Dean's Update

Happy Birthday Nicholas Friends! This year we celebrate 30 years of creating science and knowledge, cultivating environmental leaders, and making impact in the world. As I look ahead, I see 30 more years of scientific discovery and solutions for our future as we drive narratives of possibility for what we can achieve together.

Spring brings hope. This year, it also brings optimism that after the COVID pandemic finally recedes there will be once-in-a-generation opportunities to make significant climate progress, if we act when we have the chance.

Those who will help lead us through the cumulative crises we face today need the ability to listen, communicate, empathize, speak truthfully, collaborate, create transparency, fail and recover, and maintain a sense of humor. These, not unassailable authority, are what will lead us to solutions.

The 50th Anniversary of Earth Day should be a time of reflection and commitment for us all. I have called upon our faculty and staff to focus on three defining areas as we seek to have intentional impact with our science, our teaching and our outreach.

Those of us motivated by environmental concerns are often deeply invested in what I would refer to as the “crisis myth”—we have many problems over which we must watch.

There is growing agreement among the American public that climate change is real and that humans are likely causing it. Conditions are right for making great strides on climate, if we are strategic about it.