OFFICE OF THE PROVOST
March 29, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
In 2020, Yale launched the Planetary Solutions Project (PSP), a university-wide initiative to support faculty, staff, alumni, and students intent on raising awareness about and combining their knowledge and skills to identify solutions to emerging global challenges, especially those caused by climate change and the loss of biological diversity. I am very pleased by the progress the university has made in bringing its expertise to bear on these issues of global importance. Through the efforts of the PSP staff and the engagement of our community, the project has successfully enabled multi-disciplinary collaboration across campus and facilitated innovations that address major threats to our planet.
To build on this momentum and facilitate the growth of Yale’s response to planetary crises, I will appoint an inaugural faculty director of the Planetary Solutions Project. The faculty director, in consultation with the provost and in close collaboration with the staff director and the vice provost for research, will lead the PSP by building productive faculty partnerships across the university. The director will also create alliances with industries, donors, alumnae, and other organizations to enable scientific, technological, policy, and communications solutions to our planet’s most pressing problems.
I hope you will consider providing nominations for this position. Those interested in nominating themselves or another faculty member are invited to send a brief statement to provost@yale.edu">provost@yale.edu by April 18. The PSP faculty director position description appears below.
Please forward to colleagues who may be interested in this position or who would consider nominating suitable candidates.
Sincerely,
Scott Strobel
Provost
Planetary Solutions Project Faculty Director | Position Description
About PSP
The Planetary Solutions Project (PSP) is a growing, university-wide initiative that supports Yale faculty, staff, alumni, and students intent on combining their knowledge and skills to help solve global environmental problems caused by human activities, especially climate change and the loss of biological diversity. To realize this mission, the PSP builds networks, integrates solutions, and supports implementation. The PSP serves as an umbrella program that coordinates and publicizes academic, research, and programmatic initiatives connected to planetary solutions at Yale. PSP not only builds productive partnerships across the university, but also strives to create alliances with industries, donors, alumnae, and other organizations to enable scientific, technological, policy, and communications solutions to achieve meaningful scale and global impact.
The Faculty Director
The faculty director will have a central role in leading the university’s Planetary Solutions Project, one of the university’s main academic priorities that spans Yale’s schools and disciplines.
The faculty director will:
- Report to the provost, while working in close partnership with the vice provost for research
- Guide and support the project’s staff director
- Lead the conceptual development of the PSP in close collaboration with the project’s staff director
- Be responsible for creating and developing interdisciplinary planetary solutions projects, in close collaboration with departments, institutes, centers, and schools across the university
- Work closely with deans, faculty, and staff engaged in planetary solutions endeavors in schools, departments, institutes, centers, and programs at Yale
- Collaborate with the vice president for campus development and sustainability and the Office of Sustainability to help establish key sustainability goals and identify pathways for Yale to use its campus as a living laboratory
- Communicate the ways Yale leads by example to advance a One Yale approach to solving climate challenges
- Chair the annual PSP seed grant review committee
- Oversee the PSP budget and carefully steward its resources
- Support PSP fundraising efforts and engage with prospective donors
- Serve as the face of the PSP for internal and external audiences
- At a high level, guide the PSP’s communications efforts
- Have ex-officio membership on the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility
- Collaborate with Yale’s Office of Sustainability and the vice president for facilities, campus development, and sustainability on monitoring and implementing Yale’s carbon reduction commitments
The faculty director will be appointed by the provost and will typically serve a term of three years, with possibility of reappointment.
To nominate a candidate, please submit a nominating statement to provost@yale.edu">provost@yale.edu by April 18, 2023.