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The SPIKE Center is excited to introduce a new series: SPIKE Faculty Fellow Spotlights. Over the course of the year, we will sit down with our Faculty Fellows invested in this year’s theme of information integrity to discuss their ongoing research and efforts, both in and out of the classroom.��

Our first Faculty Fellow in the series is Professor Thomas G. Andrews. He is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for the American West. A specialist in environmental and social history in Colorado and the West, Andrews has been at CU �Ǹ�Թ� since 2011. As a returning SPIKE Faculty Fellow, he is invested in integrating sustainability into his classrooms.��

“Sustainability education is so critically important and I wanted to be involved in it because it helps give me hope,” said Dr. Andrews. “CU �Ǹ�Թ� can help educate undergraduates and graduate students, as well as the broader communities, about sustainability. It’s just so necessary for finding a way forward that can, hopefully, steer us clear of some of the existential threats that we’re steamrolling right towards.”

Since becoming a SPIKE Faculty Fellow last year, Dr. Andrews has been exposed to both resources and fellow professors who share his passion for sustainability. “It was cool to be around such smart, interesting people who had pretty similar values and commitments and were dedicated towards the same overall goal,” he said. “We [professors] have to learn things like this [information integrity] for us to be able to pass them down and impart them to students. It’s a key part of what we always need to be educating ourselves on and why.”

Raised in �Ǹ�Թ� by a librarian and a geologist, Dr. Andrews has been asking questions about the world around him since he was little, a trait that undoubtedly drew him to teaching and environmental history. Though sustainability takes many different forms in his classes and life, Dr. Andrews makes a point to always include it in virtually every course he teaches.��

In addition to participating in the SPIKE Center’s training for fifty faculty from across campus last May, he also made a point to share many of the resources he learned during his previous fellowship at SPIKE with his students.��

As a professor with more than twenty years of experience, Dr. Andrews has been in the classroom for many transitional periods, the latest one being the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into our lives and classrooms. As a sustainability fellow and a long-term professor, his opinions on AI are mixed.��

“AI is big and transformative and fast-moving. I feel like I have really struggled to find a coherent take on it all,” Andrews said. “I have a lot of doubts and fears about the whole enterprise, one of which being about where it’s pointing us. I’m kind of old school and it's much easier for me to see it leading the planet into some really dark places rather than to a just and sustainable future.”

The cover of Dr. Andrews' new book, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Contagion and the Fate of Reconstruction America.��

In addition to teaching his various courses at CU, Dr. Andrews is publishing a book this fall:��The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Contagion and the Fate of Reconstruction America.��In his book, Dr. Andrews discusses the 1872–1873 equine influenza outbreak and its impact on the United States during a time of extreme reliance on equine labor. The equine malady, which focused primarily on horses, donkeys, and mules, paralyzed the economy and upended everyday life. This animal disease event forced many Americans to adapt in ways that they did not think possible.

��“The book ends up using this unexpected lens of a huge animal contagion to try to better understand human society in the US during this time period,” said Andrews. “A lot of the concerns in the book are really rooted in the things I saw happening during COVID. Some chapters are less about the outbreak itself and more on what the outbreak helps us see, which were inspired by my efforts to understand what the relationship was between the George Floyd protests and the calls for racial justice that came to head in the summer of 2020.” His book will be released by the University of North Carolina Press on October 6th, 2026.��

The Great Horse Flu reflects the crossroads between the first two themes of the SPIKE Faculty Fellows. Andrews appreciated and enjoyed the 2025/2026 SPIKE faculty fellowship on environmental justice last spring, expressing his enthusiasm in his teaching. “What I really appreciated about last year’s work was that there were a lot of faculty who shared my interest in environmental justice and my concerns about the limitations of thinking about sustainability without attending to issues of justice and equality,” he said. “There’s always a danger of sustainability becoming a technocratic type of approach that’s removed from social and political struggle, so I really enjoyed getting to meet a lot of other faculty who have different expertise than I do in environmental justice. I enjoyed being able to deepen our understanding and interest in that approach to sustainability.”

The fellowship had a lasting impact on him,��so much so that he decided to apply again this year with the new focus: information integrity. His book resonates with these critical sustainability skills: reflecting on the intertwined role of social, economic, and ecological relations, as well as the need to do diligent research and apply critical scrutiny of a wide range of sources to uncover root causes and impacts of crises.

Professor Andrews is an extraordinary example of SPIKE Center’s��Faculty Fellows. His teaching, writing, and research relating to sustainability demonstrate how faculty and the SPIKE Center are working together to educate more students, faculty and the broader CU-�Ǹ�Թ� community about sustainability–both in the classroom and beyond.��