Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey has charged 10 campus leaders with bringing focus to the Environmental Initiative. Among the responsibilities for this new Administrative Coordinating Council for the Environment will be the design of an organizational structure for the initiative. Organizational options include a new proposal for a Graduate School of the Environment. The Environmental Initiative, which has been under development for the past three years, is intended to provide coherence and direction to the considerable faculty and staff resources at UC Davis committed to the environment. Grey said he was taking action to rapidly advance the initiative. "The campus is blessed with a large number of distinguished faculty and staff members in the environmental arena," Grey said. "The breadth of activity in research and instruction in environmental programs has been a major challenge to efforts to coordinate and project a visible presence to external constituencies." Grey has three objectives in his action plan for the short term: * Establishing a leadership structure--the Administrative Coordinating Council for the Environment--and organizational framework for coordinating the environmental programs at UC Davis; * Assigning responsibility for day-to-day management of the initiative implementation effort to a faculty assistant; and * Appointing a faculty steering committee to help guide the administrative council and the faculty assistant in their work on the initiative (expected to be appointed by Nov. 19). The faculty assistant would be a liaison for the Provost's Office, the council, the faculty steering committee and other campus units, among other duties. Nominations and applications should be sent to Grey by Wednesday, Nov. 24. The Administrative Coordinating Council for the Environment is composed of deans, a vice chancellor, a vice provost and the acting director of the John Muir Institute for the Environment (see box). The council is similar to ones appointed earlier for the biological sciences; social sciences; and the mathematical and physical sciences and engineering. Grey asked the council to consider and recommend actions that can be taken immediately to improve the coordination of environmental programs among the colleges, divisions and schools. The group is also charged with improving coordination and resource management for graduate programs in the environment, and enhancing the visibility of the campus's strength in environmental research, education and public outreach. The administrative council has been specifically asked to recommend by the end of spring quarter how to organize the long-term leadership and governance structure for the Environmental Initiative and how this should coordinate with the appropriate graduate groups and programs. This includes evaluating a new proposal to create a Graduate School of the Environment as well as alternatives to that school. In addition, the council has been asked to advise Grey about the long-term relationship between this leadership and governance structure and the John Muir Institute for the Environment. That institute was formed two years ago with the purpose of serving as an incubator for environmental research projects--and as the anchor institution for the Environmental Initiative. Peter Rock, dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, will be the initial convening dean for the coordinating council. He believes the campus must move aggressively to bring the numerous segments of its environmental expertise together into a much more cohesive organization. "We are very much more than we are perceived to be in the environmental area, and our primary goal is to rectify these misperceptions by aggressive, effective action," Rock said. The Environmental Initiative dates back to the spring of 1996 when UC Davis first identified three cross-disciplinary areas--the environment, globalization and health--believed to have the potential of boosting the campus's reputation as an academic and research leader. Of the three, the idea of a campuswide environmental focus drew the largest contingent of enthusiastic faculty members. A Commission on the Environment developed from the initial effort, and Robert Flocchini, professor of land, air and water resources, was put in charge. In March 1997, the commission received a three-year, $1.1 million grant from the campus New Initiatives Reserve fund to work on two specific research projects under the initiative's umbrella. One of those projects, called the Putah-Cache Creek Bioregion Project, joined biologists, social scientists, arts, writers and others in an effort to develop an in-depth picture of Yolo County's two watersheds. The other project involved ecologists and community designers working in the Sustainable Communities Consortium to help the region plan for growth. Later, in June 1998, the Environmental Initiative became one of 10 cross-disciplinary initiatives formally created in the first stage of academic planning, with the idea that some new faculty positions would be dedicated to working on the initiative. As part of the academic planning, the deans were asked to integrate the initiatives into their unit plans.