School Notes: School of the Environment
September/October 2019

F&ES introduces visiting professorship in climate research, policy

Thanks to the generosity of Coleman Burke ’63, F&ES has created a visiting professorship in climate change research and policy. The Coleman P. Burke Visiting Professorship in Climate Change will bring to campus one expert practitioner or scholar for at least one semester each academic year. Addressing the critical challenges of climate change will require engaging experts across disciplines and fields, said F&ES dean Indy Burke. “There are so many talented and innovative people across the world working to address this challenge—this rotating professorship will enable us to draw on that talent,” Dean Burke said. “We’re eager to discover the new perspectives and creative ideas they will bring to our curriculum and to our community,” she said. Coleman Burke (no relation to Dean Burke), who has been a member of the Dean’s Leadership Council since 2001, has previously supported scholarships at the school and the construction of Kroon Hall, where the auditorium is named in his honor.

Faculty recognized for climate research of ‘enduring’ impact

Robert Mendelsohn, Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Forest Policy and professor of economics at F&ES, and William Nordhaus, a Yale Sterling Professor in Economics who has an appointment at F&ES, were honored by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) for published research that has proven to be seminal in nature and of enduring value. Mendelsohn and Nordhaus—along with a third coauthor, DaigeeShaw, from the Institute of Economics at Academia Sinicain China—received AERE’s 2019 Publication of Enduring Quality Award for their 1994 paper, “The Impact of Global Warming on Agriculture: A Ricardian Analysis.” The influential paper, published in the American Economic Review, offered early evidence that the potential impacts of climate change would vary from region to region, with warmer regions paying the biggest price. The award was presented during the AERE summer conference.