Giving to Environmental Studies

The goal of Environmental Studies has always been to provide our students with the best possible opportunities to learn and develop. We have an outstanding faculty and staff; people who are talented, committed, and effective. There are goals, however, that we are struggling to accomplish in a time of tight resources. We need your help so that we can provide our students the education we want to and that they deserve.

Environmental Studies has several targets that could particularly benefit from your support:
(click on the name to learn more about each area)

1. Schuyler Lecturer Fund                        
   
2. Marc McGinnes Environmental Law and Advocacy Scholarship Fund
   
3. Student Resource Hall
   
4. Field Trips and Outside Activities Fund
   
5. Student Development Functions
   
6. Endowed Chair in Environmental Studies
   
7. Unrestricted Funds

How to Give

1) Pledging by Email: To register a donation to the ES Program please write a note to our department chair, Dr. Josh Schimel (schimel@lifesci.ucsb.edu). Be sure to include the amount you plan to contribute as well as which area you want your donation to apply. A representative from the ES Program and/or the UCSB Development office will then contact you to discuss mehtods of payment.

2) Donating by Check: For unresticted giving or donations to any of the taget areas listed above you may send a check payable to "UC Regents" and then in the memo section of the check indicate "ES Program" - and title of the name of the fund/cause (i.e. ES Program - Student Resource Room). Please make sure you clearly indicate which area you want to donate and if you wish to make your donation unrestricted just leave the memo section blank or mark it "unrestricted." Then send your check to:

Josh Schimel, Chair
Environmental Studies Program - MC 4160
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4160

Thank you for your support and consideration! Please do not hesitate to contact ES Program Chair, Josh Schimel, or Program Manager, Jo Litte, if you have any questions about giving to the Environmental Studies Program at UCSB.

Dr. Josh Schimel, Chair Environmental Studies Program schimel@lifesci.ucsb.edu (805) 893-2905

Jo Little, Manager Environmental Studies Program little@es.ucsb.edu (805) 893-7547

Schuyler Lecturer Fund
This fund was created to honor Environmental Studies Lecturer Emeritus Barry Schuyler, and through him to honor and support lecturers in the ES Program. Lecturers have long been a crucial component of our program. They bring a real-world, hands-on, experiential insight to complement the academic perspectives provided by our faculty.

The Schuyler Lecturer Fund has two primary goals:

1. Support our existing lecturers with resources for professional development and to enhance their classes.

2. Allow us to periodically invite individuals to teach classes (either special short courses or full quarter-length courses) that would provide unique opportunities for our students.

Marc McGinnes Environmental Law and Advocacy Scholarship Fund
Marc McGinnes was a critical part of the Environmental Studies Program through his contagious enthusiasm and commitment to our students. He created a program in environmental law and conflict resolution as an integral part of the overall ES program. He inspired many students to pursue careers in environmental law.

To honor Marc on his retirement, and to support talented students who are interested in careers in environmental law, we established the Marc McGinnes Environmental Law and Advocacy Scholarship Fund to support one aspiring environmental law student each year.

Student Resource Hall Renovation
With our move to the Bren Building, we acquired a wonderful, large, open hall to use as a student resource room and lounge. We’ve installed our computing facility, a conference table, and some chairs. It is functional, but sparse.

We want to turn this room into a high quality resource that will allow students to work and study effectively. We want it to be a resource that students will use regularly and that will build interactions among students and with faculty. These relationships are among the most valuable experiences that our students take away from an ES degree.

To create the facility that will accomplish these goals, we need to partition and better equip the facility. Specifically, we need:

• A retractable partition between the computing facility and the remainder of the area to provide some quiet work space.
• An overhead projector and folding chairs so we can use the area for seminars.
• Built-in closets in the bays along the edges of the room for storage.
• Built-in shelves for the ES library.
• Ccouches and chairs to provide comfortable seating areas for group study and interaction.

Field Trips and Outside Activities Fund
Nothing can replace going into the field and getting your “hands dirty” for really learning about the environment. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then an experience is worth 1,000 pictures. For a student, spending time in the field is an opportunity to interact with, and get to know, faculty that can never be matched in the classroom.

It is vital for ES to be able to provide as many field trip opportunities as possible, and to make those as valuable as possible. Thus, we wish to develop a fund to support off-campus excursions.

Student Development Functions
ES provides regular activities to help student interactions and growth.  They include weekly student mixers attended by the ES Peer Advisors and faculty with occasional speakers, an orientation session every fall for new and potential ES majors, poster sessions associated with ES program functions during the academic year, and the year end commencement awards ceremony and reception.  We depend on outside funding to be able to offer these events, which are not supported by state funds.

Endowed Chair in Environmental Studies
An Endowed Chair provides a spectacular opportunity for Environmental Studies to recruit world class faculty to campus and thus to enhance environmental scholarship on campus and to provide extraordinary opportunities to our students. We currently have two endowed Chairs in the Environmental Studies Program: Dr. Bill Freudenburg (Dehlsen Chair), and Dr. Carla D’Antonio (Schuyler Chair), two amazing scholars and teachers. 

While there are several areas where a new Chair could enhance our program, our top priority would be in environmental literature, journalism, & communication. We would seek a scholar whose expertise is in the presentation of the environment in the media of some form and how that colors environmental action and policy. This is a large area touching literature, the arts, and history at one end (how did Thoreau or Carson influence environmental movements), and journalism, documentary film, and politics at the other (how do different groups use the media to present visions of the environment that support their particular environmental policies). The right person would therefore be effective in bridging humanities and policy and integrating scholarly and practical perspectives. We would very much like to see someone who could teach environmental journalism/writing and so help students develop concrete skills as well as a deeper understanding of how perception and policy interact.

Unrestricted Funds
Need we say more? In all our lives, challenges and problems periodically arise that need an infusion of funds to solve. Environmental Studies is no different. Our supply of unrestricted funds to meet emerging challenges is almost non-existent. In the past, we have used this type of money to bring speakers to campus to contribute to classes, to support student mixers, to buy teaching supplies and replace equipment, and other such activities. An ‘unrestricted’ gift helps to cover the important aspects of the ES academic mission for which there are not other sources of funding.