Welcome to Nicholas School Students

On behalf of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and as its Dean, let me welcome you to Duke.

Whether as a MEM or a PhD student, knowing that you have chosen our program, I suspect that each of you, like me, has some special fondness for nature and commitment to understanding how the world works ”and perhaps a worry that the human species may well be on a collision course with our environment in a way that may ultimately threaten the persistence of life on this planet.

My own journey to a career in environment began with a weekend program for high school students at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the mid-1960s. Even then, I was alarmed at how the sprawl of Cleveland's suburbs was eating into habitat for the plants and animals, which formed such a wondrous diversity to my young eyes.

Later at Dartmouth College, I was an environmental activist, as we tried, with the first Earth Day of 1970, to mobilize national attention to environmental degradation, amidst the Viet Nam protests of the late 1960s.

Along the way, I took a lot of geology, but ultimately chose to pursue a career in ecology ”more specifically biogeochemistry ”to better our understanding of how the Earth works as an integrated chemical system. And in various activities of the past 30 years, working with lots of others in many fields, I hope the early enthusiasm for environmental preservation has made for a better environment. Today, the need for activism is even greater, and I welcome your passion and your commitment to make a difference. Do not let battles lost depress you; we come to work every day with inspired by the battles that can and will be won.

Together, over the next few years, I hope we will carry our School to preeminence as an institution of leadership in environmental science and policy. And, we have a strong beginning:

With the School of Forestry, the Geology Department and the Duke University Marine Laboratory ”all of which date to the 1930s at Duke, we have a rich history as a now-unified School that can approach environment holistically. There is no other School in the world where one can find among its faculty, expertise ranging from molecular to global, from land, to the highest reaches of our atmosphere, and to the deepest reaches of our seas; where scientists investigate how nature works and where specialists in risk assessment, economics, and policy teach us how to best forge strong environmental policy amidst the conflicting motivations of our citizenry and the voting public.

Through last year's generosity of Peter and Ginny Nicholas, we have the resources to carry the Nicholas School to the highest level of prominence as the nation's standard of environmental excellence. In a few weeks time, we will launch the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, with Tim Profeta (MEM & JD 1997) as its director. The launch event will bring Jared Diamond, Russell Train, Dan Pauley, and others to our campus as distinguished lecturers. And, the Institute itself will represent the beginnings of a new level of public outreach and advocacy for the Nicholas School.

One special event this year is the advent of green power for the Nicholas School. While the lights and air conditioning you use in this building, Old Chemistry and the DUML are probably powered by coal, the Nicholas School is supporting the purchase of an equivalent amount of wind power generated on the Great Plains. In a very real sense, we are mitigating our own impact by paying for the generation of clean energy, which replaces fossil fuel energy that would otherwise be generated in the Midwest.

While you are at Duke, I urge you to look well beyond the catalog of the Nicholas School to enrich your education. Our work in the Nicholas School and with the Nicholas Institute is truly interdisciplinary, and we have established outreach to the law, business, public policy, divinity and medical schools. Today, it is impossible to know what environmental problems you will be working on in 10 years ”indeed, the issues may well be problems that we do not even recognize today. So, what is most important is not to memorize the facts, but to learn to know:

When to ask

Who to ask

What to ask, and

How to ask it

The most effective individuals I have met in furthering environmental preservation and management are those who know how to work the system ”and I say that as a scientist who has spent most of his life on the details. If I were to make a single recommendation for your studies whether you are pursuing the MEM or PhD degree, it would be to think broadly ”erase the barriers during your time at Duke.

The acquaintances you make among the rich diversity of your classmates and the professional contacts you make in your short time here will also be invaluable ”a virtual rolodex of contacts to begin your career. Among MEM students there are 121 of you beginning today; from 34 states and 11 nations. You come from 91 different undergraduate institutions ”including 4 from Notre Dame. Your average age is 25, so many of you have some post-graduate experience. Most of you were biology or environmental science majors, but you list no fewer than 39 majors, including Comparative Literature and Physics. I know of no emerging differential sexual frequency in the human population, but for some reason 64% of you are female. Among you I found those who describe their recent work as:

- the program coordinator from the Boston College Environmental Studies Program

- an Americorps volunteer working in environmental education at the EPA's Philadelphia office

- a kindergarten teacher from northern Virginia

- a member of the corporate affairs division of Environment Canada

- the founder and producer of an independent record label, "Frigital Records" operating from Jacksonville, Florida

- the majorette of the University of Florida marching band

So, work hard, think broadly, but have some fun. For those in a PhD Program, you are embarking on a major commitment to scholarship that will keep you at Duke for a number of years. For those in the masters program, remember that two years from now when we all join again for graduation on the lawn in front of the LSRC, there will be 160,000,000 more humans who will have joined us on this planet ”each with a desire for a better life that splits the pie of the Earth's resources in to ever-smaller chunks for both us and the other species that share our planetary home.

Welcome to the Nicholas School, where we see much to do and little time in which to do it.