a partnership between Freiburg’s Innovation Academy and the College’s Career & Civic Engagement Center and Department of Environmental Studies. Innovation Academy organizes excursions and educational tours around the themes of innovation and sustainable development.

The internships grew out of the relationship Bryn Mawr built with Innovation Academy as part of the 360 program course titled Climate Change: Science & Politics. Since 2010, this signature program has enabled students to participate in a cluster of courses focused on common problems, themes, and experiences for the purposes of research and scholarship.

Professor Carol Hager, who co-edited Germany’s Energy Transition: A Comparative Perspective (2016), first reached out to Innovation Academy when planning a trip to Freiburg as part of the Climate 360 program in 2015—and they’ve been a steady partner ever since.

“Last fall, the Academy told us they wanted to pilot a summer sustainability internship with a few trusted schools, Bryn Mawr among them,” recalled Hager. “Thanks to Katie Krimmel and Jennifer Prudencio in the Career & Civic Engagement Center, we were able to get the internship set up for this summer.” Hager said she hopes to see the number of placements expand in the coming years.

According to Green City Times, Freiburg, Germany, has set goals to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2035 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

Meet the 2023 Interns

Clara Schilling ’24, neuroscience major, Innovation Academy intern, says she did something different every day: “I accompanied students on sustainability tours and took photos, gave presentations about the Academy to companies at an industrial park, wrote posts in German for the website, translated texts from German into English, and created educational materials.”
Nuha Mohammed ’25, chemistry major and Innovation Academy intern, seized the opportunity to improve her German language skills and learn more about sustainability: “Learning about sustainability endeavors can help promote research in the field and decrease our consumption of certain chemicals.”
Clara Grosse ’25, environmental studies major, interned at CarlSchurz-Haus/German-American Institute, a binational cultural center in Freiburg: “I did a lot of design work for posters, flyers, and T-shirts, which is something I really enjoy. I hope to find a career in sustainable design, so it was helpful to hone my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator skills.”