School Notes: School of the Environment
March/April 2015

F&ES partners to create national poll

The environment school has partnered with the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research to conduct annual polling of Americans about their environment-related opinions and behaviors. “Public understanding of environmental issues—from global warming to water pollution to the loss of biodiversity—is more important than ever, as many Americans work to create a more sustainable future,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, a research scientist and faculty member at F&ES. In their first report, published on December 12, they found that most Americans say the US should take a leadership role in combating global warming. Moreover, twice as many Americans think the country should participate in international climate treaty negotiations as oppose it.

The new initiative builds on F&ES’s commitment to opinion polling, which since 2007 has centered largely on issues related to public perceptions of climate change. The AP-NORC Center is a collaboration of the Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago, which taps into the power of social science research and the highest-quality journalism to bring key information to people across the nation and throughout the world. The Yale partnership is the center’s first project focused specifically on environmental issues.

Tropical Resources Institute celebrates three decades

The F&ES-based Tropical Resources Institute (TRI), an interdisciplinary center that promotes student research in the world’s tropical environments, commemorated its 30th anniversary with a special publication of the journal Tropical Resources that highlights three decades of student work. Since its inception in 1984, TRI has sponsored research projects across the world by more than 600 fellows, and published their scholarly work. The anniversary publication features 19 articles that were previously published in Tropical Resources or its predecessor TRI News.  In October, F&ES announced a new student award named in honor of William “Bill” Burch, professor emeritus and TRI’s founding director, who retired in 2008 after four decades on the F&ES faculty. Beginning in 2015, the $1,000 William R. Burch Prize will be awarded annually to the best paper written by a TRI Fellow.