Environmental Health Sciences Talent Show Strikes a Chord

Usually celebrated for their scientific and educational achievements, Columbia Mailman faculty in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) showcased their creative side on a recent afternoon. A packed audience of students, staff, faculty, and friends celebrated the department’s inaugural EHS Bonanza as professors entertained with song, dance, humor, and storytelling.

The event kicked off with Robbie M. Parks, assistant professor, who performed two songs from his latest musical project. Next up, Professors Julie Herbstman and Lew Ziska, outfitted in matching t-shirts and sunglasses, debuted an AI-generated, Sabrina Carpenter-inspired song, “Ivy Apocalypse,” whose lyrics reference research by Ziska on the link between rising levels of CO2 and the proliferation of poison ivy. Sample lyric: Ivy Apocalypse, you know I told you so / Ivy Apocalypse, watch it grow, grow, grow.

One of several faculty dancers, Maya Deyssenroth, assistant professor in EHS, performed a Classical Indian Dance about a woman who coaxes her companion to accompany her to a beautiful garden. This idyllic setting can be seen as a stand-in for “our beautiful garden, our beautiful community, and all the work we do to safeguard our garden, including our local community and the broader Earth,” Deyssenroth said. That performance was followed by professors Alan Cohen and Norman Kleiman, who demonstrated contact improv, a dance style that involves continuous physical touch between dancers, using gravity, momentum, inertia, and friction to shape and inform each performer’s interactions. The event finale was a salsa performed by EHS Chair Ana Navas-Acien and Associate Research Scientist Luis Acosta, who danced to a song written by a Chilean ensemble to educate children about the environment.

Designed to welcome the incoming class of EHS graduate students and foster community, the EHS Bonanza was also an opportunity to launch their Giving Day fundraising campaign. So far, the department has raised several thousand dollars to provide research opportunities and support for students and postdoctoral scholars to attend scientific conferences and present their research. (Contribute toward the fundraising goal here.) The event was organized by Anastassia Amato-La Hoz, assistant to Navas-Acien, and emceed by Nina Kulacki, EHS director of academic programs.

“This was a collective effort and a really special event,” says Navas-Acien. “We were all dazzled by the performances and inspired by their creativity and the deep care it showed for our department, our field, and the environment we all live in.”