Ethan Coffel has built his research around one of the most consequential questions of our time: as the climate changes, what happens to the systems human society depends on?

For that work—and for the teaching and service that have made him one of Maxwell’s most distinctive junior faculty members—Coffel has been named this year’s recipient of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Teaching and Research, the school’s highest honor for untenured faculty.

Coffel will accept the award and speak at the Maxwell School's Graduate Convocation on Friday, May 8, at 9 a.m. in Hendricks Chapel.

The Moynihan Award has been presented annually since 1985, when it was established by then-U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, himself a former member of Maxwell's junior faculty from 1959 to 1961.

Coffel, assistant professor of geography and the environment, joined Maxwell in fall 2020 following a Neukom Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College and holds a Ph.D. in earth and environmental sciences from Columbia University. His research centers on a simple but urgent idea: human society depends on a stable climate, and as that stability erodes, the consequences reach into food systems, water supplies, energy grids and more. He uses global Earth system models alongside geospatial and socioeconomic data to understand how climate extremes will reshape the world, and what that means for the people living in it.

His current NSF-funded project, detailed in a recent Syracuse University News feature, examines not just how climate affects crops, but how crops affect the climate around them. Corn and soybean fields across the Midwest may be moderating local temperatures, buffering the very heat waves that threaten them, and Coffel is working to quantify how much, and whether that effect will hold as the world warms.

Since joining Maxwell, Coffel has published 14 peer-reviewed journal articles, including five as lead author, in some of the field’s most prestigious outlets, including Nature Climate Change and Nature Food. His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian and the BBC. He has received two National Science Foundation grants, awarded in 2021 and 2023, totaling $942,713.

Peng Gao, professor and chair of the department, nominated Coffel for the award.

“In his five years at Syracuse University, Dr. Coffel has distinguished himself as an exceptional and reflective educator,” Gao wrote. “He approaches course design and instruction with careful deliberation, continuously refining his methods and introducing innovative approaches to enhance the curriculum and foster student engagement.”

That reputation carries into the classroom. Coffel teaches two large-enrollment core courses, GEO 155: The Natural Environment and GEO 215: Global Environmental Change, and has developed three new courses expanding the department’s physical geography curriculum, including GEO 371: Climate Extremes and GEO 700: Seminar in Climate Science, a graduate-level course that draws students from earth science, geography and environmental engineering backgrounds alike.

Dean David M. Van Slyke praised Coffel’s contributions across all three pillars the award recognizes.

“Ethan exemplifies what the Moynihan Award was created to honor—a scholar whose research pushes the field forward, whose students leave his classroom genuinely changed, and whose commitment to this department goes well beyond what’s asked of someone at his stage,” Van Slyke said. “This is exactly the kind of recognition Ethan has earned, and we are proud to celebrate it with him.”