W&M Gets $1.5 Million Grant

The College of William and Mary has gotten a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to add two novel programs to its environmental studies lineup.

The first will be a Center for Geospatial Analysis, which will train students to use geographic information systems to analyze environmental data. The Mellon grant will also be used to set up a postdoctoral program in environmental science and policy. According to Carl Strikwerda, W&M's dean of arts and sciences, the program will help graduate students learn to balance the teaching and research aspects of the faculty positions they are likely to hold. The college must, however, raise $1.6 million to complete the endowment for the teacher-scholar program.

W&M's environmental studies efforts have received money twice before from the Mellon Foundation, which counts conservation and the environment among its core program areas. In 2000, the foundation funded the development of its environmental science and policy minor--now a major. It provided a second round of funding in 2004.

Image credit: The College of William and Mary

William And Mary, And Environmental Justice

The College of William and Mary was the second college to be founded in the American colonies, in 1693 to be exact. But there is nothing colonial about its current thinking on the environment.

In its classrooms, the college has worked to put together a highly interdisciplinary undergraduate green major, called Environmental Science and Policy. Its faculty has focused their research on ecology and conservation, environmental geology/geochemistry, environmental justice, and international aid and policy.

But some of its professors have taken those concerns well beyond the classroom. Emmett Duffy, a professor of marine science at the college's Virginia Institute of Marine Science runs a blog called "The Natural Patriot". In it, Duffy argues for a new form of patriotism grounded in environmental stewardship. He brings a sharp mind and even sharper writing to green scholarship, and that's before you even get to his blogroll and resource links. Very definitely worth a read.