Your gift can support…

• Students-scholarships, internships, travel
• New innovative curricula
• Faculty
• Enriching Special Events and Opportunities
• Research, Leadership Initiatives, Program Support
• Facilities and equipment

Students Tuition - Most students have unmet financial need, and scholarships for tuition help offset the debt most will incur to secure the education they need to enter this field.

Internships - Pre-career experience is essential for graduate students and allows their academic learning to be grounded in a place and in practice. The mentoring gained from working with an experienced professional is invaluable and often leads to employment offers or leads. Many internship positions do not cover the cost of travel, housing, and living expenses, and a fund for such modest support would be valuable.

Travel Support - Students are often invited to participate in professional settings and conference panels, or to make presentations on their research-participation is valuable for their development but is an additional expense above and beyond their tuition that puts a real strain on students. Landscape architecture students' in particular can greatly enhance their education by visiting highly regarded projects or sites. Friends of the School have contributed to funds making some education-related student travel possible. There is a need to greatly expand this resource.

New Innovative Curricula

New Innovative Curricula - Both new and enhanced curricula are needed, especially to connect disciplines and practice if the environment is to be understood and managed in a sustainable way. The need is to effectively bridge such areas as business, environmental science, public health, technologies, and law. Environmental challenges are complex, dynamic and global. And the pace of change is accelerating. Resources are needed to create, pilot, and refine a curriculum which educates the leaders of the 21st century.

Faculty

Professorships - Faculty leadership in new areas and endowed professorships are crucial to anchor and lead new collaborations as well as to ground the core disciplines of the School. Such positions attract distinguished academic leaders and the students who will work with and learn from them. We have been exceptionally fortunate in the last six years to receive gifts making possible the Theodore Roosevelt Professor, the McGraw Professor, the Wege Professor, the Dow Professor, and the Holcim Professor.

Enriching Special Events and Opportunities

Enriching Special Events and Opportunities - The spice of an education is gained from having access to guests who join us for limited periods of time in the classrooms, in the studios, and in public presentations and discussions. Such guests bring contrary or alternative points of view leading to debate and reflection; they add insight from international experience; or they bring the perspective of a practitioner. Bringing distinguished visitors to campus is a costly, but invaluable endeavor.

Field-Based Courses, Labs and Information Technology

Field-Based Courses - An education about the environment is, in part, best learned in the field. Some lessons can only be experienced and learned there. But costs are higher for field-based education, and funds to reduce the cost differential would ensure such valuable instruction continues to be available to all students.

Labs and Information Technology - Data from laboratory analysis can become the knowledge needed to manage and make informed decisions about sustainable use. Laboratories where sophisticated physical and chemical analyses can be done reliably and in volume are essential in the School. Spatial analysis of attributes which can be geographically referenced is increasingly used for scholarship and for management applications. All such analysis, measurement and display technologies depend on instrumentation which requires periodic maintenance and upgrades to remain at the leading edge of research and teaching.

Research, Leadership Initiatives and Program Support

The School provides leadership in areas which require collaboration and synthesis of traditional bodies of knowledge. These areas, which we term Initiatives, are of necessity interdisciplinary and focused on large-scale problems and challenges. Defining the problem is essential; imaging the solutions and providing academic leadership is our challenge.

Erb Environmental Management Institute and the Corporate Environmental Management Program

Achieving sustainability requires a much closer linkage of business management with environmental science and resource management. It is daunting, and it is imperative. In ways never before attempted, corporations will be accountable for economic performance, environmental conditions and social attributes. This requires an educational curriculum, an agenda of scholarly excellence, and innovative outreach and collaborative programs. The stakeholders include public corporations, the public-sector, and non-profit organizations. Core business skills and environmental science must be synthesized and applied in the emerging dynamic, global economy. Please visit the Corporate Environmental Management Program web site for more information.

Environmental Justice

The burden of environmental contamination and pollution is not equally distributed. Some areas and populations, particularly people of color and low-income communities, have been disproportionately impacted by toxic and hazardous waste disposal. Understanding why this happens is crucial, and new methods of collaboration must be developed to redress the harm, restore human and environmental health, allow sustainable development to proceed, and develop policies to prevent these inequities from reoccurring. Please visit the Environmental Justice Program web site for more information.

Ecosystem Management

We seek to provide leadership in reinventing natural resource management for the challenges of the 21st Century. Natural resource management is at a cross-roads. Serious problems-ecological, economic, decision-making, and social-demand new scientific understanding, updated management strategies, and better ways for people to interact to address and solve these problems. Please visit the Ecosystem Management Initiative web site for more information.

Sustainable Systems

Technology is a pivotal aspect of sustainability. Understanding how technology and a systems approach can help create and tune models and metrics for knowing and achieving sustainability is the goal of the Center for Sustainable Systems. The earth has been altered on a global scale by human activity. The CSS examines material and energy flows related to industrial and natural processes from a holistic life-cycle perspective. Quantitative and complex assessments, with partner-firms and agencies, using life-cycle frameworks are emphasized through applied research with a focus on creating new innovative sustainable processes and systems. Please visit the Center for Sustainable Systems web site for more information.

Facilities

Greening of Dana - The "Greening of Dana" is a $25 million dollar renovation that will result a building that makes a statement - a building where environmental principles are not only taught, but upheld and demonstrated to the community. The project promotes sustainability, reduced negative health impacts and now the building serves as a laboratory and educational center for ecological themes. The renovated S.T. Dana Building will balances two critical facets: the building will be a comfortable place to learn and work, and will simultaneously demonstrate state-of-the-art environmentally conscious design. This building teaches environmental sensitivity, respect and awareness through its design and resource management. It demonstrates the potential effectiveness of these principles, and how transferable they are to other building situations.