From the labs and classrooms of Brandeis to the small, rural villages in the Zanzibar region of Tanzania, Prof. Emeritus Bob Lange's (PHYS) life today looks quite different than during his 43 years teaching physics here. His days were once filled with meetings, lectures and grades. Now, he spends them working outdoors with local people to install more-efficient cooking stoves as well as solar panels for the roofs of their homes. These days, Lange heads his own nonprofit organization, the International Collaborative for Science, Education and the Environment, or the ICSEE. Lange retired from his position teaching physics full time to focus on the ICSEE, although he is still an adjunct professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. The ICSEE is run by Lange and a team of Tanzanians and graduate students from the Heller School, all of whom work to spread science education to underdeveloped communities while encouraging "sustainable community development focused on women and children, environmental protection and conservation, and the expansion of educational opportunity for traditionally under-served groups," according to its website. Lange started the ICSEE in 1992 and remains president of the organization, working out of Cambridge.

His initial goal of the ICSEE was to "raise money for projects in Africa." The ICSEE has since grown to include more regions of the world to promote science education. Lange has helped other environmental philanthropists fund their work from grants he acquired through the ICSEE as well.

For example, Dr. Dessma Williams, a former Heller School of Social Policy and Management professor who also served as the Grenadian ambassador to the United Nations, runs the ICSEE's Grenada Education and Development Project. ICSEE funding has helped William's project, which is "dedicated to partnering with rural communities to use education as a catalyst for individual and communal transformation in Grenada," according to the website.

Lange decided to focus his current project on bringing more-efficient stoves to communities in Tanzania, and more specifically to the Maasai, a tribe in Kenya and Tanzania. Lange chose Tanzania after falling in love with the country during his travels there, and he chose the Maasai after spending time in their communities and observing their daily living conditions. He decided it was necessary for Tanzanians to have cleaner stoves after experiencing the dark and smoky daily conditions of the Maasai's homes.

For the project, "local people contribute as much [money] as they can toward cost of stoves that will cut down on wood-fuel consumption, . carbon emissions . and will get smoke out of the house."

As a promise of collaboration to improve the villages' environmental conditions, the purchase of clean stoves earns families a solar panel for their home as a sort of trading system. Lange and his colleagues present those who have bought and installed the stoves with a solar-panel system for their thatched roofs. These solar-energy systems give the people "light and cell phone charging and battery charging," according to Lange.

Jerilyn Terry, an American graduate student in the Heller School who is pursuing a master's degree in Sustainable International Development, is working on her practicum assisting with the ICSEE in Monduli, Tanzania.

As a second-year SID student, Terry must complete her second-year project, which entails either "a professional-level practicum working with leading development organization" or an "advanced study . under the mentorship of a senior researcher at Brandeis." Terry chose to work with Lange and the ICSEE after her time as a student in Lange's class "Energy and Development" from fall 2009.

She described the living conditions she has observed and the harsh conditions associated with traditional stoves. In an e-mail to the Justice, she wrote, "It is akin to having a campfire in a home with no windows and closed doors."

The solar panels dramatically change the daily routines of the Maasai families. "I have observed a participating Maasai home during the evening hours before and after solar installation and I was amazed by the increased household activity the solar light enabled," Terry wrote. Now, instead of the large quantities they once needed for even a dim light inside their homes, Maasai families can work and read in a cleaner, brighter space.

In addition to the improvements in living conditions, Lange and the ICSEE have also focused their efforts in Tanzania on empowering women. Since women are responsible for most of the wood-gathering, cooking and stove maintenance, Lange believes that these "women should make [the stoves]." So, in each of the three villages of Zanzibar where the ICSEE is established, it has taught six women the engineering behind the stoves as well as the proper techniques for fixing stove damage. Maasai women love this role "because they're being treated with respect and given serious responsibilities," Lange said, implying that women in Tanzania do not always feel that they are trusted or respected within their communities.

As Lange progressed from teaching physics full-time at Brandeis to running a nonprofit, he says that the transition for him was quite natural. A self-described "typical active left-wing professor-activist," Lange said he had "always been interested in third-world issues." Lange explained that he has always been interested not only in physics, but also in science education for youth. In 1986, Lange took a sabbatical to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He returned to Tanzania in 1988 while still a full-time professor at Brandeis and began working on science education programs in Zanzibar that would later grow into the Zanzibar Science Camp. These trips convinced Lange that the conventional American classroom was no longer the place for him. "I said 'I'm through with telling people what to think. I just want to build things for the rest of my life,'" he said.

Lange expressed enthusiasm for his current lifestyle and said he loves the power and independence he is afforded by serving as his own boss. While he called foreign aid "a way of life for privileged people," he noted that the ICSEE's expenses come from maintaining projects and paying their native workers. Lange takes no salary from his work at ICSEE and does not pay other American or European employees, which he contrasted to larger nonprofits, many of which have "Europeans and Americans working in Africa making a fortune."

Lange and his colleagues built a model of their solar panels from Maasai outside of the Usdan Student Center during this past weekend, part of the German Embassy and the Center for German and European Studies' Climate Change Campus Week, a celebration of the CGES' efforts to promote "sustainability in Germany, Europe and the world" through "institutions, innovations and idealism," according to the center's website. CGES plans to present the newest developments in this field as well as ways in which globalization can be used for further sustainable economic development and has selected Lange's work as an example of sustainable economic development.

In making the jump from Brandeis all the way to Tanzania, Terry explained that energy use in any part of the world creates a global impact and warned, "It is important to support and participate in initiatives that decrease dependency on limited energy sources, such as wood and encourage use of renewable energy sources such as the sun." She continued, "All communities, whether in the United States or the Maasai in Tanzania, will be affected by climate change and natural resource depletion." Stretching across the globe, the ICSEE proves the impact individual choices have on the world around us.