Just as it brings longer days, this spring brings several reasons to celebrate, even in the face of all that’s going on in the world. Preparations are underway for the SEFS community to welcome students and classes back to Anderson Hall in Spring quarter. Faculty and staff reoccupied the building earlier in the month and we’re eager to celebrate the reopening of the building with a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 10, complete with an in-house and sustainably produced ribbon reflective of our community’s values. The celebration will include remarks from the College’s Interim Dean Joel Thornton and UW President Robert Jones. While we are still settling into the new space and finding our stride, we look forward to hosting our community, our supporters and friends of SEFS on this important and much anticipated day. If you’d like to attend please find the event details on our calendar. 

This month we hosted several of our admitted prospective graduate students for our annual Grad Student Visit Day. In meeting with prospective students, I was reminded of the important journey these students are embarking on, despite so much uncertainty. Our students are leaders and future leaders who put in the effort to develop skills and capacities needed to be the strong researchers, problem solvers, and stewards of the environment our society needs them to be. While we work to defend science and truth in the face of a changing climate and biodiversity crisis, these students offer our community hope for the future.

We have begun preparation for our 2026 Sustaining Our World lecture, our main annual public event. This year Peter Reich from the University of Michigan will be sharing the ever evolving challenges that come with being a global change scientist. Peter’s lecture topic is “Hope on a Changing Planet: Science, Democracy, Nature and Us” – and you can find more information about Peter and this year’s lecture on our website. I hope you will save the date for the lecture on May 6 here at Anderson Hall. 

Dan Brown

School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Corkery Family Director’s Chair
Professor and Director