Through community-engaged research, Kendra Rentz found her path to fighting climate change

This article is republished with permission from the author at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

Studying climate change can be demoralizing work.

“Pretty bleak” is how Kendra Rentz T’25 described forecasting the global effects of extreme heat on human mortality.

“It was depressing to look at the results every single day, and seeing how many people would die from climate change,” said Rentz, an environmental sciences major.

But she soon discovered another approach to climate research. Through a course on ethics and environmental policy, Rentz learned how to connect with community members who were most likely to be impacted by climate change — and how to conduct research that could directly benefit them.

“I discovered my passion for working with communities directly, and how much more you can get done when you’re working at the grassroots level,” she said.

After taking a climate course with senior lecturer Alexander Glass during her first year at Duke, Rentz was inspired to major in environmental sciences. Seeking summer experiences in the field, she joined DukeEngage Brazil, a program directed by Luana Lima, a professor in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

That summer, DukeEngage Brazil offered students the opportunity to work at Itaipu Binacional Dam — the third largest hydroelectric dam in the world, which straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.

“Technically, we were living on the Brazil side, but every day when I went into work, I would work on the Paraguayan side, and my clock would change by an hour,” Rentz said.

She worked in the hydrology department with a group of Brazilian and Paraguayan engineers — forecasting how much water would enter the dam and how much energy it would generate.

“I was working on correlating various climate indices to natural inflow,” Rentz said.

“You can’t just correlate. You need to take into account various things — like the topography of the region and other local conditions that will affect the inflow.”

Though she gained a lot of coding experience, her time in Brazil wasn’t all work. She made lifelong friends with other DukeEngage students and Brazilians from Itaipu.

“It was one of the highlights of my Duke experience,” she said.

Back on campus, Rentz became one of the Nicholas School’s inaugural Climate Scholars. She started working with Professor Drew Shindell on emission reductions and extreme heat, which soon became her core research area.

In spring 2024, Rentz took “Ethical Dimensions of Environmental Policy,” a course taught by Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Fellow Kay Jowers. During a time when Rentz was feeling the emotional impact of projecting deaths from climate change, she was drawn to the course’s different approach. “And I heard great things about Dr. Jowers, so I really wanted to take it,” she said.

Each year, Jowers selects a different policy to study in a class-wide qualitative research project. This time, it was President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which directed 40% of climate investments toward disadvantaged communities.

“Using Duke as a case study, we were looking at how universities were engaging with Justice40 and how communities were responding to it,” Rentz said. She was part of a team that led focus groups with community organizations and analyzed the findings.

Rentz heard from community members about negative past experiences with researchers, who treated them more like objects of study than partners in a knowledge exchange.

Jowers modeled a different approach. “Instead of coming in with a research question already in mind, she goes in saying, ‘What do you guys need from us?’ Rentz said. “‘We have the tools and resources — how can we best do this?’

“It was really interesting to see that you can very easily do this ethically,” she added. “It got me thinking more about community-engaged research.”

“Why am I doing this? Why am I studying climate? At the end of the day, it’s to help solve the problem of climate change, which I think is the biggest problem of our generation and the most solvable problem of our generation.”

Kendra Rentz T’25

Rentz began to look for ways to combine her research on extreme heat with ethical community engagement.

“You have your research question, which is something you develop in collaboration with local people,” she said. “You’re also making sure you fairly compensate them and you’re giving them something that personally benefits them.”

That summer, Rentz joined a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at Arizona State University. Working with Professor Jennifer Vanos and graduate student Gisel Guzman, she spent three months going out into the community, testing participants’ personal heat exposure.

“Phoenix is extremely hot,” she said. “There are around 600 to 700 deaths every summer from extreme heat. It mainly affects the unhoused population and elderly people who are lower income.”

Rentz provided participants with information about cooling centers and hotlines, and later returned with deliverables showing them how their personal metrics compared to an average person’s susceptibility to heat exhaustion or stroke. Participants were compensated for the study.

“It was a great example of community-engaged research,” Rentz said. “And it was so fun. I loved talking to community members and hearing about their lives.”

For her senior thesis, Rentz decided to focus on heat exposure in Durham. Using the model developed by her collaborators at ASU, she calculated how people’s various physiological profiles affected their risk levels.

“My research is looking at maximum safe levels of activity for younger and older people,” she said. “I might be fine in the heat, but my grandmother definitely would not.”

Rentz also looked at how heat exposure differs across Durham. Disparities are apparent, especially in neighborhoods affected by redlining — a discriminatory practice of the Federal Housing Administration, which denied mortgages in Black communities in the early to mid-20th century.

“Those historical injustices are still present today,” Rentz said. “You can see a difference in heat exposure in those communities when you just take into account air temperature and humidity.”

She also hopes to integrate mean radiant temperature (MRT), using a data set created by UNC-Chapel Hill collaborators.

“Let’s say you’re standing on a giant asphalt parking lot at Walmart, and 200 meters over, there’s a green park,” Rentz said. “If you’re standing in the green park, it’s going to feel much cooler. But if you measured that with two thermometers, it could be the same exact air temperature.”

MRT helps create high-resolution estimates that can account for these differences, providing more accurate measures of communities’ heat stress.

When her study is finished, Rentz plans to share a plain language summary of her results with community members.

“I know that community organizations will continue to push for additional resources from the local government for extreme heat exposure, because it’s getting worse and worse in Durham,” she said.

As graduation approached, Rentz said she was thinking back on her first-year self and the moment she decided to major in environmental sciences — and how she’s developed her sense of purpose since.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked. “Why am I studying climate? At the end of the day, it’s to help solve the problem of climate change, which I think is the biggest problem of our generation and the most solvable problem of our generation.”

After receiving a National Science Foundation fellowship, Rentz chose to enroll in the Ph.D. program in Earth Systems and Climate Science at Arizona State University, where she plans to research the local impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable populations — and help communities adapt to the “new normal” of extreme heat.

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Sarah Rogers

Sarah Rogers is an Assistant Director for Communications at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University who loves to tell stories about people who are passionate about making the world a better place.