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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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A scientist takes over at the environment school If you want to know the focus of the outgoing dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES), just read the title of his latest book: The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. The most recent book by the incoming dean—Sir Peter Crane, whose appointment was announced this month and will begin on September 1—suggests a different focus: The Origin of Modern Terrestrial Ecosystems: Fossils, Phylogeny and Biogeography. By choosing an evolutionary biologist to succeed James Gustave "Gus" Speth '64, '69LLB, an outspoken expert in law and policy, is F&ES shifting its emphasis from advocacy toward science? Not at all, says Crane, a professor at the University of Chicago and former director of the famous Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. "I'm a firm believer in speaking out on issues. So I would be sad if there was any diminution in the school's profile," he says. "The issue is how to get the balance right between the science and the more activist side of the environmental agenda. We need to do both, and we need to do both very well." The school's students, Crane notes, want to learn from "people who are involved in these issues in the real world in a substantive way. It can't be all science." Speth, a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former United Nations environment official, helped draw attention to the school. His decade as dean brought significant growth in FES's faculty, course offerings, number of students applying, and fund-raising. He has also served as a leader in Yale's institutional greening—prodding President Richard Levin to focus on reducing the university's greenhouse gas emissions, for example, and overseeing F&ES's move into a new home, Kroon Hall, a showpiece of green building design and construction. (He also raised the hackles of some alumni when he began referring to the school as "the environment school" rather than "the forestry school.") After retiring from Yale, he will join the faculty of the Vermont Law School. Crane has a lower political profile, although he was knighted in 2004 for his service to plant conservation. But, like Speth, he brings an urgency about climate change and other pressing environmental issues. An expert in biodiversity, he helped establish the Millennium Seed Bank, a vault in Great Britain in which scientists are preserving seeds of wild plants threatened with extinction. F&ES professor Thomas Graedel, who chaired the search committee that recommended Crane as its top choice, says the committee cast a wide net, not limiting itself to scientists. Nonetheless, Crane's "scholarly credentials were very impressive." "At F&ES, this is a particularly interesting time for leadership," Graedel observes. With a new U.S. president who understands the urgency of "a planet in peril," "the next few years are likely to be ones in which the environment and sustainability are perceived as much more important." It's essential, he says, "that Yale's environment school is playing a major role." Crane expects to visit Yale in April, his first opportunity to meet the school's entire tenured faculty. "I need to learn a lot more
about F&ES before we decide what [scholarly] direction we want to go,"
he notes. "We can't do it all; we're going to have to pick our spots.
We're going to have to think carefully about the kind of training we want to
provide. And we need to do that together." |
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