Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Executive Summary
With rising human population and the desire of all humanity for a comfortable, healthy lifestyle, the Earth is experiencing increasing stress to the physical, chemical, and biological systems that sustain life on our planet. Extinctions of species are leading to widespread threats to the integrity of ecosystem function, which provides clean air and water, food, fuel, and fiber to all of us. There is no greater challenge facing humanity than to attain harmony with the global environment and to provide a sustainable future for the diversity of life on Earth.
The mission of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences is to provide unsurpassed environmental leadership through interdisciplinary education, research and outreach.
- Education: to train the next generation of environmental leaders and scholars through undergraduate, graduate and professional programs.
- Research: to understand basic earth, ecological and environmental processes, including the interactions of humans with their environments.
- Outreach: to inform society of critical environmental challenges and develop solutions based on objective analysis using natural and social science and thoughtful assessment of public values.
During upcoming years, we will:
- Achieve faculty and programmatic excellence for our work in:
- Conservation Biology
- Ecosystem Science and Management
- Energy and Environment
- Environmental Economics and Policy
- Environmental Health
- Global Change
- Marine Science and Policy
- Water Resources,
which represent the major environmental challenges that will determine a sustainable future for life on this planet.
- Build strong relationships to the Nicholas Institute and to other Schools at Duke University, to capitalize on the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to solve environmental problems. Linkage to the Nicholas Institute will ensure that the research and analysis by faculty and students in the Nicholas School are translated and made available to the corporate, government, policy and media sectors of society.
- Increase our enrollments of undergraduates and professional masters students, so that the best and brightest minds can be brought to bear on the solution to environmental problems and to understanding the importance of the natural environment to human welfare.