The Bren School of Environmental Science & Management is emerging as the preeminent institution for solution-centered environmental research and education. Our goal is to train professionals in a comprehensive, balanced, interdisciplinary approach to Environmental Science & Management. We seek funding support for special programs to ensure that the school is able to effectively teach new skill sets and research techniques. To learn more about how you can support the school’s special programs, please contact Assistant Dean of Development Jennifer Purcell Deacon.

PRIORITY PROGRAMS

The Fund for Excellence

The Bren School aims to be the leader in graduate education and research in the area of Environmental Science & Management. Our Fund for Excellence ensures that the school has the financial ability to seize important opportunities for expansion and development at a time when existing resources are stretched to meet an array of competing needs. Having immediate access to funds allows the dean to act decisively and embrace one-time opportunities that can propel the enterprise to the next level.

Gifts to the fund can have a transformative impact on the life of a young faculty member or student, and can be leveraged to secure additional funds and generate new opportunities.

The Fund for Excellence is exceedingly important to the school, and gifts of all sizes are welcome and encouraged. In accordance with university policy and presidential approval, we will be pleased to acknowledge some endowed gifts by naming selected prominent spaces in Bren Hall to honor the vision and generosity of our donors and reflect our gratitude in perpetuity.

Student Support

Diversity at Bren

Established by the graduating class of 2006, this fund supports outreach to and recruitment of students from populations that are underrepresented in Environmental Science & Management. Within the bounds of California law and university policy, donors can help play a significant role in contributing to the diversity of the Bren School’s student body, thereby making the school stronger and more representative of the world in which we live. Gifts of all sizes are most welcome and appreciated.

Eco-Entrepreneurship 

“Eco-E” is a partnership between two highly regarded academic centers at UCSB—the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the nationally recognized Technology Management Program (TMP) in the College of Engineering. Addressing serious environmental and natural resource problems requires ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Through their EE collaboration, the Bren School and TMP are expanding and promoting environmental entrepreneurship and technology transfer in an altogether new way. EE links innovation with the environment by providing entrepreneurial training and support for the launch of socially valuable new ventures. 

Eco-E is a green business incubator and gives Bren students the opportunity to spend up to two years developing a business concept, innovation or product that will solve an environmental problem or address an environmental need.

Gifts of all sizes are welcome and encouraged. Annual gifts of $500+ enable us to include Bren Alumni who have graduated in the last 10 years as Young members in the UCSB Chancellor’s Council. Those out more that 10 years become members at $1000.

Career Development Program

The Bren School has an excellent and comprehensive Career Development Program designed to help students become highly sought-after applicants and effective environmental professionals. The Career Development Program provides workshops on job search training, interview skills, and an array of other crucial job-seeking skills. One of the main components of the program is to assistant students in locating national and international internships in various sectors. 

Internships are an excellent way for Bren students to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real world situations and settings. As a result, all Bren students are encouraged to complete summer internships between their first and second year of study. The results are extraordinary: During the summer of 2005, 99 percent of the class of 2005 completed internships. 

With the goal of developing successful environmental problem solvers and placing Bren students in positions where they will have considerable impact on businesses and the environment, the Bren School Career Development Program is seeking ways to offer students more internship funding. As our program expands and we continue to produce quality students, it is essential that we are able to provide students with access to key organizations, a goal that has been difficult in the past due to a lack of internship funding. When students have funding opportunities available to them, they can approach any corporation, government agency, or nonprofit organization and develop new and exciting internship opportunities. They are no longer restricted to pursue paid internships. The focus can be on the company and the quality of the internship. 

Funding will help with more than just developing new internship opportunities, as many excellent unpaid international and nonprofit internship opportunities already exist. But without some form of funding, many students are unable to take advantage of these exciting and broadening opportunities. 

  Sustainable Nanotechnology Initiative (SNI)
Nanotechnology is the science of the supersmall. Working at the nano scale—a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter long, or about a million times smaller than the head of a pin—nanoscientists are manipulating atoms and molecules to create new materials that can dramatically improve a myriad of everyday and specialty products. With the potential it presents for engineering materials at the atomic level, nanotechnology could become as socially transforming as running water, electricity, and the Internet. Engineered nanoparticles are found in such things as clothing, athletic equipment, baby products, sunscreens, cosmetics, and medicine. More than eight hundred nano-enabled products are already on the market, and the number is rising exponentially over time. In this decade alone, nanotechnology is expected to become a $1 trillion business. Yet, for all the promise of nanotechnology, little is known about the environmental and health implications of engineered nanoparticles.

In tandem with the UC Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN), the Sustainable Nanotechnology Initiative (SNI) at UC Santa Barbara will support a growing society-wide effort to address the vital need for the safe and responsible development of nano-enabled products. Through SNI, business and industry can engage in research on this next great scientific frontier.

Sustainable Nanotechnology Initiative (SNI) Strategic Alliance

($10,000 Annual Contribution)

SNI Strategic Allies are members of the corporate and scientific community who seek to implement nano-enabled materials and products in an environmentally responsible manner. Contributing $10,000 annually to support the initiative, our SNI Strategic Allies benefit from monthly seminars and webcasts, training programs, and regular communication with scientists who are working at the leading edge of sustainable nanotechnology research. For more information, please contact Assistant Dean of Development Jennifer Purcell Deacon by e-mail or at (805) 893-5743.

SNI Fellowships

(Annual Fellowship is $50,000/Endowed Fellowship is $1,000,000)

The Bren School is proud to be part of one of a handful of universities worldwide offering PhD training in nanoscience and other emerging technologies that are at the forefront of Environmental Science & Management. SNI fellowships enable the Bren School to recruit the best and brightest applicants to our PhD program and to those of collaborating departments across UCSB. Recruitment packages may include fellowships (tuition and fees), research support, and summer internships, all of which are critical in enabling the Bren School to compete with other top-ranked programs for the most promising students. A full or partial fellowship is highly prestigious for the fellowship recipient and raises the visibility of the donor/company. We are honored to associate the name of the donor/company with the fellowship annually or in perpetuity, as appropriate. For more information about supporting PhD students working within the SNI, please contact Assistant Dean of Development Jennifer Purcell Deacon by e-mail or at (805) 893-5743.

SNI Summer Internships

(Annual Summer Internship is $10,000/Endowed Summer Internship is $200,000)

SNI Summer Internships offer PhD students hands-on training to better understand nanomaterials and their environmental implications. Working with state-of-the-art equipment in a UCSB laboratory setting, students will be introduced to the unique properties of nanomaterials while assessing their toxicity, mobility, persistence, and bioavailability. Students can also learn to synthesize novel nanomaterials that can be employed in solving environmental problems. Students who complete an SNI Summer Internship will be better positioned to contribute to ensuring that nanomaterials are produced in a responsible and environmentally safe manner, a concern that will remain vital for both science and society as the nanotechnology industry explodes during the twenty-first century. For more information about supporting an SNI PhD summer internship, please contact Assistant Dean of Development Jennifer Purcell Deacon by e-mail or at (805) 893-5743.

SNI-Targeted Research

In collaboration with SNI Director Arturo Keller, a company may wish to scope a particular SNI research project on the environmental applications or implications of a specific nanomaterial. For example, novel uses of nanomaterials for water filtration and treatment are currently under development. A company that produces a specific nanomaterial may want to better understand the risks associated with products that contain it, or receive help in designing an environmentally benign product that incorporates the benefits of nano-enabled materials. For more information about scoping a project, please contact Professor Arturo Keller by e-mail or at (805) 893-1822.

Global Impact Conference Series

Leading the Bren School’s intellectual life is a renowned faculty whose members have distinguished themselves across an array of disciplines. Through their collaborative research with scholars from around the globe, our faculty members advance the state of knowledge of Environmental Science & Management. 

To ensure that their research has its intended impact on resource managers and policy makers worldwide, the current state of knowledge on selected environmental issues must be organized and presented in a format useful to decision makers. This activity is often best accomplished in high-level conferences, where eminent thinkers at the forefront of diverse fields can come together for several days to synthesize and analyze research and provide meaningful contributions and recommended courses of action.

Often, conferences are the culmination of years of work by many players. As an academic institution, the Bren School is an ideal venue venue to convene conferences at which participants can discuss, debate, and collaborate free from distraction and partisan influence.

The Bren School seeks the resources to establish a high-level Impact Conference Series to enable the school to host gatherings with the goal of making a significant impact on the state of knowledge in selected areas of Environmental Science & Management. Gifts for a conference series would support publications, media briefings, conference planning, logistics, and meals, as well as honoraria, travel, and lodging for invited conference participants.

To learn more about how you can support the school’s special programs please contact Assistant Dean of Development Jennifer Purcell Deacon.

Environmental Modeling Laboratory

The Bren School seeks to attract the finest scholars and graduate students from across the nation and around the world. Once here, these scholars are empowered to conduct leading-edge, solution-centered teaching and research in the greenest laboratory facility in the United States.

The Environmental Modeling Laboratory (EML), a 950-square-foot facility on the third floor of Bren Hall, supports the Bren curriculum in computational modeling, geographic information systems (GIS), and environmental information management. It is home to 32 advanced GIS work stations, all of which offer state-of-the-art graphics, visualization, and data-processing capabilities and are linked to large-format, high-resolution color printers and scanners. Students store their extensive research and lab data on a 4-terabyte file server. Screens, projectors, a podium, DVD and VCR capability, audio inputs, and a computer with Internet connection provide for a full range of audio-visual needs.

Computer modeling has become an indispensable tool for many resources managers and policy makers. Models that integrate information and images play a key role in understanding Earth's natural systems. Such models enable researchers to map the world’s water resources and predict the effects of climate change over the next few decades, thus enabling governments to develop water-management policies today to address water challenges fare into the future.

A world-class teaching and research facility is essential for attracting and retaining eminent scholars in the field of Environmental Science & Management. The EML is such a facility, and because it is also the "central nervous system" of the Bren School's extensive desktop computing capability, its state-of-the-art hardware and software are updated annually. After a year of use, EML technology cycles to the Student Computing Facility for general use by master's students, and to the Davidson Student Commons, where second-year master's students use the computers to conduct Group Project research. Bren faculty and staff then benefit from the technology before it is passed to other units on campus or donated to the community. To ensure continued technological excellence in the EML and at the Bren School as a whole, we are seeking an endowment that will support the laboratory in perpetuity.

In accordance with university policy and presidential approval, we would be pleased to name the EML to permanently reflect our deep gratitude and honor a donor’s vision and generosity.