Steering Committee Charge
A message to the Yale Planetary Solutions Steering Committee from Scott Strobel, Provost, and Jack Callahan, Sr. Vice President for Operations.
January 17, 2024
The 2018 University Science Strategy Committee report recommended environmental and evolutionary science and climate engineering as ideas for priority investment, highlighting the unprecedented challenge of human-accelerated changes to the environment. Building from this recommendation, Yale’s Planetary Solutions work has steadily endeavored to highlight, promote, and accelerate scholarship and research in support of this focal area from across the University. Since that time, we have established the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture and the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions; we have provided nearly $3M of Planetary Solutions grants to over 70 faculty across 7 schools; and we have progressed towards our net zero campus carbon goals.
As this Planetary Solutions work has proceeded, the urgency of the environmental crises facing humanity has continued to intensify, and the need for Yale to serve as a model and a source of knowledge has only grown and become more complex. This reality has provoked the university to consider how Planetary Solutions can build on our science priorities, and function as a hub for scholarship, research, and action towards positive impact. We can accelerate action and advance solutions to the greatest challenges of our time when we utilize the university’s capabilities, and its capacity to mobilize and focus our collective resources synergistically. The breadth of Yale’s endeavors provides tremendous potential to capture and convert into action a fantastic array of ideas and solutions, building on decades of effort and investment. However, without intentional and meaningful collaboration across these efforts, we will fail to meet our greatest potential.
We now ask for your service and leadership as a member of a new Planetary Solutions Steering Committee to help set the goals and ambitions for this next critical part of the University’s work that seeks to integrate our research agenda, academic priorities, and commitments to sustainability. This new committee will be co-chaired by Julie Zimmerman, Vice Provost for Planetary Solutions, and J. Mike Bellamy, Vice President for Facilities, Campus Development, and Sustainability. The committee will be tasked with:
- considering how the broad University Science Strategy Committee (USSC) strategic planning framing and Yale’s existing sustainability plans intersect with the multifaceted reality of today’s planetary challenge needs, and Yale’s commitment to developing and implementing integrative solutions to planetary threats we face;
- formulating a vision for the Planetary Solutions work that integrates academics and operations, as well as a series of three to four key overarching themes to guide the next phase of bringing all Yale has to bear on the profound environmental issues of our time; and
- setting priorities for a series of working groups to develop strategic plans for each of the established goals .
Steering Committee Members
Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History; Associate DGS, History
John Barden, Vice President for Information Technology and Campus Services
J. Mike Bellamy, Vice President for Facilities, Campus Development, and Sustainability (Co-Chair)
Deborah Berke, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture; J.M. Hoppin Professor
Peter Boston, University Director, Principal Gifts
Jeffrey Brock, Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Zhao and Ji Professor of
Mathematics
Indy Burke, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean of the Yale School of the Environment; Professor of
Ecosystem Ecology
Liza Comita, Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology; Co-Director, Yale Center for Natural
Carbon Capture
Jack Callahan, Sr. Vice President for Operations
Alexandra Daum, Associate Vice President, New Haven and State Affairs
Doug Kysar, Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law
Amber Garrard, Director, Office of Sustainability
Renee Kopkowski, Vice President for Communications
Anthony Kosier, Associate Vice President for Facilities and Campus Stewardship
James Levinsohn, Dean of the Jackson School of International Affairs; Charles W.
Goodyear Professor in Global Affairs; Professor of Economics and Management
Megan Ranney, Dean of Yale School of Public Health and C.-E.A. Winslow Professor
of Public Health (Health Policy) and Professor of Emergency Medicine
Eric Sargis, Professor of Anthropology; Director, Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies;
Curator of Zoology (Mammalogy) and Vertebrate Paleontology, Peabody Museum of Natural History
Karen Seto, Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science; Director
of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability
David Skelly, Frank R. Oastler Professor of Ecology; Director of the Peabody Museum of
Natural History; Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Sara Smiley Smith, Assistant Provost for Planetary Solutions
Carla Staver, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Associate
Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies
Scott Strobel, Provost; Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
and Professor of Chemistry; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor
Rafi Taherian, Associate Vice President for Yale Hospitality
Gerald Torres, Professor of Environmental Justice; Professor of Law
Julie Zimmerman, Vice Provost for Planetary Solutions; Professor of Green Engineering;
Assistant Director for Research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering (Co-Chair)