What is the Environmental Council?

Environmental Faculty

More than 250 Berkeley faculty members identify themselves as environmental specialists. They hold appointments in the Colleges of Natural Resources, Engineering, Environmental Design, Chemistry; in the Schools of Public Health, Law, Public Policy, and Education; in the Divisions of Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences; and in the Energy and Resources Group. And these scholars are closely affiliated with a group of environmental researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The foci of the their research range from the molecular and microbial to indicator species to human behavior and its environmental consequences to global systems and change. Their tools include engineering, statistics, behavioral science, risk analysis, chemistry, toxicology, biology, policy analysis, hydrology, ecomanagement, climatology, meteorology, economics, ecology, and more.

Environmental Council

Though these faculty reside in disparate departments, increasingly they have expressed commitments to interdisciplinary research and teaching that span the boundaries of departments and take advantage of their diverse talents, tools, and techniques. Three years ago, a grass roots movement grew up on campus - the Environmental Council. The Council took up the tasks of: developing accessible information for students about environmental courses and programs; establishing an environmental colloquium series; taking inventory of the research interests of environmentally oriented faculty; initiating interdisciplinary faculty working groups focused on environmental research themes; coordinating environmental sciences teaching, research and public service programs across traditional campus departmental and administrative boundaries; developing funding proposals; and reaching out to other institutions engaged in studying and solving environmental challenges.

The Environmental Council Executive Committee

Charge to the Environmental Council Executive Committee

To give voice to the Environmental Council, the Chancellor appointed the Environmental Council Executive Committee. It provides advice and makes recommendations to The Vice Chancellor and Provost concerning the development, implementation, integration, and coordination of academic programs in environmental areas in order to achieve and maintain a leadership role appropriate to the Berkeley campus.

The Environmental Council Executive Committee advises on:

• the organization of new and emerging fields and the identification of potential faculty recruitments;
• the allocation of resources, including faculty FTE, and their priorities to maintain present areas of strength and to develop new ones;
• the continued review and evaluation of the quality of teaching, research and public service programs; and
• the coordination and evaluation of curricula, distribution of teaching effort, and structure of academic programs in the environmental area.

The Environmental Council Executive Committee advises the Deans, Budget Committee and The Vice Chancellor and Provost on FTE requests from departments, and it recommends to the Deans search committee membership drawn broadly from appropriate disciplines. The Council also reviews advertisements for faculty positions.

The Environmental Council Executive Committee is composed of up to fifteen faculty broadly representative of the intellectual domains from which faculty will be recruited. Members should not consider themselves to be representatives of their departments, but rather of the community of environmental and natural resource fields on the Berkeley campus. Its Chairman is John Harte, Professor of Energy and Resources.