Mission

Promoting a sustainable relationship between people and the environment as well as ensuring a quality life for people here and throughout the world is what grounds the vision of the Cornell Center for the Environment. Today's most pressing environmental challenges make clear that all aspects of the environment are connected, sometimes in surprising ways. Cornell has great talent and capacity in diverse disciplines that can advance environmental knowledge and solve environmental problems. The Center for the Environment specializes in crafting interdisciplinary collaborations among scientists and professors drawn from throughout Cornell and collaborating institutions. The Center also works to apply new knowledge to environmental problems, and to promote Cornell's new methods and information for environmental stewardship needs around the world. The Center's specific objectives are to catalyze interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research on the environment, develop ways that science can solve environmental problems, connect Cornell's environmental research capacity to needs around the world, and to engage Cornell's scientific talent as new environmental issues and problems emerge.

Goal

Advance knowledge on environmental and human systems to promote a sustainable relationship supporting a quality life for people.

Approach

• Develop an organized and broad approach to opportunity identification.
• Increase interactions among faculty across fields and with outside science, conservation, and management organizations.
• Select for action the opportunities with the best chance of success or very high campus-wide benefit.
• Act on emerging science and conservation issues in a proactive manner.
• Keep connected with the conservation community and visible in making environmental conservation gains.