Schlesinger Reappointed Dean of the Nicholas School

Success in enrollment, fund-raising and national visibility cited.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Durham, N.C. -- William H. Schlesinger, dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences since 2001, has been appointed to a second five-year term as dean, Provost Peter Lange announced Tuesday.

Lange said he and President Richard H. Brodhead are delighted to welcome Schlesinger for another term and look forward to working with him and with the Nicholas School community to build on the school’s momentum for an even brighter future.

“Since taking the helm in July 2001, Bill has shown himself to be a strong leader with clear goals and an ambitious vision for the Nicholas School,” Lange said. “He has worked to build enrollment in the Master of Environment Management/Master of Forestry program, to increase giving, to further unify the school’s different divisions and programs, and to raise its national visibility.”

During his tenure, the Nicholas School has seen a steady increase in enrollment in the professional program. The 2005 entering class of 121 will be one of the largest in the school’s history and demonstrates a 30 percent increase over four years ago. Annual fund giving is at its highest, having increased by 17 percent in 2003 and by 10 percent in 2004.

With the signing of the $70 million gift to the school from Peter and Ginny Nicholas of Boston in December 2003, Schlesinger has been able to push ahead with the plans for a new building that will bring the Durham units of the school together and to oversee the creation of the new Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. The series of environmental advertorials that have run this year on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and that Schlesinger championed to herald the September launch of the Nicholas Institute “have given the school unprecedented national exposure and are a vanguard of the kind of outreach the Institute will be conducting,” Lange said.

“Long an advocate of translating scientific research for the public, he has encouraged faculty to speak out when their findings are relevant to societal problems,” Lange said. “He personally has written and published numerous op-eds, testified before Congress and given dozens of speeches across the country on environmental issues,” he said.

“As president of the Ecological Society of America from 2003 to 2004, Bill took the opportunity to close his term with a speech asking his colleagues to join him by taking their research beyond the confines of academia. His talents have not gone unrecognized: in 2003 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences,” Lange said.

“I appreciate this vote of confidence in my leadership as we carry the Nicholas School to its next level where our excellent science has maximum impact on policy,” Schlesinger said.