William H. Schlesinger, dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, has been named the second president and director of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies. He will step down as Nicholas School dean on June 1, 2007, and assume his new duties in Millbrook, N.Y.
The Millbrook institute is one of the largest and most respected ecological research organizations in the world, with expertise in aquatic science, forest ecology, urban ecology, air pollution, nutrient cycling and disease ecology.
Provost Peter Lange, Duke's top academic officer, praised Schlesinger, the James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry, for having done an "excellent job" as dean, adding, "We will regret his departure."
"During his time as dean he has made a number of truly outstanding faculty hires, grown and improved the school's student population and brought a far higher degree of integration around a common vision to the school's units," Lange said. "He also made substantial progress on the budget challenges the school faced when he became dean and developed the vision for and established the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions to better project the findings and implications of environmental research done at Duke and elsewhere into the world of public and corporate policy making.
"These are most substantial accomplishments and Bill's leadership will be missed by faculty, students and administrators alike."
A strong advocate of translating scientific research for the public, Schlesinger took over the leadership of the Nicholas School in 2001 and was appointed to his second five-year term in 2005. During his tenure, the school saw a steady increase in enrollment in the professional program, growing 66 percent from 71 to 118 in a class. Giving levels have reached their highest, with the annual fund jumping from $356,000 to $836,000, and major gifts increasing from $2 million to more than $6 million.
With the signing of the $70 million gift to the school from Pete and Ginny Nicholas of Boston in December 2003, Schlesinger began planning for a new building to bring the Durham units of the school together. He also oversaw the creation of the Nicholas Institute in 2005, which launched its Washington, D.C., office on Nov. 16. Schlesinger championed a series of environmental advertorials that ran on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, which gave the school national exposure and heralded the opening of the Nicholas Institute. He also wrote and published numerous op-eds, testified before Congress and has given dozens of speeches across the country on environmental issues.
Noted for his research on global environment change, Schlesinger served as president of the Ecological Society of America from 2003 to 2004. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.
"The decision to leave the Nicholas School and Duke University was a difficult one for me. It has been an honor for me to head this school and work with such dedicated faculty and staff members and students," Schlesinger said. "I will miss my friends and colleagues of more than 30 years, but I trust that the school and the institute have a positive momentum that will continue on.
"The institute offers me an opportunity to focus my work and research in a way that a dean cannot, and I look forward to the new challenge," he said.
Lange said a global search for a new dean will begin almost immediately. "President Richard Brodhead and I will be in consultation with the executive committee of the Academic Council and the faculty of the school to form the search committee and to develop an ambitious charge that will inspire the hiring of a dean who can continue and even accelerate the upward trajectory of the school that Bill has promoted."
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The Institute of Ecosystem Studies' news release about Schlesinger is available at http://www.ecostudies.org/press/Schlesinger.html.