About the Faculty
New school to host programs within ENV
A new School of Environment, Enterprise and Development will provide a home for some of the academic programs in the Faculty of Environment, under a plan that was endorsed by the university senate and the board of governors in April.
“We’ve been actually thinking about it for over a year,” dean Deep Saini told the senate, noting that a series of committees, including the senate’s long-range planning committee, had already given their okay.
The Faculty of Environment currently contains three academic units — geography and environmental management, environment and resource studies, and planning — and SEED would be a fourth. It will provide a home for the faculty’s biggest undergraduate program, Environment and Business, and a new but fast-growing program, International Development.
In addition, it will house new graduate programs leading to the degrees of Master of Environment and Business and Master of Development Practice. SEED could potentially also include the existing graduate program in local economic development, currently based in the geography and environmental management department, the dean said.
It would also include an Environmental Training Institute to operate non-degree programs.
SEED will be “the first of its kind in North America, and arguably the most comprehensive institution of this type in the world”, according to background papers presented to senate. “The School will be in the forefront of education, research and training in environmentally responsible business and development.”
The growth of the Environment and Business program means that a large share of Environment students are in “programs without an academic home”, Saini said. “There is a need to consolidate,” he went on — and a need to be able to appoint faculty members to the programs SEED will offer, rather than just cross-appointing them from geography or some other unit.
“The School will provide the structure, stability, identity and high profile needed to market its academic plans to prospective high-quality students, faculty and staff. This will allow appointments to be made directly to the unit that delivers the academic programs, and it will create a critical mass of faculty with like interests to synergize new research activities.”
“We expect to ramp up the number of faculty to about 15 by the end of next year,” Saini said. “Many of these would be new hires,” and some would be holders of externally funded chairs. SEED would be headed by a director, as other units across UW with the status of “school” already do.
“SEED will be financially self-sufficient from the start,” the background papers said. “Already a major source of revenue for the Faculty and the University, the School’s four core academic programs are expected to generate over $8 million by 2012, and should exceed $10 million once the new master’s programs have reached maturity. . . The revenue will contribute significantly toward the cost of a new building needed to house the School."
“The University and the Faculty are also vigorously seeking external funds from donors and government, including a potential major donor to name the School.”
adapted from the Daily Bulletin
