February 16, 2024
Sara Soderstrom, associate professor of environment and sustainability in the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability and director of the Program in the Environment, is one of five U-M faculty members who have been named Arthur F. Thurnau Professors in recognition of their extraordinary contributions to undergraduate education.
Soderstrom will hold the Thurnau title for the duration of her career at U-M and will receive $20,000 to support activities that further enhance her teaching.
The Board of Regents approved the Thurnau professors Feb. 15. The appointments are effective July 1.
To become a Thurnau professor, faculty members must demonstrate a strong commitment to teaching and learning, excellence and innovation in teaching, and dedication to working effectively with a diverse student body.
They also must have made an impact on students’ intellectual or artistic development and on their lives, and contributed to undergraduate education in ways that extend beyond the classroom, studio or lab.
A celebrated teacher and expert on corporations and environmental sustainability, Soderstrom challenges her students to find answers that will allow both businesses and the biosphere to thrive.
She developed several courses and mentored more than 160 students — as research assistants, on independent studies, for honors theses and for applied internship research — while simultaneously earning six different teaching awards.
One student described her teaching as “able to take a notoriously nebulous topic — sustainability — and create structure that was both concrete and provided space for creativity.”
She inaugurated the Erb Undergraduate Fellows Program in 2020, opening to undergraduates an initiative of the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability that has served master’s degree students for 25 years.