News Magazine of the UW Department of Communication
Maks Goldenshteyn, COM361
Borrowing a football metaphor, UW President Mark Emmert said at his annual address Tuesday that if the university is to make the next “catch” in maintaining its status as a premier research institution, it will need to develop its College of the Environment for the future.
In front of a nearly full Kane 130 auditorium, Emmert warned that the school risks letting “the opportunity for success slip through our fingers” by not having environmental and conservation studies as its primary focus points within the next decade or two.
Emmert said the UW needs to make the recently-established College of the Environment flourish despite internal debates about how to do that.
If successful, Emmert believes the College would attract every kind of support money he could think of, drawing parallels to the Congress-driven funding of medical research in the 1970s which put the UW on the map.
"Bang, away we went, and we haven’t looked back since,” Emmert said.
The UW currently allocates $140 million each year for environment-related research, according to the College of the Environment website.
Prevailing trends like alternative energy, global health, information technology and the crisis of rising urbanization will also need to be observed in order for the school to make the next catch, Emmert said.
“I can’t imagine anyone who looks out 10 years or 20 years who doesn’t believe that the issues around the environment, and global climate change, and sustainability aren’t more prominent than they are now,” he said. “And today they are pretty bloody prominent.”
Emmert said the UW needs to become a player in the energy game, adding that alternative energy research and exploration is fast becoming one of the dominant themes in the lives of UW’s undergraduate students.
The transfer of $1 trillion worldwide from developed countries to oil producers has heavy political and economic implications, Emmert said, adding that the U.S. alone writes checks worth $500 billion annually to the Gulf States, Venezuela and Russia.
Emmert said he believes the University of Washington can find success in the oil arena by finding a niche in alternative technologies like the algae fuels and cellulosic fibers already being studied at the UW.
Citing statistics from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Emmert identified another key area for exploration—mass urbanization. According to the UNFPA, human populations across the world are moving from rural settings to the city at a rate the world has never seen.
Reaching out to the Dean of UW College of Built Environments, Daniel Friedman, who was in attendance, Emmert asked: “What’s the UW’s position going to be? Where are we going to be when it comes to thinking about mass urbanization and mass migration?”
Emmert also emphasized the need for investment in global health, as issues like stem cell research, infectious diseases, cost control of medication and health care inequity will continue to gain prominence, he said.
The final trend on Emmert’s watch list is the new wave of information technology, something he said has led to “The Chips Ahoy Phenomenon.”
“We’ve got chips in everything,” he explained.
To take full advantage of the growing opportunities in science and technology, Emmert said the UW needs to be “lucky and good.”
“You get lucky because some of those trends work out the way you want them to and you should because you’re ready to take advantage of them when they come,” he said. “You know that they’re coming and you get to the right place, and you catch the ball.”
