The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Dickinson a three-year, $1.4 million grant that will ensure the college’s status as a leader in environmental and sustainability studies. The grant, which is the largest the college has ever received from a private foundation, will support a director and center for environmental and sustainability education, a new faculty position in environmental health and postdoctoral fellows in geographic information systems.

“Our expectation is that this grant will launch our environmental and sustainability initiative in the same manner that our National Endowment for the Humanities grants in international education in the 1980’s launched our global education program,” said Dickinson President William G. Durden ’71. “The grant from Mellon will move the college into a leadership position on the environment, such as we have in global education.”

A planning group funded by a previous $25,000 Mellon grant devised a blueprint combining institutional strengths with new programming that will make environmental education an integral part of the Dickinson experience. The new Mellon grant will help the college realize that plan. Existing environmental-studies and environmental-science programs will be further enhanced, and the study of environmental issues will be integrated with other departments and interdisciplinary programs.

Of the $1.4 million, $450,000 will fund a permanent endowment, which the college must match with $1.35 million within three years. The endowment will support the environmental-health faculty position and an environmental-education fund in perpetuity. The remaining $950,000 will be used over approximately four years for various projects including the center for environmental and sustainability education.

“These enhancements, all identified as key priorities by our planning group, will strengthen our existing majors in environmental studies and environmental science, connect their work to that of other existing disciplines and interdisciplinary programs, and make possible the introduction of new curriculum and research/field study opportunities for our students,” said Provost and Dean Neil Weissman.

The grant builds on an ongoing effort to increase sustainability and environmental education at Dickinson. President Durden joined the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment last spring, pledging to reduce campus carbon emissions to zero. The Rector Science Campus and Center for Sustainable Living are emphasizing sustainability in their design and construction, and solar panels are harvesting energy on the roof of Kaufman Hall. Co-curricular projects like the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM), which works to protect and restore watersheds, have helped raise awareness about sustainability in central Pennsylvania.

“As a campus we already are engaged in numerous environmental and sustainability efforts,” said Durden, “but as a college, the greatest and longest lasting contribution we can make, in keeping with our core mission, is education.”