YIBS Five Year Report

Introduction

Great universities both empower and constrain the future in the tools they give their students. They are therefore responsible for cultivating graduates who are impassioned yet realistic, and who are attuned to the underlying complexity of environmental challenges. Basic research is no less powerful in shaping society's response to environmental problems, providing the fundamental understandings needed to translate passion into effective action. No other agency has the university's ability to shape both the perceiver and the lens through which a problem is perceived. Through the Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale University galvanizes its resources to ensure that the observer is acute and the lens is clear.

The search for solutions to the environmental challenges society faces has brought about a re-evaluation of the role of institutions of higher learning. The complex relationships between the earth's ecosystems and the well-being of human and other species require an approach that draws from many academic disciplines in building a new paradigm for solving the most critical environmental challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies was founded in 1991 with an extraordinary gift from Edward P. Bass to build upon the strong foundation of University resources through which Yale would advance understanding of the biosphere and develop relevant approaches to environmental issues of national and global importance. The Institute was established to bring together a community of scholars to capitalize upon the University's strengths in the basic sciences which inform environmental issues; to draw upon the foundation of knowledge embodied in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and in the graduate and professional schools of the University, particularly the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; and to encourage the reintegration of the magnificent natural history collections of the Peabody Museum into faculty and student research, thus drawing upon the past to inform the present and enlighten the future.

The Institute is succeeding in cultivating a new standard for university-based environmental research and education and has indeed established itself as a catalyst for interdisciplinary collaboration. To date, 92 faculty members from 18 of the University's Schools, Departments, and Faculties have been involved in environmental research through the Institute's research Centers and/or through its two degree-granting undergraduate programs, Studies in the Environment and the Program in Organismal Biology.

In addition to specific advances in research and education, a principal achievement in the Institute's first five years has been to foster a shared vision among multiple academic units. As a result, Yale's considerable intellectual resources continue to be most effectively brought to bear in solving environmental problems.

Among its most notable achievements, the Institute has:

• Conceived of the Environmental Sciences Facility and advanced it as a University priority, with groundbreaking planned for 1997. The facility is planned as a unique space conducive to interdisciplinary interaction; it will house faculty from two Schools and three Departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, laboratories, collections from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and state-of-the-art teaching facilities. The facility will be the centerpiece of an "Environmental Campus" uniting elements of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Peabody Museum, the Institute, and the Departments of Biology and Geology & Geophysics.
  
• Conceived of, recruited, and encouraged the active involvement of an External Advisory Board of national and international prominence. Beginning as an Institute Board only, External Advisory Board members have taken an increasingly active role in addressing larger issues that reach beyond the Institute and encompass the broader concerns that are shared by the Institute, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and the Peabody Museum.
• Catalyzed an institutional examination of the structure of biological sciences at Yale. It is anticipated that one outcome of this examination will be to give new institutional emphasis and prominence to fields crucial to the environmental sciences, namely ecology, evolution, and organismal biology.
• Secured a permanent faculty base and program financing for Studies in the Environment, one of the oldest undergraduate programs of its kind among US universities offering an environmental studies major. The number of students who had declared Studies in the Environment as a second major climbed from 11 in 1992 to 56 as of January, 1996.
• Conceived of, funded, and remains a continuing partner in the Yale Environmental Partnership, a collaborative academic planning and development vehicle that brings together the Institute, the School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, and the Peabody Museum. Support from corporations, foundations, External Advisory Board members, and Yale alumni and friends of the University has been generated for faculty and student research, graduate and undergraduate course development and enhancement, and equipment purchases or gifts-in-kind.

These accomplishments could only be achieved with the strong commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration that is shared among the participating academic units and fully supported by the University administration. The success of these collaborations and the tangible outcomes described in the following sections serve as the foundation from which the Institute will move forward and upon which it will expand in the next five years.