Nature and Human Society: The Quest for a Sustainable World (1997)
Chapter: Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC): A New Multi-Institutional Partnership to Prepare the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders
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Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC):
A New Multi-Institutional Partnership to Prepare the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders
Solutions to the crisis of biodiversity loss will be as complex as the forces that led to it. Therefore, the serious task of educating and training current and future leaders of the public and private sector must include all areas of environmental management and conservation that are critical to the health of the ecological-support systems on which we rely. The fields of environmental management and conservation not only are complex and multidisciplinary, but also extend beyond the realm of the natural sciences.
We describe here the outcome of the first 5 years of a long-term effort to build an innovative and productive training and research consortium, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), through a new multi-institutional partnership of existing organizations. In New York, we have a unique opportunity because of the presence of several biodiversity-research institutions of international caliber complemented by an internationally renowned research university. Hence, we chose a strategy to bring them together: Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Wildlife Preservation Trust International.
Scope
Much has been written about how education and training in environmental conservation should be delivered (Jacobson 1995). Universities in the United States have been criticized because their professors and students alike are so
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narrow in their perspective that the universities fail to turn out graduates who can find employment in government agencies and nongovernment organizations (NGOs), much less make a substantial contribution to environmental conservation if they could find a job (Noss 1997). In fact, the need to broaden the definition of who should teach in this field, as well as who should be taught, was one motivator for the development of CERC.
It is clear, from the type of institutions and researchers that have been brought together to form the consortium, that we are not using a narrow definition of a research-university professor as the conveyor of knowledge. Our multi-institutional staff has a range of experience in academic institutions, research institutions, NGOs, and government agencies and as field-based practitioners. Equally diverse are our students, who are upper-level high-school students, undergraduates, graduate students, midcareer professionals, and those who already occupy positions of leadership in government and nongovernment institutions. Perhaps most important, we have sought the participation of both teachers and students who have diverse personal backgrounds; for example, those who come from nations of high or unique biodiversity and those from groups that are underrepresented in the academic and conservation communities in the United States.
By providing education and training programs that extend from high-school students to high-level environmental managers, CERC hopes first to generate interest among and identify those high-school and college students who have the greatest aptitude for environmental conservation. Second, we hope to provide unique opportunities to build the capacity of future environmental leaders at the level of graduate students and midcareer professionals. Finally, we hope to enhance the background knowledge of current environmental leaders and their staffs. We believe that such a broad-based approach is needed if we are to find solutions to the complex environmental problems we face now and those we will face in the future. If our five institutions can implement the consortium's goals successfully, then, in the process, we will have created a new model for conservation education and research in which the expertise of each institution is brought to bear on significant issues beyond the scope of any one institution.
Structure
The central administrative and education facilities of CERC are on the campus of Columbia University. Facilities include offices for administrative staff and faculty, a computer and student center, seminar and lecture rooms, a teaching and research greenhouse, and a planned, integrated set of teaching and research laboratories. In addition, students, visiting scientists, and teaching and research staff have a variety of laboratory, library, and computer facilities available on the same campus. It is at these facilities that many of the programs we will describe are based, but the true strength of the CERC consortium is realized in the activities, facilities, and expertise of the staff drawn from the five consortium-member institutions.
The American Museum of Natural History has one of the world's most extensive collections of animal species, and its staff have world-renowned expertise in
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identifying, cataloging, and systematizing animal diversity. Through the use of collections, individual research, and participation in field projects organized by individual curators and the Museum's new Center for Biodiversity, the museum staff offer an array of opportunities for animal-diversity research.
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), which has the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere plus a botanical library of more than a million books, journals, and other items, is the most comprehensive botanical-research center on a single site in North America. Its participation in the consortium is through its two key research divisions, the Institute of Economic Botany and the Institute of Systematic Botany.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which was founded as the New York Zoological Society, has the largest field staff of any international conservation organization based in the United States. It conducts more than 250 field projects in more than 50 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The Bronx Zoo in New Yorkwhich has experts in captive breeding, veterinary medicine, school-curriculum development, and data analysiscomplements these field programs.
Wildlife Preservation Trust International (WPTI), working through local conservation scientists and educators, conducts interdisciplinary, small-scale projects at the grassroots level in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. WPTI works to protect threatened species and their habitats in areas where human pressures and human-wildlife conflicts exist in highly diverse or unique ecosystems. To train local conservation professionals, WPTI provides on-site backup and formal courses.
Columbia University in New York City is one of America's top research universities and the most internationally oriented. CERC is integral to the university's Columbia Earth Institute (CEI), which brings together scientists from a broad range of natural and social-science disciplines to understand better how the earth works and to mitigate the negative effects of human activities on natural systems. In addition to CERC, eight divisions of the CEI or the university itself have direct relevance to CERC's mission.
• The School of International and Public Affairs offers a Master's of International Affairs concentration in environmental policy and collaborates in the environmental-policy certificate offered by CERC to its PhD students.
• The Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory supports graduate education in the earth sciences and is the home of the new International Research Institute for Climate Prediction.
• The Goddard Institute for Space Studies was the first to identify global warming.
• The Biosphere 2 Research Center (in Arizona) provides opportunities for conducting closed-system ecological research and relating it to other atmospheric research.
• The Black Rock Forest, which is run by a consortium that includes Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History, is a temperate
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research forest 50 miles from New York City that has an array of habitats, including a patch of rare primary, climax vegetation.
• The Rosenthal Center for Alternative/Complementary Medicine is an institute that investigates the relationships between traditional health practices, ethnobotany, and related areas of environment, biodiversity, and economic development.
• In the School of Public Health, the Division of Environmental Health Sciences is involved in a number of international projects that focus on the relationships between environmental change, climate variations, and emerging diseases.
• Finally, the Program for Information and Resources is composed of a group of applied mathematicians and economists who study the relationship between environmental changes and economic trends.
All these schools, centers, and institutes offer a broad array of expertise to our students and visiting scientists, and they provide a variety of powerful resources for all the member institutions of CERC.
Governance
To ensure the participation of all member institutions of CERC, we have created joint committees to assist in the development of our education, training, and outreach programs, to evaluate small-grants proposals, to identify potential affiliate centers throughout the world, and to handle general issues of interinstitutional integration and consortium policy. In addition, undergraduate and graduate students are mentored by both Columbia faculty, some hired specifically for CERC's educational programs, and adjunct faculty, consisting of selected staff members from all five CERC institutions.
Programs
The programs of CERC are in three areas: degree-granting education, professional training and public outreach, and interdisciplinary research. In all areas, the paramount goal is to provide opportunities for individuals to improve their ability to assess the effect of human activities on natural environments and the services they supply and to help develop the scientific, economic, and political means to mediate effects that adversely affect important ecosystems and the species they contain.
Degree-granting Education
Undergraduate Program. CERC staff have designed a new interdepartmental undergraduate major, Environmental Biology. Graduates of this major have a strong foundation in the life sciences and an exposure to relevant fields in the social sciences, such as economics and anthropology. This major also provides the necessary training for students who wish to pursue graduate studies, such as the new biodiversity-conservation-based Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PhD program offered by CERC, the Conservation Biology MA program offered by
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CERC, and the social-science-based Environmental Policy master's programs offered by Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
The undergraduate course of study includes a two-semester sequence of earth and environmental sciences, a two-semester sequence of molecular and organismal biology, and several other introductory courses in physics, chemistry, and quantitative methods. These introductory studies are followed by elective courses in such areas as environmental policy and economics, conservation and population biology, ecology and behavior, and evolution and genetics. The courses are taught by Columbia faculty and by adjunct faculty from CERC. These collaborations have borne productive fruit, including cross-cutting courses in ethnobotany and human ecology and in biodiversity loss and human disease.
Besides the novel policysocial-science component as part of a natural-science majorwe require and facilitate a summer internship for each student major between the junior and senior years at CERC. In many cases, these internships are overseas and place students with researchers from one of the five CERC institutions. They also may be in New York, where they may involve collections or policy-related research. The purpose of these internships is to expose students to practical biodiversity-conservation research and to help them focus their interests and goals for their future careers.
Master of Arts Program in Conservation Biology. The 2-year, stand-alone MA program emphasizes the biological sciences but includes a basic foundation in environmental policy. After taking specially developed MA core courses in the natural science of conservation biology and the social science of environmental policy, students have the option of tailoring their remaining coursework to follow either an academic or a professional track. The academic track is designed for students who wish to continue on to a PhD program, and the professional track is for students pursuing positions with nongovernmental organizations, government agencies, or consulting firms concerned with the conservation of biodiversity or environmental protection.
In addition to the required coursework, all students must complete an internship and a thesis. This experience provides the practical experience necessary to pursue a career in a field related to natural-resource conservation. For the academic track, the internship, done during the summer after the first year of the program, is usually conducted in the field or in a laboratory at one of the CERC institutions; a thesis results from this research. Students in the professional track can do original research or conduct their internship with a conservation organization or government agency. In the latter case, a report or policy formulation is the expected focus of the thesis.
PhD Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) program is designed to provide the broad scope of education needed to describe, understand, and conserve the diversity of life on Earth. This program offers specializations that are strictly biological (ecology, evolution, systematics, and population biology) or are at the interface of biology and human activities (ethnobiology). The aim is to prepare students to conduct ecological,
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behavioral, systematic, molecular, genetic, and other evolutionary-biological research and to formulate or implement biodiversity-related environmental policy. Graduates of the program likely will pursue academic careers as researchers and teachers or take professional positions in national and international-conservation, environmental, and multilateral-aid organizations. It is also our hope that some of our graduates will fill public-sector positions in environmental ministries, national park systems, and other agencies that deal with environmental conservation and sustainable-development planning.
Students in this program take two core courses at the outset that include the basics of ecology, evolution, systematics, population biology, and genetics. This initial semester is followed by several semesters of electives in these areas and at least three laboratory or field-based research internships. After passing the qualifying examinations and an oral defense of their research proposal, students engage in original research. The CERC consortium is so rich with conservation-oriented research projects being conducted around the world that the opportunities for internships and research projects are enormous in scope and number.
Perhaps the truly unique aspect of this PhD program is that all the students must complete a certificate in environmental policy. This certificate program is designed to give candidates in the biological sciences a better understanding of the workings of the markets, policy, and law that affect the efforts to preserve biodiversity. The certificate program, co-organized with SIPA, includes the completion of six courses and one internship, participation in a problem-solving workshop, and preparation of one interdisciplinary research paper.
Outside the CERC program, we also offer a parallel certificate in conservation biology for social-science PhD students, to give candidates in the social sciences a strong foundation in areas of biology that will enable them to contribute as much as possible to the formulation of sound environmental policy.
Professional Training and Public Outreach
Training and outreach to nontraditional, non-degree-oriented students are often conducted by nonacademic institutions rather than universities, although universities harbor the research infrastructure and pedagogical resources to have a major effect on this audience. Recognizing this, CERC has established the Morningside Institute (MI) as a way of directing energy and resources to these nontraditional audiences, giving them the opportunity to fill in gaps in their academic background, gain new skills, and profit intellectually from the interaction and exchange of ideas with others in the CERC community.
The MI programs include career days, 1-day workshops designed to bring the staff of the five CERC institutions up to date on the latest areas of inquiry and the latest technology used in biodiversity conservation and environmental management. Formal training in these areas is relatively recent, and many individuals have learned their trade on the job. To enhance the ability of every member institution in CERC to work more effectively, we have offered workshops in such areas as environmental economics, conservation genetics, geospatial positioning systems and mapping, the use of computers and the Internet in environmental management, environmental ethics, environmental education, and ecotourism.
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These workshops have been a great success in providing exposure to new fields and have provided an opportunity for interaction among people who have similar interests, which can lead to new research collaboration.
Another MI program is the annual Environmental Leaders' Forum (ELF), which was created to help high-level conservation managers from countries of high or unique biodiversity in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and eastern Europe to develop strategies to carry out their individual mandates for conserving biodiversity. The curriculum includes sessions on strategic planning, on emerging techniques such as conservation genetics, in systematics research, in population biology, and in resource economics. The member institutions of CERC participate by presenting to the environmental leaders the types of research and training opportunities they offer. Each ELF culminates with a group statement on the status of biodiversity conservation and the critical needs of the developing world in this area.
Each participant becomes part of a growing communication network of environmental leaders around the world. An electronic newsletter has been developed to invite communications and observations from all former participants and to provide an opportunity for information exchange among high-level managers around the world. So far, 66 leaders from 29 countries have participated in the ELF program. We believe that ELF is an important instrument of training and communication for conservation managers. For example, a program of community use that was established by the head of Chitwan National Park in Nepal was presented at the ELF and likely will be considered by the environmental ministry in Cameroon, whose head officer also attended that forum.
The High School Summer Program is a 1-month intensive course for highschool juniors and seniors that includes lectures and practical field projects. During this course, teachers from the CERC faculty and staff engage students in grappling with critical biological and policy issues at a level that they can understand. They visit nearby protected areas and meet staff from the member institutions of CERC as part of the course. In this way, the information they get is given life, and they can begin to identify potential role models and career paths. We believe this program will become a major vehicle for generating interest in environmental conservation among high-school students in our region.
The Visiting Scholars Program is designed to allow selected scholars and environmental-resource managers to spend 1–6 months at CERC. It is intended to provide the intellectual environment necessary for an international group of practitioners to read widely, interact with other environmental scholars, and write on their concerns. The resources we have at the CERC institutions, particularly our libraries and computer systems, are resources we want to share for the completion of critical research and of the formulation of policy.
The Mid-Career Certificate in Conservation Biology is a two-semester sequence in the science, techniques, and policy of conservation biology that is designed for professionals who want to enhance their knowledge to perform their jobs better or to reorient their careers. Courses are held in the evenings and are taught by the faculty and research staff of CERC. Classes are designed to give participants a broad overview of the basic science of conservation, the techniques used to
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conduct research, and the social-science issues that are related to policy development. The program consists of four intensive courses that cover the theory and practice of conservation biology and resource use by humans. The brevity of the training program, compared with degree programs, still provides substantial coverage of key topics in conservation science, but it is extremely appealing to individuals from fields as diverse as law, business, finance, public service, and teaching. More recently, we have designed specific tracks in this program for high-school science teachers and international trainees.
Interdisciplinary Research.
Small-Grants Program
To stimulate new cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional research in biological conservation, we have established a small-grants program to assist in the development of research teams and the collection of preliminary data that would stimulate research on a much larger scale. Projects this program has supported so far and the disciplines they have involved include developing models for trading in carbon-sequestration credits (agronomy, economics, and human ecology), preliminary research on the relationship between climatic variability and vector-borne diseases (climatology, ecology, and epidemiology), and a multifaceted approach to conservation of manatees, including basic biological monitoring and communitybased ecotourism (marine biology, community development, and wildlife management).
Affiliate-Centers Program
We have set up affiliate centers in Indonesia and Brazil and are engaged in discussions with colleagues in Madagascar, Vietnam, and Belize. We hope to have 10 such affiliates around the world that can act as regional training centers and provide a means of identifying individuals who would benefit from one of the many New York-based programs of CERC. In its ideal form, the affiliate-center model involves a university, an NGO, and a government division. In the case of Indonesia, we have forged an agreement with the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies and with the University of Indonesia. In Brazil, we have concluded an agreement with the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas and with the government of São Paulo. In Madagascar, the agreement will be with the major national university and the government. In each case, a small annual budget is provided to the affiliate center to improve facilities, initiate innovative research, and assist students in the pursuit of their training.
Conclusion
The Center for Environmental Research and Conservation is an ambitious experiment to meld the many strengths in science and policy of its member institutions into a cohesive effort that can make a difference globally in the education and training of both current and future environmental leaders. It is a model worth trying in other regional centers of biodiversity research in the United States and
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abroad. Indeed, given the rapidity with which biodiversity is being lost, we, as a community of researchers and practitioners, need to move as quickly as possible to make the most of our collective resources. To do less would be difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to defend.
References
Jacobson SK (ed). 1995. Conserving wildlife: international education and communication approaches. New York NY: Columbia Univ Pr. 302 p.
Noss RF. 1997. The failure of universities to produce conservation biologists. Cons Biol 11(6):1267–9.
