Ducks Give '22

The Environment Initiative (EI) provides transformative research, education, and leadership to address the urgent challenges and opportunities of a changing climate.  Rooted in the EI Guiding Principles, the EI launches and sustains areas of expertise and inquiry that are relevant for the state and ecoregion, that are nationally significant in creating new problem-solving pathways, and that are globally recognized.    

“The UO’s Environment Initiative grows from our institutional strength in this area. It imagines entirely new organizing principles for a state flagship university. It fosters transdisciplinary approaches to teaching, research and service. And it amplifies all that we know, through our diverse perspectives and voices, about building a just and livable future.”  

--Executive Director Adell Amos 

Giving to the Environment Initiative Fund will: 

• facilitate current experiential learning opportunities and allow for development of additional experiential learning opportunities where students learn by doing; 
• provide support for the many environment-related programs, centers, and institutes on campus;
• fund transdisciplinary research projects that have enormous potential to deliver relevant research to inform policy decision makers and the communities we serve.

With the urgency created by the impacts of climate change and the need for environmental justice woven throughout, with our Environment Initiative we strive to be:

• Multi-disciplinary and innovative in building opportunities for teaching, research, and service centered around climate solutions and environment and sustainability related topics;
• Policy-relevant, data-driven, evidence based, applied, translational, and responsive to the urgency of our environmental challenges;
• Rooted and focused on issues of equity and social and environmental justice in which we add and amplify voices in the conversation, including work directly with or within diverse communities, including Indigenous, Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and other communities;
• Relevant and responsive to the needs of local communities, tribal nations, the state, the eco-region and beyond; and/or
• Tied to direct student outcomes, experiential learning offerings, and new ways of thinking about professional pathways for a changing world.

The Environment Initiative is the place for promoting and answering questions on how to conserve, preserve, and sustain our environment. Let’s build an action plan together. Work with us. Give to the Environment Initiative during Ducks Give and help support environmental learning and research at the University of Oregon.