Neil Leary Appointed to Pa. Environmental Consortium

October 28, 2009

Neil Leary, director of the Center for Environmental & Sustainability Education

Neil Leary, director of the Center for Environmental & Sustainability Education at Dickinson College, was recently elected to the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC), a consortium of more than 50 colleges and universities.

PERC is an organization comprised of environmental policy makers, universities and colleges devoted to improving environmental policy and understanding through government and academic cooperation that encourages interdisciplinary analysis and discourse. The consortium was created in the belief that the environmental problems of the 21st century will challenge both decision makers and academic institutions in new ways. For this reason greater cooperation between government and higher education is urgently needed to protect and restore the environment for present and future generations.

Before coming to Dickinson last fall, Leary was a senior scientist at START, an international science network of developing country institutions and researchers, where he directed a number of interdisciplinary research, assessment and training programs on climate change. He was one of the leaders of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, and continues to be active in the organization. Leary also has served as senior economist in the Office of Policy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and assistant professor at Middlebury College.

Leary has a Ph.D. in natural resource economics from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree from Macalester College.