NSF grants bolster integrative graduate study

Twin grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), coupled with matching institutional funds, will give a $6.8 million boost to innovative graduate study and research in global sustainability, development, and the environment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The two $3 million grants – one to the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, another to the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) – come from the NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships (IGERT) program. Several campus units, including the Division of International Studies and the Graduate School, will provide the $800,000 balance.

Fewer than 20 of the highly prized IGERT grants will be awarded nationally this year.

“Each award in itself is fantastic for the university, but to receive two at the same time is a rare event,” says Jonathan Patz, one of the principle investigators and an associate professor of environmental studies and population health sciences.

“These awards demonstrate UW–Madison’s leadership in innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to some of today’s most important, complex global issues,” says Kenneth Shapiro, associate dean for international programs in CALS.

“They will make it possible to create both an interdisciplinary and international team of students able to cross physical and intellectual borders with new insights and skills,” says Gilles Bousquet, dean of International Studies.

Together, the NSF grants will support the training and research of more than 40 doctoral students over five years. The university’s matching funds will supplement each grant so that every student receives a full fellowship for two years.

“This will help us attract the very best students,” says Patz. “And the potential for synergy between the two projects will likely make the whole even greater than the sum of the parts. It’s an incredible opportunity to advance environmental and sustainability science.”

Frances Westley, director of the Nelson Institute, agreed. “This is truly exciting,” she says. “We are pioneering new directions in graduate education that will set us apart from other institutions and serve as models in the future on these critical topics.”

The CALS project will target biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the eastern Himalayas of southwest China, site of a long-term collaboration between UW–Madison and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Most of the major challenges of biodiversity conservation occur in tropical and subtropical regions of developing countries, where researchers must confront the interactions of biological, physical, social, economic, and governance conditions that often are very different from those in North America,” says Joshua Posner, principal investigator for the China IGERT program and a professor of agronomy and environmental studies. “The research at the core of our program is aimed at understanding these conditions and their interactions.”

IGERT fellows will travel to southwest China for summer training, language study and field work. Back in Madison, they will tackle actual biodiversity and development issues in interdisciplinary seminars focused on the region. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has committed $1 million of its own to the collaboration, will send students and scientists to Madison to participate, and it will use the results to enhance conservation and improve economic conditions for people who live in the region.

“The Chinese have a system of discipline-oriented institutes,” says Posner, whose co-investigators include 18 professors from two colleges and 12 academic departments. “And yet they realize that to really have an effect on biodiversity conservation, they need to have an effect on policy, and they need to bring more tools to bear. I think they hope this will help them be more effective.”

The Nelson Institute’s IGERT program involves 10 faculty members in diverse departments ranging from atmospheric and oceanic sciences to sociology. It seeks to interweave natural and social sciences to better understand the vulnerabilities and resilience of human communities facing complex environmental hazards such as global climate change.

“Today’s global environmental problems are caused by highly interrelated factors, and solving them requires coordinated efforts from the natural and social sciences,” says Patz, who will direct the program. “With this significant support to train students across the disciplines, we can begin turning out a new generation of young scientists prepared to grapple with the complexity of these problems.”

Among other things, the IGERT initiative will lead to a new graduate-level certificate program in sustainability and the global environment, offer international field research experiences, and provide leadership training.

“Most important, we will impart to a cadre of future scholars and leaders the skills to integrate natural and social science research and to forge strong links to decision-making and public policy, business and non-governmental organizations, and civil society,” says Patz.

The new grants bring to three the number received by UW–Madison from the IGERT program since its establishment in 1997. The first also had an environmental theme: how humans and water influence each other.