The School for Environment and Sustainability will celebrate its launch in conjunction with the Bicentennial Fall Festival and Homecoming.
The newly formed school, which builds on the strengths of the former School of Natural Resources and Environment, will provide leadership and work collaboratively with other U-M schools, institutes and programs to develop solutions to society’s most challenging global sustainability issues.
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Events open to the public run Oct. 26, and Oct. 27.
The Samuel A. Graham Lecture and installation of inaugural SEAS dean Jonathan T. Overpeck will take place at 6 p.m. Oct. 26 in the Samuel T. Dana Building Room 1040.
Other launch events include an opening ceremony in the Dana Building at 10 a.m. Oct. 27, and a Climate Change Summit at Rackham Auditorium at 11 a.m. that same day.
Tours of the Dana Building — the state’s first gold LEED-certified academic building — will be offered the afternoon of Oct. 27.
At the Graham Lecture, Overpeck will debut his vision for the future of SEAS.
“The University of Michigan has one of the most impressive enterprises in environmental research, education, and engagement in the country, stretching broadly across campus, including innovative institutes, and loaded with talent,” Overpeck said.
“U-M is uniquely poised to contribute key knowledge and know-how to meeting the climate challenge, and also to meeting other environmental and sustainability challenges on a list that gets longer with each passing year. We can make the kind of impact that will provide a new model for other universities to follow.”
Overpeck is a world-renowned paleoclimatologist. He comes to U-M from the University of Arizona, where he was director of the Institute of the Environment, the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Professor of Science, and a Regents’ Professor of Geosciences, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences.
The Samuel A. Graham Deanship was established in 2013 by alumnus Don Graham and his family to ensure continued work toward the vision of a sustainable world. It is named in honor of Graham’s father, Samuel A. Graham, a professor in the former School of Forestry and a pioneer in environmental sustainability.
