Safeguarding our Future Through the Center for Environmental Studies

The Center for Environmental Studies supports a wide range of research, teaching and outreach, including the Environmental Studies minor, which takes a multidisciplinary approach to the urgent issues facing us now. Environmental dilemmas require the scientific, social and cultural approaches — the scope and scale of which necessitate the insights of all the academic disciplines along with robust conversations across them.

How do we understand the Earth and its many environments and living systems? How have cultural ideas and social pressures shaped how we understand those systems? What does it mean to seek environmental justice in an era of climate instability? How do we understand energy systems and our reliance on them? How do we understand the economics of energy and the environment? How are environmental policy and law shifting to accommodate the changing circumstances of our planet? How can architecture and design help us envision and build more resilient structures, infrastructures and communities int he face of extreme circumstances? How are our views on the environment shaped by religious beliefs and practices? How can we thrive in a world of increasing exposure to toxicity and waste? What futures do we envision when we conjure terms like conservation, sustainability, resilience and adaptation? What literatures, histories, theologies and philosophies guide interactions with natural systems, including a wide diversity of life forms? How do the arts and media respond to environmental dilemmas and create possibilities for change? Visit enst.rice.edu to learn more.

Your support is crucial to helping us address these seemingly intractable challenges while meeting the interests of students from across disciplines on campus. To discuss gift opportunities, please contact us.