Introducing the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute (RCEI)

October 5, 2023

Dear Rutgers–New Brunswick Community,

As we continue to redefine the meaning of excellence in higher education, Rutgers–New Brunswick is taking bold steps to implement our Academic Master Plan and its Four Pillars of Excellence: Scholarly Leadership, Innovative Research, Student Success, and Community Engagement.

This enterprise continues with our launch of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute (RCEI)—a locus for transformative, interdisciplinary scholarship on climate change, renewable energy production, energy conservation, and their environmental dimensions.

Over this academic year, RCEI will incorporate and expand upon the activities of three currently existing institutes: the Rutgers Climate Institute (RCI), Rutgers Energy Institute (REI), and Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS).

Those institutes have built outstanding scholarly communities and established our stellar worldwide reputation in climate change scholarship. We will invite their affiliated faculty and staff to join RCEI under its Interim Director, Professor Julie Lockwood, who currently serves as Interim Director of EOAS. The leaders of the other institutes will serve in leadership or advisory board positions within RCEI.

RCEI will be a force multiplier and enable Rutgers–New Brunswick to make significant advances in producing the knowledge needed for a resilient, equitable, and sustainable climate future; communicating and contextualizing that scholarship; and inspiring climate action.

RCEI will convene interdisciplinary teams of scholars on the social, historical, and physical dimensions of climate change, low-carbon energy transitions, wind energy, and climate and energy communications, and it will create physical and virtual spaces for faculty, staff, students, and stakeholders to collaborate and innovate across these areas. The new institute will collaborate with the Rutgers Office of Climate Action and other units across Rutgers that engage with climate and energy science.

Having a unified Rutgers–New Brunswick home for climate change and energy research will help ensure investments realize their greatest intended effect, open new avenues for the pursuit of large-scale, externally-funded projects, and allow philanthropic supporters to more easily identify ways to amplify their interests and goals.

Funding for RCEI will include $2.5 million from the Chancellor Challenge, which will be awarded over three years; dedicated funding from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; and additional support through other Rutgers–New Brunswick schools, including the School of Engineering, School of Arts and Sciences, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and Mason Gross School of the Arts, whose faculty will serve in RCEI leadership roles and/or enhance RCEI Programs. This coming together of multiple schools and divisions will expand the resources available to the institute, and we expect RCEI’s funding sources to further diversify as it moves from inception to full operation.

This ambitious initiative is worthy of Rutgers–New Brunswick’s status as the #15 top public university in the nation and a member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

Please join me in thanking the RCI, REI, and EAOS faculty, staff, and leaders for all that they have accomplished for the benefit of the human condition—and in welcoming Interim Director Lockwood and all those who will join RCEI as we bring that work to its next level. I am also grateful to Senior Vice Provost for Research Denise Hien and her team for leading this reorganization and expansion of our climate and energy scholarship.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will provide further updates about our implementation of the AMP across a rich variety of strategic priorities and initiatives. We will provide the latest information on their progress and welcome your feedback as we move toward their implementation.

Rutgers–New Brunswick is a powerful community of scholars, staff, and students. Working together we can make an impact on the future of our planet and make the world a better place for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Francine Conway, Ph.D.
Chancellor and Distinguished Professor
Rutgers University–New Brunswick