MEETING THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE: THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

A report of the Environmental Programs Enhancement Committee

February 2000

Executive Summary

Perhaps the greatest challenge now facing humanity is how to continue to improve the quality of life without doing irreparable damage to the life support system that sustains all life and human society. Universities have played, and must continue to play, a central role in generating the knowledge and training the leaders necessary to meet this challenge. But universities change very slowly and most, including the University of Georgia, are not well organized to meet the rapidly changing and highly interdisciplinary environmental problems faced by society. Solving big problems without generating worse ones will require not only more science and technology, but also greatly increased cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration among the sciences, humanities, and environmental policy fields.

To remain a major contributor to environmental knowledge and problem-solving, the University of Georgia must re-tool its faculty, re-invigorate its research and service programs, and re-invent its undergraduate and graduate teaching programs. Spurred to action by President Michael Adams, in 1999 the University created an Environmental Program Enhancement Committee and charged the committee to find ways to enhance the environmental programs and opportunities offered by the University. After 10 months of study, and much debate and deliberation, the Committee now recommends the University of Georgia create a new College of the Environment.

The College of the Environment will administer a small number of academic units and will work with other colleges to promote environmental programs in a larger number of affiliated departments. The academic and affiliated units of the College will focus on four broad, interrelated areas: 1) ecology, including human ecology, 2) earth and marine sciences, 3) environmental health, and 4) environmental design and urban planning. A central part of the new College will be an innovative, interdisciplinary Academy of Environmental Studies that will allow faculty from all parts of the University to participate in the new College without severing their current college affiliations. The Academy will encourage the formation of cross-collegiate, interdisciplinary teams of faculty to design and implement new courses and degree programs. The Academy will provide seed grants for interdisciplinary research and foster the creation of Areas of Excellence in research, teaching, and service.

The College of the Environment will also create three new campus-wide centers and institutes focused on the service mission of the University. The Environmental Leadership Center will identify and train environmental leaders and decision makers. The Center for River Basin Science and Policy will encourage and coordinate research and policy-analysis at the landscape scale of river basins. The Eugene P. Odum Institute for Advanced Ecological Studies will be a place for contemplative thought and study devoted to ecological synthesis and incorporating ecological knowledge into environmental decision-making.

The College of the Environment will not only be a new college, but also a new kind of college. The hallmark of the new College will be the flexibility that allows it to adapt quickly to emerging opportunities and new environmental challenges. Although we propose a number of new programs that will require relatively long-term funding commitments, such as Endowed Chairs in Areas of Excellence, most of the funding for the new College will be for short-term projects, innovative teaching, postdoctoral and graduate fellowships, and student internships. The new College will stimulate and nourish cross-disciplinary environmental scholarship and encourage students and faculty to work together across department and college boundaries. The new College will serve as a campus-wide clearinghouse, providing information to students about environmental programs throughout the University. The new College will seek to inform the public, train environmental leaders, and educate decision- and policy-makers.

The College of the Environment and its new programs cannot be implemented without significant new resources. The College will require a major new building, a significant number of new faculty positions including new endowed chairs, and substantial new funding for its innovative programs. However, once implemented these innovations will propel the University, already renowned in the environmental sciences, into a national and international leadership position as the preeminent environmental university of the 21st century.

The Environmental Challenge

A great many of the key problems that challenge human society are fundamentally environmental in nature. These include the burgeoning human population, rapidly evolving diseases, and the unsustainable depletion of the natural resources and biological capital of the Earth. The fundamental environmental challenge is how to continue to improve the quality of life while simultaneously protecting the life support system that sustains human society and all life. Despite growth in our scientific understanding of the environment, huge knowledge gaps and uncertainties remain, and public policy and economic decision-making on environmental issues lag far behind existing knowledge. Environmental problems cut across disciplinary boundaries and span multiple scales of organization, from DNA and cells, to the behavior of individuals and populations, to the dynamics of natural and human-dominated ecosystems, to the biosphere and whole-earth system. Solutions to these complex environmental problems will require breaking down traditional barriers between disciplines and finding more effective ways of linking basic research findings with the needs of applied environmental science, technology, and policy-making.

A host of complex environmental issues are likely to dominate the geopolitical, economic, and scientific agendas of the Nation and the world in the 21st century, and many of these will require universities to retool their research, teaching, and outreach capabilities. A sampling of critical environmental issues universities must help address are:

Human ecology, population, and demography: What is the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth? How do historical, cultural, political, evolutionary, and ecological forces interact to explain variation in human fertility, and how can unsustainable rates of population increase be avoided?

Sustainable development and use of natural resources: How do we price environmental values and natural resources to include the full environmental and social costs of human activities? How can we ensure the sustainability of agriculture and soils?

Environmental design and restoration: How do we build sustainable cities and environmentally friendly industries? How do we restore degraded ecosystems?

Environmental justice and ethics: How do we ensure that no segment of society carries an undue burden of environmental costs? How do we address inequities in access to and consumption of natural resources while respecting individual rights and democratic traditions?

Environmental leadership and education: How do we increase the environmental literacy of our citizens, and how do we train the environmental leaders of tomorrow?

Biology of organisms in natural and human-made ecosystems: What are the ecological requirements of organisms, and how do human alterations of natural environments affect their ecology and evolution? How do we control the emerging diseases and invasive species that threaten humanity and agricultural crops?

Conservation of biological and cultural diversity: How do we ensure that our biological and cultural heritage is available for future generations? Global change and ecosystem functioning: What are the key processes maintaining the Earth's life support system, and how are human activities altering these processes? What are the key scientific uncertainties, and how do we incorporate both scientific information and uncertainty into environmental practice and policy?

Reinventing the University of Georgia to Meet the Challenge

Universities have made enormous contributions to the understanding of and solutions to environmental issues. However, most universities, including the University of Georgia, are not organized optimally to meet the challenge of the complex, interdisciplinary problems we now face. Universities must reinvent themselves to stimulate more effective communication, research, and education among students and faculty across disciplinary boundaries. Scientists and engineers must know more about human nature and environmental policy, and legal experts, humanists, and policy analysts must know more about science. The University of Georgia must become much more adaptable and flexible and be able to evolve deliberately, building with both administrative and programmatic flexibility to allow needed mid-course corrections and to take advantage of unanticipated intellectual and educational opportunities as they arise.

The University of Georgia Environmental Initiative was launched by President Michael Adams in his 1999 "State of the University" address. President Adams challenged the University to maintain its teaching vitality and relevance for students by continuing to evolve new "courses, majors, and programs which serve their changing academic needs." President Adams also stated that he would "like to see us consider the establishment of a College of Ecology and Environmental Science." In response to President Adams' speech, Provost Karen Holbrook appointed the Environmental Programs Enhancement Committee and charged the Committee to find new ways "to enhance the ecological/environmental programs and opportunities offered by the University."

The Committee studied the current environmental programs offered by the University and the national and international trends in environmental funding and opportunities. The Committee held five open, campus-wide forums to obtain faculty, student, and administrative input into its deliberations, and to receive comments on its preliminary findings and recommendations. The committee drew the following four conclusions:

1) There is growing public awareness of pressing environmental problems and increasing demand on universities to provide leadership in the search for lasting solutions to environmental problems;

2) State and federal agencies, business and industry, and private foundations are becoming increasingly aware of the need to address environmental issues and are providing substantially increased funding to do so.

3) There is a growing job market for students who are well trained in traditional academic disciplines but who are also prepared for interdisciplinary work and work at the science-policy interface; and

4) The University of Georgia has a number of outstanding, nationally-ranked environmental programs, currently scattered throughout the University; which can be connected and re-vitalized to become more effective and more responsive to new environmental opportunities and challenges.

Taken together, the above findings constitute a strategic opportunity for the University of Georgia to consolidate and improve its environmental programs and to position itself to become the leading environmental university in the 21st century. Based on these findings, the Environmental Programs Enhancement Committee has developed a series of recommendations that will allow the University to become an entrepreneurial hotbed of cross-disciplinary research, service, and teaching. Yet the University must do this while remaining true to its core mission and continuing to emphasize its current strengths. To ensure that the University both remains faithful to its mission and takes advantage of this strategic opportunity to develop new strengths, the Committee recommends that the University commission an external review of the EPEC recommendations, including their potential impact on both the existing units and programs and the overall vitality of environmental programs at the University.

One long-standing strength of environmental programs at the University of Georgia is the very permeable boundaries between its academic disciplines and departments. A second strength is the wide-spread incorporation of environmental curricula, research programs, and service activities in many departments and colleges. These traditions of permeability, breadth, and communication must be energized, strengthened, and expanded in order to foster increased dialogue and collaboration among the diverse disciplines that are relevant to understanding and solving the great environmental challenges of the 21st century. The University must build on its considerable existing strengths in environmental science and technology and forge linkages among the sciences and environmental law, design, history, ethics, and policy. These linkages will, in turn, enable the University to train a new generation of environmental leaders who are far better schooled in the science-policy interface, a new generation of scientists who are far better prepared for cross-disciplinary research, and a new generation of educators in many disciplines who incorporate environmental ideas and concepts into their courses.

The Committee considered a large number of models for possible reorganization of the University's environmental programs. Among the extreme models considered, but rejected, were doing nothing at all, and moving all environmental programs into a single new college. Many, if not all, departments and colleges need strong environmental components and faculty with environmental interests and expertise. After much deliberation, the Committee focused on two proposals: a new, stand-alone College with its own core faculty and departments, and a cross-campus Academy whose faculty would remain in the respective home academic units but work together to establish a campus-wide environmental curriculum and new cross-cutting research and service programs. In the end, the Committee recognized there is much merit in both the College and Academy models, and the current proposal combines the best features of both.

A New Kind of College

We propose the creation of a new College of the Environment at the University of Georgia. The College of the Environment will not only be a new college but also a new kind of college. We propose an open, flexible, and adaptive college structure with both core faculty and programs administered within the College and a university-wide mandate to work with other academic units to promote excellence in environmental studies throughout the University. From its inception, the new College will be designed to break down barriers to cross-campus interactions and to foster interdisciplinary research and teaching. To this end, the new College will administer a campus-wide Academy of Environmental Studies, whose Faculty of Environmental Studies will be open to all UGA faculty members interested in environmental issues. The new College will have a flexible budget and adaptive programs that will allow it to respond rapidly to newly emerging environmental problems and opportunities. The College will have a critical mass of its own faculty and academic programs, but it will also support faculty and programs in academic units not directly administered by the College. The Dean of the College will be explicitly evaluated on the basis of his or her performance in promoting excellence in environmental programs throughout the University, and not just in those units reporting directly to the Dean.

The full organizational structure of the proposed new College is provided in Appendix 1. In brief, an Office of the Dean will have overall responsibility for the administration of the College and a mandate to promote environmental excellence throughout the University. An external Board of Advisors, appointed by the Provost, and an elected College Council, representing students, staff, and faculty, will advise the Dean. The Dean's Office will include a Development Officer who will actively raise funds on behalf of the College, a Director of Service and Outreach, and an Office of Student Services for advising, internships, and job placement. Three essential branches of the proposed new College are: a) an Academy of Environmental Studies which is home to the campus-wide Faculty of Environmental Studies and a broad array of interdisciplinary faculty interest groups and Areas of Excellence, b) Academic and Affiliated Units of the College, which consists of departments or schools administered by the College of the Environment or those jointly administered by more than one college, and c) a number of campus-wide Centers and Institutes.

Courses and Degree Programs. The new College will offer a variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees, including both professional and academic degree tracks. The lower division undergraduate program for students not in professional degree programs will be embedded in the liberal arts. These students will fulfill most of their lower division liberal arts requirements in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The new College will offer a comprehensive set of upper division courses for its own majors, including courses appropriate to accreditation in professional degree programs, but students will also be actively encouraged to take relevant upper division courses from any other unit of the University. The College of the Environment will also have responsibility for providing courses for undergraduates in other colleges, both in environmental literacy and for majors in the biological sciences. The College Curriculum Committee will actively promote the cross-listing of courses with other academic units and will work to reduce barriers to students in one college receiving credit for courses taken in another college.

The Academy of Environmental Studies

The Academy of Environmental Studies will be one of the principal tools of the new College for reaching across department and college lines and promoting interdisciplinary interactions. The Director of the Academy of Environmental Studies will also serve as the Chair of the campus-wide Faculty of Environmental Studies. The Director/Chair will be provided sufficient funds to "buy time" of faculty to plan and initiate new courses and degree programs, to offer competitive "seed grants" for interdisciplinary research, to foster the creation of interdisciplinary faculty interest groups, and to promote the development of "Areas of Excellence" in environmental areas where UGA might become a national or international leader. The Committee recommends that the University aggressively seek endowment funds to support the programs and activities of the Academy.

The Faculty of Environmental Studies will be open to all members of the University community who have professional interests in the environment. Because many instructional and research opportunities are at the interfaces between traditional academic disciplines, a particular effort will be made to encourage interactions among and between environmental scientists, social scientists, and humanists. This new Faculty of Environmental Studies will offer courses, degrees, and certificates in environmental areas not adequately covered by degrees in existing schools and departments. The Faculty of Environmental Studies will also help to coordinate environmental research and service programs across department, school, and college lines. Among the responsibilities of this faculty will be the following:

a) Development of a Campus-wide Environmental Curriculum. The Faculty of Environmental Sciences will comprehensively review all existing environmental courses, certificates, and degree offerings and take action to streamline those offerings, to identify redundancies and gaps in the current course offerings, and to reduce the redundancies and fill the gaps. This will be done in conjunction with an analysis of enrollment trends and job opportunities and with an eye to expanding instructional opportunities in those areas where student demand is the greatest. Based on these analyses, the Faculty of Environmental Studies will propose new courses, certificates, and degrees, particularly in highly interdisciplinary areas such as environmental journalism, environmental education, environmental policy, and urban and regional planning. It will also establish courses and workshops specifically designed to increase both the understanding of environmental science by students and faculty in law and policy fields, and the understanding of environmental policy by science students and faculty.

b) Coordination of the Environmental Literacy Requirement. The University currently has a requirement that all of its graduates be environmentally literate and offers a variety of courses to achieve this goal. There is, however, no evaluation of the effectiveness of these courses at meeting the overall goal of environmental literacy for our students and no coordination or review of the content of the current course offerings. The Faculty of Environmental Studies will be responsible for reviewing the environmental literacy courses on an annual basis, developing a survey instrument to ascertain the effectiveness of the requirement, and convening the instructors in the environmental literacy courses to seek consensus on a set of common requirements for course content.

c) Graduate Fellowships. A hallmark of a great university is a very strong graduate program. Graduate students are at the heart of the research and teaching enterprise of the university, and they will play a central role in the success of the University of Georgia's transformation into the leading environmental university of the 21st century. We propose a total of at least 30 new graduate fellowships, in addition to those attached to new faculty endowed chairs (see below). These fellowships will be administered by the campus-wide Faculty of Environmental Studies, competitively awarded to outstanding environmental graduate students in any department or college of the University, and funded at a level that allows the University to compete for the very best graduate students nationally.

d) Competitive Environmental Seed Grants Program. The competitive seed grants fund will be established to facilitate innovative interdisciplinary investigation of environmental problems. Seed grants will be targeted to areas of inquiry with high prospects of attracting outside funding, will require collaboration of 3 or more faculty members from 2 or more different academic units (including investigators from other universities where appropriate), and will provide funding for no more than 3 years. A portion of the funds will be targeted specifically toward supporting interdisciplinary graduate students and postdoctoral students working across department and college boundaries. We propose a target of $1M per year funding for this program, anticipating that most grants will be at a level of $100K per year and that 8 to 12 such grants will be funded at any one time.

e) Annual Student Environmental Symposium. Hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students participate in research projects at UGA every year and for the most part receive little recognition for their work. Furthermore, students in one department or school are unlikely to know about projects in other departments or schools, even when the students are working on closely related projects. We propose an annual environmental research symposium, with oral and poster presentations and significant cash prizes, that is open to students from all parts of the University.

f) Environmental Theme Dormitory. The University is currently planning new dormitories to house increased numbers of students on campus. The environmental theme dormitory will be open to any undergraduate or graduate student with an interest in the environment, but preference will be given to those students who major or minor in an environmental degree program. Students will not only benefit from the learning environment provided by daily interactions with students in other environmental programs with different perspectives, but also will also learn by being actively involved in environmental decisions regarding dormitory life.

Interdisciplinary Faculty Interest Groups and "Areas of Excellence"

The Director of the Academy will encourage formation and development of interdisciplinary Faculty Interest Groups. The organizational chart in Appendix 1 lists some of the interest groups that will be promoted, but the number and composition of the groups will be determined by the participating faculty. Each faculty group will be focused on a different subject area and dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research, service, and/or instruction in that subject area. For the most part, these will not be designed as permanent faculty groups, rather the groups will form and dissolve depending on the interests of the faculty and the success of the groups. Several sources of funding will be available to foster interdisciplinary activities by the Faculty Interest Groups. The Academy will provide funds to buy time and services of faculty members to teach specific courses and/or plan new degree programs. The groups can also compete for interdisciplinary seed research grants through the Competitive Environmental Seed Grants Program.

Depending on the availability of funding, a Faculty Interest Group can also compete for designation as an "Area of Excellence," which will include funding for endowed faculty chairs. While Areas of Excellence involve longer-term funding commitments than other Faculty Interest Groups, they will not be permanent, and when endowed faculty retire or otherwise leave the University, the funds will go back into a common pool and may be allocated to other purposes. We propose an aggressive endowment campaign to raise funds for five or more "Areas of Excellence" including funding for two or more endowed chairs in each area. Endowed professors will be appointed in departments across the campus, with no special preference given to the academic and affiliated units of the new College. Also, approximately half will be recruited externally, and the remainder will go to endow existing faculty positions, thus freeing up salary for approximately 10-12 junior faculty lines. We recommend an endowment of $3M per chair to provide for salary and for funds for at least two new graduate assistantships associated with each endowed chair.

The Areas of Excellence will be chosen both to build on existing strengths and to be in areas of increased public concern and student demand. The proposed areas will fall into one of two categories: 1) those areas in which UGA already has nationally and internationally recognized programs and expertise, and with additional support can expect to be among the top five programs nationally; and 2) those areas for which UGA is not recognized yet as a national leader, but in which the University has some strength scattered across department and college lines, and for which there are significant new national funding initiatives and increased demand and employment opportunities for well trained graduates. The selection of Areas of Excellence will be based on a competition with proposals submitted by the participating faculty. The proposals will be reviewed by a panel of experts to be appointed by the Provost and to include distinguished professionals from outside the University. Although the final designation of Areas of Excellence must await review by the panel appointed by the Provost, we offer the following two examples to illustrate how the program will work and how the program will build linkages between academic units:

Area of Excellence in Biological Diversity and Population Biology: The University of Georgia already has internationally recognized strength in population and evolutionary ecology and a successful interdisciplinary graduate degree program in Conservation Biology. Two endowed chairs in the Conservation of Biological Diversity might be offered to distinguished existing faculty members, freeing 3 or 4 junior positions to be recruited from outside the University in systematics, evolution, or behavioral ecology. Current faculty offered endowed chairs may assume split appointments between their current home college and the College of the Environment, and the junior faculty may hold appointments in any appropriate college. Additionally one or more of the new faculty members would, if appropriate, serve as a part-time curator in the UGA Museum of Natural History.

Area of Excellence in Environmental Ethics. Environmental ethics is fundamental to sound environmental decision making as well as scholarship, and instruction in environmental ethics is envisioned as a core requirement for students in the College of the Environment. The University of Georgia is already recognized for the excellence of its interdisciplinary Environmental Ethics Program. UGA has the largest environmental ethics program in the world with over 40 affiliated faculty from many schools, colleges, and departments, and thus it provides an excellent model of the type of interdisciplinary interactions the new College will promote. Two endowed chairs, one in Environmental Ethics and one in Environmental Justice, would support this Area of Excellence. One chair would be appointed in the Department of Philosophy and the other, a chair in Environmental Justice, would be a joint appointment between the new College and the Law School. We also propose the development of a certificate program in Environmental Justice and a student scholarship fund targeted for low-income students, especially those from urban and other areas heavily impacted by pollution and other environmental problems.

Academic and Affiliated Units of the College

Although environmental programs are widely distributed in units throughout the University, in most cases only a handful of faculty in each unit identify themselves as environmental professionals. In a few cases, however, all or almost all of the faculty in an existing department work directly in the environmental arena. We propose that such environmentally-focused departments be invited to formally affiliate with the new College in one of several ways. In no case do we recommend that a department be required to affiliate with the new College against the will of its faculty.

In a few cases there may be little compelling reason for a department to maintain its existing college affiliation, and the department might leave its current college and join the College of the Environment outright. In most cases, however, a more appropriate arrangement will be for the existing department to remain intact in its current home college but to develop a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the new College specifying the responsibilities of the individuals, departments, and colleges involved in joint programs and activities. Relationships between existing departments and colleges and the new College can range from simple coordination and cooperation of research, teaching, and service activities to, in some cases, actual joint administration of the unit by two colleges. As appropriate, the MOUs will also include guidelines for tenure and promotion decisions, and provide details of how teaching credit, cross-listing of courses, instructional costs, overhead returns, benefits, indirect costs, etc. will be handled.

In cases of joint administration, departments will remain intact, with all of the department members continuing to report to the same department head even though positions in the department are funded through two different colleges. Such a departments will have clearly delineated responsibilities to both colleges, and the department head will report to different deans for different activities of the department. There are precedents for this arrangement at UGA, and it is common at some universities such as Cornell, where faculty members often speak of being "college blind," meaning that a department operates as a single unit and students in the department are typically unaware of the fact that faculty EFTs are split between colleges. An example of how such joint administration of a department would work is given in Appendix 1.

We propose that the School of Environmental Design and the Institute of Ecology be wholly administered through the new College. This alliance makes good sense in terms of our goal of linking basic scientific research to the solution of environmental problems. Although the Institute of Ecology does have a service program and the School of Environmental Design does have faculty heavily engaged in research, the Institute of Ecology is mostly recognized for its basic research in ecology, while the School of Environmental Design is largely known for design and the application of scientific information developed in other disciplines. The School of Environmental Design and the Institute of Ecology will retain their identities as separate academic units, but will coordinate their curricula and report to the same dean.

We also propose that the following academic and research units be invited to become formally affiliated, in one of several ways, with the new College: the Departments of Marine Sciences, Geology, and Anthropology from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Environmental Health Science and Crop and Soil Science from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory from the Office of the Vice President for Research. This plan does not preclude the possibility that other academic units might at a future time affiliate in some way with the new College, but all such affiliations will need to be acceptable to all departments and colleges involved, and administrative details of the affiliation will need to be spelled out in a MOU signed by all deans and department heads involved.

We propose that the University actively seek additional endowment funds to enhance programs in the academic and affiliated units of the College. Such funds will be made available through the Office of the Dean to build initiatives in four broad areas: 1) ecology, including human ecology, 2) earth and marine sciences, 3) environmental health, and 4) environmental design and urban planning. The faculty in the academic and affiliated units will work together to plan new degree programs and areas of research and service emphasis and, as appropriate, will ask faculty from other departments and colleges to participate in the new activities.

The initiative in Human Ecology will focus on human demography, the demographic transition, and the cultural, historical, and political dimensions of environmental issues. The initiative in Earth and Marine Sciences will focus on global change and build on existing strengths in biogeochemistry, soil science, and aquatic ecology. The initiative in Environmental Health will focus on emerging diseases and public health concerns related to pollution and toxins in the environment, and will include participation of the existing campus-wide Program in Toxicology. The initiative in Environmental Design and Urban Planning will focus on providing service and outreach to rapidly growing communities in Georgia and elsewhere. The strategic plan of the School of Environmental Design already calls for the development of degree programs in urban planning and design and the hiring of several new faculty members to implement this program. This program, and the other initiatives listed above, will be funded through the new College if endowment or other funds are secured.

Plans for implementation of the initiatives originating in the academic and affiliated units will be subject to peer review and evaluation by the same external review board as discussed above for the Areas of Excellence. Funding recommendations will be made by the panel to the Dean of the College of the Environment.

New University-wide Centers and Institutes

Centers and institutes are particularly appropriate for outreach and policy-related programs that need to be closely coordinated with the academic and research mission of a college but whose faculty and staff are more oriented to community outreach than to academic pursuits. Although additional centers and institutes may be appropriate in the future, at this time we propose only those for which we have already identified likely sources of outside endowment and/or programmatic funds. For example, discussions have been held with the J. W. Fanning Institute for Leadership and Community Development about a new Environmental Leadership Center to be jointly administered between the Fanning Institute and the College of the Environment, and there are indications that private funds can be raised to support this initiative. Likewise, a proposal has already been written for a campus-wide River Basin Studies and Policy Center, and funding sources are already available for some of the projects of the Center. The Odum Institute for Advanced Studies is proposed both because of the interest of a number of faculty in promoting ecological synthesis and its incorporation into environmental policy and because of the likelihood of securing funding for an institute named after Professor Odum.

Centers and institutes administered by the College of the Environment will be viewed as intermediate-term commitments and funded for 5 years at a time, with a mandatory review at the end of year 3 of the 5-year term. Faculty associated with the centers and institutes will be tenured in academic departments, and most of the funding through the centers and institutes will be short-term commitments to specific projects, so that unproductive centers and institutes can be phased out and their funding reallocated to new needs. Proposals for new centers and institutes will be submitted to the Provost and University Council for campus-wide review. Brief descriptions of the three proposed centers and institutes are provided in Appendix 1.

Adequate Space for Teaching and Research Programs

One of the greatest impediments to the advancement of the environmental programs at the University of Georgia is the lack of adequate space. Research is conducted in overcrowded and outdated space, and class enrollments are severely limited by the lack of sufficient classroom and laboratory space. A new building is essential for providing a focal point for environmental programs at UGA. This building needs to house academic units of the College of the Environment, plus provide a significant number of research labs, classrooms, and teaching laboratories, that can be used by other academic units. We recommend a building of at least 240,000 square feet designed to accommodate upwards of 100 faculty offices and laboratories plus a wide array of classroom, conference, and meeting spaces. The building should be identified as the place to go for information on the University's environmental programs, for academic counseling and job placement services in environmental areas, and for examples of teaching and research that relate to environmental studies. The building will also house the Environmental Ethics Program, the Environmental Leadership Center, the Odum Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Center for River Basin Science and Policy.

A building that houses environmental programs should itself reflect the best environmental values and principles. We are committed to constructing a "green" building that reflects state-of-the-art approaches for using recycled materials, achieving energy efficiency, and capturing storm water runoff in pond catchment basins. Furthermore, to make this building a useful "laboratory" for the building industry, we propose equipping the building with instruments that provide a continual record of total energy use and costs. Because the downside of achieving energy conservation can be decreased air quality, we also propose distributing instruments throughout the building to monitor air quality and make this information readily available to building residents. We hope this building will become known as a model of green architecture and will be frequently visited and imitated by builders and designers.

An additional feature of the new building will be a state-of the art computing facility that will serve as the hub of an environmental information network. This network will be a major repository for course materials and information about faculty, students, and student groups and activities. The network will also be a major site for data storage, research analyses and reports, and science-policy syntheses. A staff of programmers and database managers will facilitate the use of the facility by both faculty and students from throughout the University and by the public.

Because of severe space limitations for both research and teaching, we recommend that the new building for environmental studies be high on the University's capital request to the Board of Regents. This building should be built regardless of whether or not any of the other EPEC proposals are implemented and therefore is not included in the budget discussed below.

Budget for Environmental Excellence

Few of the Committee recommendations can be accomplished without significant expense. Some of the recommendations, such as a Faculty of Environmental Studies, Coordination of the Environmental Literacy Requirement, and an Annual Student Environmental Symposium, could be accomplished with modest internal reallocation of funds. However, the recommendations are only worth implementing if they can be done well, and some cannot be done well without a very substantial financial investment. We recommend that the major recommendations, such as a new College, not be implemented unless there are substantial new funds from external sources. A preliminary estimate of the cost of implementing all of the new programs and activities recommended in this proposal, exclusive of the cost of new construction, is approximately $8M per year or, equivalently, $160M in endowment funds. We recommend two primary sources of new operating and programmatic funds as outlined below.

"Line Item" for Environment. This year the University secured the Regent's approval for a $3M+ line item budget to support a Biomedical Initiative. We recommend that the University make a similar request in next year's budget, targeted for new environmental programs. We recommend at least $2M annually to initiate the 'Areas of Excellence' and 'Competitive Environmental Research Grants' activities of the Academy of Environmental Studies. We also recommend $1M for "fixed costs" of a new College such as administration, furniture, building maintenance, and set-up funds for new faculty.

Aggressive Endowment Campaign. "Improving environmental quality" and "excellence in education" are both popular themes with foundations and private donors. We recommend an aggressive external fundraising campaign aimed at establishing a minimum of $100M in endowment. The income from this endowment will be used to establish the new College, including supplementing the line item funds for 'Areas of Excellence' in the Academy, funding initiatives in the academic and affiliated units, and establishing of the proposed centers and institutes.

Flexibility, Adaptability, and Commitment

The College of the Environment will be a new kind of College because of its unprecedented openness, flexibility, and adaptability. Unlike most colleges which tend to look internally and to protect their own interests, the College of the Environment will be designed from the beginning to look externally and to promote excellence wherever it is found. The majority of the endowment funds secured for the new College will be available for campus-wide programs and will be used to foster creativity and innovation throughout the University. The budget of the new College will be flexible and allow the College to respond to new opportunities and challenges. Unlike most colleges, where upwards of 90% of all funds are devoted to fixed, long-term commitments, we envision the College of the Environment devoting only about 1/3 of its endowment funds to long-term commitments such as faculty salaries. The remaining 2/3 will be used for student support and shorter-term research and service projects and can be quickly redirected as needed.

The College of the Environment will be committed to breaking down barriers between academic disciplines and to linking sound research to the solution of real-world problems. Much of the funding provided to the new College will be used to build bridges between academic units and to promote interdisciplinary research and teaching. The College will develop world-class research programs recognized for their academic excellence. At the same time, equal emphasis will be given to synthesizing environmental knowledge and making information available to policy- and decision-makers. More than anything else, the College of the Environment will be devoted to meeting the fundamental environmental challenge of improving the quality of life on Earth without destroying the life support system which sustains human life and society.

Appendix 1. Appendix on Administrative Details

Office of the Dean. The Dean of the College of the Environment will be advised by an external Board of Advisors and an elected College Council. The Board of Advisors will be appointed by the Provost and consist of nationally prominent scientists, academics, and other leaders with expertise and interests in the environment. The Board of Advisors will advise the Dean on general policy issues, fund raising, and the allocation of endowment funds. The College Council will consists of elected representatives of faculty, staff, and students. Among the standing committees of the Council will be a Curriculum Committee charged with coordinating the curriculum within the College of the Environment and working with other colleges and the University Council to coordinate curriculum between colleges.

Student Services. Student services will be housed in the new building which hopefully will come to be known as the place to go for information about environmental programs on campus. An Office of Advisement will coordinate undergraduate advising, and services of the office will be available to students with environmental interest, regardless of whether or not they are enrolled in the College of the Environment. This Office will be responsible for ensuring that students are following an acceptable program of study. The Office will also host workshops each year for faculty to improve their role as advisors.

Internships provide undergraduate and graduate students with important employment related experience. Opportunities for internships will be provided through various branches of the new College, including the academic and affiliated units, the Environmental Education Program, the Environmental Leadership Center, and the River Basin Science and Policy Center. Once a history of successful internships is established with private firms, non-government organizations, and public agencies, employment prospects in desirable areas will greatly increase. In order to make sure that internships are developed to the fullest extent possible, we propose establishing an Office of Internships and Job Placement which will have the primary responsibility for developing internship opportunities and maintaining relationships with potential employers. As is the case now, interns will receive university credit for their experience.

The Office of Internships and Job Placement will also be responsible for developing relationships with potential employers beyond the contacts provided by the internship program. Each year the Office will host an Environmental Jobs Fair, which will bring in representatives from potential employers. The Office will also provide workshops and advice to students to help them prepare resumes and improve interviewing skills. Each year, the Office will compile the results of questionnaires and conversations with potential employers to ascertain the critical skills valued by employers. This information will be made available to faculty advisors during the annual advising workshops. Information from potential employers about desirable skills will also provide guidance to faculty about the need to develop new courses.

Course Listings. As part of the understanding with affiliated units, there must be a mechanism by which environmental courses and curricula can be designed with a simple prefix with the understanding that course credit for participating will accrue to their home units regardless of the prefix. Likewise, course prefixes should not limit the ability of students to receive appropriate credit for the course in their major. The judgment should be based on informational content of the course rather than prefix and who gets credit for the teaching.

Affiliated Departments. A key to the success of the College of the Environment is securing sufficient new funds to allow the establishment of the new College without harming existing environmental programs essential to other units not joining the new College. Under the plan proposed here, the faculty in the School of Environmental Design and Institute of Ecology will come into the new College in intact units, causing little disruption of existing programs. Affiliated departments will retain their current college affiliations while still participating actively in the programs of the new College. For example, if the Department of Environmental Health Science chose to be jointly administered, and if this were agreed to by the deans of both colleges involved, the College of the Environment would provide funds for new faculty members to join the existing department and to buy portions of the time of existing faculty members of the department. As a result, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) would have no net loss of EFTs, but the Department of Environmental Health Science would gain new faculty members. In such a case, the faculty, new and old, will be full members of the same department and all will report to the same department head. Because of the influx of new funds and faculty lines, the expanded faculty will be able to continue its function within its existing home college, while still being able to take on significant new activities in the College of the Environment.

Individual Faculty Affiliation

In some cases it will be appropriate for an individual faculty member to join a unit of the new College of the Environment even though his or her department does not affiliate in any formal way with the new College. To allow for such a possibility without disrupting the function of existing departments, the proposed budget of the new College includes funds for positions to be recruited within the University. In this case, if such a faculty member transfers entirely into the new College, the home department and/or college will retain the full salary of that individual just as if the faculty member had left for a new job at another university. In other cases, only a portion of the position will be transferred into the new college, in which case the old department or college will be reimbursed only for that portion of an EFT. We recommend funding for the transfer of approximately 10 to 12 faculty EFTs into the new College; if, in most cases, only a quarter or a half of an EFT is transferred, this will permit approximately 20-25 individuals to be partially or wholly bought out by the new College. Details will have to be negotiated on a case by case basis between the new College and the other academic units involved.

Areas of Excellence. Many very good ideas for Areas of Excellence have been suggested to the committee. Our recommendation is that decisions on funding for Areas of Excellence should be based on an open competition and external review. Among the suggested Areas of Excellence, in addition to the two mentioned earlier in the proposal, are the following:

a) Environmental Economics and Policy

b) Local Government and Environmental Law

c) Industrial Ecology

d) Evolutionary Ecology

e) History, Culture, and Politics of the Environment

f) Health Science and Biological Engineering.

g) Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development.

h) Environmental Decision-Making and Policy

i) Environmental Education

j) Biogeochemistry and Global Change

k)Biomedical & Environmental Health Sciences.

l) Environmental Design and Restoration

m) Mineral Resources and Geologic Hazards

Although there are clearly more suggestions than the number that could feasibly be designated as Areas of Excellence, the committee recognizes the importance of all of these topics. The intention of the Committee is to put in place a fair system that encourages the formation of Faculty Interest Groups in a diverse array of interdisciplinary topics and then encourages these groups to develop proposals for research funding, instructional and service activities, and recognition as an Area of Excellence. The expectation is that this entrepreneurial system of generating faculty groups and encouraging them to compete for funds will result in more creative ideas and novel approaches to research and problem solving than ever could result from a top-down system of choosing Areas of Excellence.

Environmental Leadership Center. The University must continue and increase its efforts to provide reliable environmental information to the citizens of Georgia and to decision makers everywhere. We propose a joint program with the Fanning Institute to develop a new 'environmental leadership' program to train environmental decision-makers in the state, national, and international arenas. The goals of this program will be to identify, recognize, and train environmental leaders. An annual Environmental Leadership Forum will initiate each year's activities by bringing together environmental leaders and decision makers. The forum will have a global theme, such as population issues or environmental sustainability, but will also have sessions for regional, state, and local decision makers. Throughout the year, the environmental leadership program will offer additional workshops, internships, and graduate courses and certificates aimed at translating academic knowledge into sound environmental decisions and action.

To provide leadership on our own campus, we propose that the University establish endowed chairs in Environmental Leadership and Environmental Education. These new senior faculty might be jointly appointed between the new College of the Environment and the College of Education . The new faculty should also work closely with the existing 4-H environmental education programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the environmental education and outreach programs in the UGA Museum of Natural History. In addition, we propose that the new faculty work through the Environmental Leadership program to offer UGA faculty and students training in environmental leadership skills.

Eugene P. Odum Institute for Advanced Ecological Studies. The Odum Institute will be patterned on the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University and will be a place for contemplative thought and study devoted to ecological synthesis and incorporating ecological knowledge into environmental decision making. A strong emphasis will be placed on synthesizing knowledge in such a way as to make it easier to use by policy and decision makers. The Odum Institute will sponsor and administer the following:

a) an Endowed Lecture Series

b) an Endowment for Visiting Scholars and Postdoctoral Fellows

c) an Endowment for Intellectual Renewal (a sabbatical exchange program)

Each year the Odum Institute will choose one theme in basic ecological knowledge and a related theme in ecological applications. Faculty from UGA and elsewhere will work with students and postdoctoral fellows to review and synthesize existing information, to propose research priorities, and to translate ecological knowledge into policy-relevant information.

Center for River Basin Science and Policy. The mission of this campus-wide center will be to encourage and coordinate research and policy-analysis at the landscape scale of river basins. The Center will bring our scientific knowledge of hydrology and riverine ecosystems to bear on policies relating to freshwater resources. The Center will have some focus on river basins in Georgia and the southeastern United States but will be international in scope to reflect the growing realization that fresh water will be a major limiting resource in the near future. A proposal for the creation of this Center is already in review and will be made available on request.

Appendix 2. Members of the Environmental Programs Enhancement Committee

Peter Appel, School of Law

Paul Bertsch, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and Department of Crop & Soil Sciences

George Brook, Department of Geography

Ron Carroll, Institute of Ecology

Cham Dallas, College of Pharmacy

Diane Davies, Cooperative Extension Service

Larry Dendy, University Communications

Timothy Denny1 (Secretary), Department of Plant Pathology

Dan DerVartanian, Department of Biochemistry

Bruce Ferguson, School of Environmental Design

Ted Gragson, Department of Anthropology

Ian Hardin, Department of Textiles, Merchandise, & Interiors

Mark Higgins, Vice Chair, Graduate Student Association

Robert Hodson, School of Marine Programs

Steve Hubbell, Botany Department

Alan Jaworski (deceased), Botany Department

Ed Kanemasu, Department of Crop & Soil Science

David Knauft, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Richard Meltzer, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Judy Meyer, Institute of Ecology

Victor Nettles, College of Veterinary Medicine

David Newman, School of Forest Resources

Tricia Page, President, Student Government Association

Barry Palevitz, Department of Botany

Ron Pulliam (Chair), Institute of Ecology

Elizabeth Reitz, Director, UGA Museum of Natural History

Mary Alice Smith2, Department of Environmental Health Sciences

Sam Swanson, Department of Geology

Rick Tarleton, Department of Cellular Biology

Robert Teskey, School of Forest Resources

Brahm Verma3, Biological Agricultural Engineering

William (Barny) Whitman, Department of Microbiology

Sandy Whitney, Honors Program

Judith Willis, Department of Cellular Biology

1Chair of Communications and Outreach Working Group

2Chair, Resources and Opportunities Working Group

3Chair, Issues and Inventory Working Group

EPEC Staff:

Dan Hitchcock, Graduate Assistant, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Appendix 3. List of Issues Used to Evaluate Option Proposals

This list of issues was developed by the EPEC Issues and Inventory Working Group. The specific issue items were suggested by committee members and by other faculty and students who attended the EPEC forums. The issues were chosen to reflect goals of the Committee and the list was used by EPEC to evaluate the option proposals developed by the Committee.

A. TEACHING/COURSE ISSUES

1. Improve the quality of environmental education at the undergraduate level for environmental majors

2. Improve the quality of environmental education at the undergraduate level for general students

3. Improve the quality of environmental education at the undergraduate level

4. Increase coordination between academic administrative units during course and program development

5. Increase interactions between different disciplines for course and program development

6. Increase knowledge of course content across academic administrative units

7. Encourage partnership between academic disciplines in the development and management of curriculum

8. Modify rules that restrict undergraduate credit for cross-college/discipline participation

9. Increase flexibility of transferring faculty resources (e.g. EFT) from one academic unit to another

10. Increase incentives for faculty to get involved with other academic/discipline units

11. Increase incentives for departments whose faculty become involved with other academic/discipline units

12. Simplify administrative procedures for cross-college instruction

13. Increase flexibility in an undergraduate's ability to satisfy University System of Georgia core requirements

14. Increase flexibility in an undergraduate's ability to satisfy college core requirements

15. Increase visibility of environmental content of courses

16. Increase visibility of available environmental courses

17. Increase access to substantive course descriptions

18. Reduce the use of prerequisites as bars for cross-unit course enrollment

19. Increase opportunity for faculty with environmental interests in non-environmental units to connect with other academic units

20. Increase TA's available for upper-level laboratory and lecture classes

21. Increase TA support for improving the quality of undergraduate instruction

22. Increase space for teaching laboratories

23. Increase experiential learning opportunities for the undergraduates in environmental courses

B. FACULTY ISSUES

1. Remove barriers for hiring faculty who fall outside traditional disciplinary lines or who are interdisciplinary

2. Evaluation procedures provide fair evaluation of performance of faculty who fall outside traditional disciplinary lines

3. Simplify administrative procedures to stimulate joint appointments

4. Means to identify and create new programs that address emerging environmental issues

5. Facilitate the creation of faculty positions for emerging environmental programs

6. Provide a solution to the disparity in 9 month/12 month/summer salaried faculty appointments

7. Appropriately reward extra time required for field/lab instruction

8. Provide institutional-level programs/incentives to foster cross-disciplinary interactions

9. Alleviate the research laboratory space deficit for environmental studies

10. Keep existing unit viable with a critical mass of faculty resources

C. OUTREACH/SERVICES/EXTENSION/ISSUES

1. Provide mechanisms for increasing/expanding environmental programs through the extension infrastructure

2. Provide mechanisms for increasing/expanding environmental programs through public service and outreach infrastructure

3. Provide credit to faculty for public service and outreach

4. Increase availability of reliable environmental information for citizens

D. INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES

1. Provide adequate office spaces for environmental faculty and programs

2. Spatial relationship of offices and labs encourages interaction of environmental faculty and students

3. Reduce disparity in overhead rates on grants and contracts between different adm units

4. Facilitate sharing overheads between PIs from different units

5. Simplify contract and grant administration for interdisciplinary research and service

6. Reduce turf battles

E. STUDENT ISSUES

1. Increase availability of funding for students in environmental programs

2. Improve connections with extramural organizations [e.g., industry, government, and non-government (NGOs)] via applied curricula, including real world problems and training

3. Improve connections with extramural organizations [e.g., industry, government, and non-government (NGOs)] via advisement participation

4. Improve connections with extramural organizations [e.g., industry, government, and non-government (NGOs)] via internships

5. Create an environmental science major for undergraduates

6. Create an environmental science major for graduate students with specific emphases

7. Improve communication between environmental faculty & students

8. Improve communication among environmental students

9. Develop cross-disciplinary symposia

10. Create interdisciplinary majors

11. Improve coordination via joint student-faculty committees with equal representatives of both populations

12. Improve students role in governance

13. Improve environmental job advising and placement facilities.

F. FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES ISSUES

1. Improve ability to attract funding support from private Foundations.

2. Improve ability to be successful with Federal agencies for competitive funds.

3. Improve ability to be successful in attracting state funds.

4. Improve ability to form interdisciplinary teams for competing for outside funds.

5 Improve incentives for innovative research to combat resistance to change