Roberts Environmental Center Goals for 2003-2004

In addition to the established goals addressed in the introduction to this report, the external review resulted in a number of specific suggestions which the REC is assimilating as specific goals for the coming and future years.  These include the following.

Involve more economics faculty  -  The REC will pursue possible collaboration with other researchers at CMC, other academic institutions, and the securities analysis sector.  Mark Massoud (back from sabbatical mid semester), Mark Cohen (one of the external reviewers), and analysts at The Calvert Group have expressed immediate interest in such collaboration.

Hire a research associate  -  The REC will aggressively pursue foundation support for funding a research associate (with the help of Jerry Garris and maybe others in the development office) but in the meantime will attempt to hire a part-time research analyst out of current funds.

Further refine the PSI  -  The REC will add topics to the PSI suggested by the external review and The Calvert Group and will subset and augment the data already in the database in order to assess degree of correspondence with the Global Reporting Initiative.

Relate the PSI scores to financial reporting of firms  -  The REC will begin this process by completing PSI scoring of reports from the 20 Fortune Global 500 firms ranked as having 1) highest profits, 2) largest increase in revenues, 3) largest return on revenues, 4) biggest losses, 5) largest increase in profits, and 6) largest return on assets.  We will also complete the scoring in the Electric Power and Pharmaceutical industries to encompass the 20 firms in each of these sectors rated for corporate reputation by RRC.

Explore why some firms are better at reporting than others  -  The REC will attempt to formulate a methodology for such an analysis by exploring corporate metrics which can be correlated with PSI scores.

Publish this research in mainstream journals  -  The REC will correlate overall and subsets of PSI scores with the financial performance and reputation metrics mentioned above and will begin the preparation of academic papers for publication in the appropriate technical journals.

Engage more alumni of the Claremont Colleges as possible sources of internships and employment for students and alumni  -  The REC will ask the alumni office to identify as many candidates as they can who might have professional interests that would intersect with those of EEP majors, and will send them letters exploring the possibility.

Augment the REC board with new members who could assist in finding student internships and jobs  -  The REC will request that the Administration appoint at least two new board members during the coming year, and help to identify other potential board members from the alumni pool who may be in sympathy with the REC’s agenda.

 

 

Introduction and General Goals

The principal goal of the Roberts Environmental Center (REC) is to involve students in real-world environmental issues and to train them to analyze the issues from as broad a perspective as possible, taking science, economics and policy into consideration. The Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) major which incorporates all three disciplines is sponsored by the REC, and the REC Director is the Chair of the major.  Many, but not all, of the students involved with the REC are EEP majors.

We are pursuing this primary goal in two largely orthogonal venues: 1) corporate environmental and social transparency and performance, and 2) management of natural resources on public lands, particularly those in California’s deserts and eastern Sierra where we have academic interests and field facilities.

We are approaching the corporate issues by researching, and through that research attempting to influence, global corporate environmental transparency and performance.  Our approach is to analyze the environmental and sustainability reporting of the worlds largest corporations and to publish the results in technical papers, in commercial books, and on our own website. Our first paper on this topic was published last year, another done jointly with two EEP students was published in December 2002[1], and a book, Clean Green & Read All Over: Ten Rules for Corporate Environmental and Sustainability Reporting documenting the results of the Center’s research of the past two years was published by the American Society for Quality in June, 2002[2].

We are approaching the land management issues by teaching students some of the primary skills used by agency specialists (including geographic information systems (GIS), geographic positioning systems (GPS), satellite image analysis, vegetation analysis, statistical data analysis, photographic documentation, etc.) and by involving them in summer field research related to agency management and to activities of environmental NGOs. The REC has just finished negotiating a $60,000 contract with the Bishop office of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management to study the success of reseeding two major forest fire areas about an hour north of the Burger Reserve.  The Burger students this year initiated the five-year study under the direction of Dr. Sia Morhardt, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at Pitzer College. Emil and Sia Morhardt are also finishing a guide to California desert wildflower families and genera which will be published by the University of Calfornia Press in early 2004.  If commercially successful, it may be the first of a series of natural history field guides of eastern and southeastern California partially supported by the Center.

Associated with these activities is the goal of increasing the visibility of the REC through our publications, websites, and personal contacts at meetings and other venues

Activities during the 2002-2003 Academic Year

External Review

For the first time, the Center underwent a review by a group of academicians unconnected to CMC.  The team of three included a professor of management from a graduate school of business, a professor of environmental studies from a comparable liberal arts college, and a professor of biology from a major research university. They are Mark A. Cohen (Professor of Management at the Owen Graduate School, Vanderbilt University), Kai N. Lee (Rosenburg Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College), and H. Craig Heller (Lorry Lokey/Businesswire Professor of Biological Sciences and Human Biology, Stanford University). The report resulting from the review was forwarded to all REC board members and was the main topic of discussion at the annual board meeting. 

EEP Clinic Program and the Center’s research

The PSI website  -  The main goal of the REC clinic program in 2002-2003, which involved 12 students, was to utilize the Pacific Sustainability Index (developed in the Center and published in its 2002 book on environmental and sustainability reporting) to score the environmental and sustainability reports of the world’s largest industrial companies for transparency and corporate performance.  By the end of the first semester we had about 100 reports scored and a website developed to present the data publicly.  The site went live in February 2003 accompanied by an announcement by email to a mailing list, developed by the center, of 600 people  -  mostly corporate environmental executives and governmental environmental personnel around the world. The spring 2003 clinic added another 50 scores which were announced by email in May.  By the end of the summer we had 220 reports scored and the results posted.  This continues to be the most detailed and systematic analysis of these types of corporate reports, and a major work product of the Center.

Meeting attendance  -   We are continuing to publicize the PSI efforts through meeting attendance. In May 2003, Emil Morhardt attended the World Environment Congress Annual Gold Medal meeting and ceremony in Washington D. C., and in June 2003 he attended the 2003 Business and Sustainability Conference run by The Conference Board in New York City.  These are two of the principal international annual forums for corporate environmental executives discussing their environmental and social programs and reports. The meetings have been invaluable in getting personal feedback on our activities from the people responsible for these reports.

The Calvert Group  -  The PSI scoring has caught the eye of two analysts in the Calvert Social Research Department who are proposing to use a subset of its results as the basis for judging corporate environmental and social transparency for use in assembling socially responsible mutual funds. We have sent them some of our data on the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and will examine the semiconductor industry this fall as a part of their pilot project. One of the analysts is Lily Donge ’92.

Rating Research LLC (RRC)  -  This new firm, founded by Scott Douglass, a former Vice President in charge of ratings at Moody's Investors Service , rates American companies for their reputations in eight dimensions, two of which  -  ethical behavior and social responsibility  -  intersect with aspects of the PSI.  RRC has recently published ratings of the pharmaceutical and electrical power industries, and is interested in comparing how its results, obtained entirely from interviews, relate to the results of the PSI. 

Bureau of Land Management Contract  -   The REC has negotiated (and completed the first year’s fieldwork on) a 5-year $60,000 contract with the U. S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management to evaluate the effects of reseeding on the recovery of four areas in the eastern Sierra burned last year in two separate major forest fires. This is a major five-year field effort involving over a hundred randomly-placed transects each year of 7 or 8 quadrats each. The quadrats are large squares, 2 meters on a side, within which the amount of area covered by each of every plant species present must be estimated.  The students therefore must learn a significant amount of plant taxonomy and be able to identify many plant species at all stages of their life cycles.  They also must record the GPS coordinates of all transects, enter tham into the Center’s geographic information system (GIS) and produce maps, enter the field data into a database, and produce a summary data report.  Subsequent years will include acquisition, digital analysis, and presentation of state-of-the-art satellite imagery (0.6 meter resolution) of the four areas. The research goal of the satellite image analysis is to assess the utility of this newly-available imagery in monitoring fire recovery. Dr. Sia Morhardt is managing the project, training the students in plant taxonomy, and overseeing the fieldwork.

 

Student Employees and Summer Internships

Rachel Chard ’03, Peregrine Lahm ’03 and Sara Leverette ‘03 worked in the REC during the 2002-2003 academic year, and Andrea Bravo, Johns Hopkins University ’06 worked during the summer of 2003, doing quality control and scoring corporate environmental and sustainability reports and posting the results to the Roberts web site

Four students spent the summer of 2003 at the CMC Mono Basin Field Station at the Burger Reserve. David Gilbert ’04, Justin Pressfield ’04, Brian Pringle ’04, and Noah Zogas, ‘04 conducted the initial fieldwork on the REC’s BLM contract to assess the effectiveness of reseeding after the Cannon and Slinkard fires near Walker California.

The REC also funded:

·       Nora Sutton ’04 doing summer research with John Coates, a professor at UC Berkeley in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department. “I am studying bacteria that, when in an anaerobic environment, are able to break down perchlorate, a common pollutant from munitions. I developed an immunoprobe kit able to detect chlorate dismutase (CD), the enzyme that is produced by bacteria that are using perchlorate as an energy source. This was done using the previously purified CD antibody and a labeled secondary antibody. I will be giving a presentation on my work at our lab meeting in August and John will be speaking on my work at the Association for Environmental and Health Sciences (AEHS) meeting in October. If you would like, I can send you a copy of my power point presentation as well as a copy of the abstract (that includes my name) submitted to AEHS later this summer. This summer I have gained an immeasurable amount of laboratory experience and personal insight into the field, graduate school, and possibilities in my future. Thank you for providing me with this opportunity.”

·       Benjamin Schachter ’04 who worked for Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). He says “It has been a truly wonderful opportunity.  I have written for their newsletter the Global Pesticide Campaigner, helped to organize materials for a protest against the June Sacramento Ministerial on Agriculture, started planning an April 2004 Pesticide Forum and started an ongoing research project on the 6 largest biotech corporations (Dow, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, DuPont and Monsanto).”

·       a supplemental grant to Donald Pipkin working on carbon futures primarily under Kravis Institute funding.

Sponsored Lectures

During the 2002-2003 academic year the Roberts Environmental Center sponsored the following lectures at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

• Bjorn Lomborg  -  Professor of Statistics at the University of Arnhaus, Director of the Danish Institute for Environmental Assessment, and author of  The skeptical environmentalis,, the most controversial book on the state of the world environment in a decade.
• Stephen Schneider  -  Professor of Biology at Stanford University, MacArthur Fellow, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and member of the core writing team for the 2001 IPCC reports on climate change
• Robert Goldberg  -  Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at UCLA, and a strong proponent of genetically modified foods.
• Gary Comstock  -  Professor of philosophy and director of the ethics program at North Carolina State University, author of Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology, and a recent convert from opposing genetically modified foods on ethical grounds to becoming a cautious proponent of them.
• Michael Fay  -  National Geographic Explorer describing his 2000-mile walk through generally uninhabited and roadless areas of the Congo basin (Yikes!).

 

The Environment, Economics, and Politics Major

 

Graduating seniors

In May 2003 four CMC seniors and one Scripps senior graduated with the EEP major (thesis titles follow names):

Perigrine Lahm  -  (Emil Morhardt not one of the readers, title unavailable at press time).

Sara Leverette—Things that creepeth. (An examination of the interplay between religion and environmental policy in the United States.)

Rachel van Dusen (EEP Scripps)  -  DDT and Malaria:Eco-colonialism, the ethics of science, and Western imperialism.

Rachel Wilson— No more cancer cures? The rise of genomics and its implications for conservation of biodiversity.

In addition, Emil Morhardt was also thesis reader for the following non-EEP graduating seniors

Courtney Scott (Pitzer)—Could creating a protein biochip for coral reefs provide a foundation for coral restoration ecology?

 

Activities of EEP Graduates—There have been 86 EEP graduates and we know the current (or at least recent) positions of most of them.  Many of these positions deal in some way with environmental matters and reflect a continuation of the interests which led these alumni to choose the EEP major. It is striking, however, to look at the range of graduate programs and professions and into which EEP graduates go.

Asif Ahmed                      1995     Marketing manager, Gemstar/TV Guide

Dona Anderson                1996     Energy Consultant, Peace Corps, Slovak Republic

Dana Armanino                1995     Administration, Western Plastics

Michael Asakawa            1999    

Sarah Baird                      2001     Dept. of Resource Econ., U. C. Berkeley—Ph. D. Student

Sedina Banks                   2000     University of California, Davis, Law School ‘03

Kate Beardsley                1997     Consultant, The Gas Institute

Molly Blumer                  1996     Business Manager, The Press Restaurant, Claremont

Ryan Bogen                      1997     CEO, D3 Technologies

Thomas Casey                  1995

Lui Cevallos                    1995     Project Engineer, Kemp Bros. Construction, Santa Fe Springs

David Cherney                 2002     Graduate Student, Yale School of Forestry

John Cherry                      1995     2Lt/Platoon Leader, U. S. Army

Robert Cole                     1995     Systems Dev. Specialist, Mani Global Communications

Eric Craig                        1994     Senior Financial Analyst, Vital Processing

Allison Davis                  2000     Broadcast Associate, CBS News

Sean Dempsey                 1995     Director, Corp. Dev. and Strategy, Microsoft Corporation

Anita Dhingee                  2000     Engineer, City of Los Angeles Dept of Public Works

Kristen Edwards              1999

Suchada Eickemeyer        1999     United States Army

Gwendolyn Fanger           1994     Attorney, Federal Trade Commission

Gary Feramisco               1997     Underwriter, Brockbank Insurance Services

Sarah Frazee                    1995     Program Assistant, Conservation International

Kelly Freeman                 2002     Watson Fellow (studying in India, Peru, and Venezuela)

Kathryn Gaffney               1998     UC Berkeley School of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning ‘05

Sally Garrison                 1995     Attorney

Patrick Gorgue                 1995

Courtney Goren                2000     Air Quality Analyst, Sonoma Technology, Inc.

Patrick Gorgue                 1996

Billy Grayson                  2000     Asst. National Field Director, Sierra Club

Brian Gross                     1995     Urban Planner

Graham Guess                  1994     Financial Counselor, Managing Partner, Xelan, Inc.

Christopher Hamilton      1997     E-Commerce Product Manager, Zing.com

Brent J. Hoberg                1999     Environmental Engineer, Kip Prahl Associates

Clive Hsu                         2000

Carlos Jallo                     1994

David Jarrat                     1993

David Juiliano                 2002    

Courtney Jung                  1999     Law student, Georgetown Law Center ‘02

Margaret Kaiser               2000     Law student, Columbia University ‘03

Caleb Kelly                     2000     Associate Engineer, Iwin.com

Daniel Klaus                    2002     Wrigley Biological Research Station, Catalina Island

Rachel Kokjer                  1996

Cho-Yi Kwan                  2000     Graduate Student, Duke University Nicholas School

Peregrine Lahm                2003     Graduate Student, Oregon Graduate Research Institute

Yee Kee Lam                   2000     Analyst, J. P. Morgan

Thomas Lambakis            1995     IT Director, Tucker Alan, Inc., Los Angeles

Greger Larson                  1996     Graduate Student, University of Colorado

Sara Leverette                  2003     Environmental Consultant,

Brett Lim                          1998     Director of Marketing, Radio Satellite Integrators

Christopher Lloyd            2001

Christina Wagner Lovato1993      Attorney

Scott Marshall                 1996     Investment Analyst, Forest Capital Partners

Erin Mastagni                  2002

Mayumi Matsuno             2001     Management Consultant, Deloitte Consulting, New York

Mark McMahon               2000     Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps

Justin Carter Meek           1999     Management Consultant, Maxtera Enterprises

Andrew Meyer                 1992     Environmental Consultant

Megan Murphy                 1997     Law Student, University of Colorado

Kimberlee Myers             2000     Environmental Analyst, Sapphos Environmental, Pasadena

Allyson Nakamoto           1993

Edward Paek                   2001     Environmental Analyst, Sapphos Environmental

Nicole Puckhaber            1996     Consultant, The Boston Consulting Group

Greg Rasner                     1995     Director, Internet and Systems, Silicon Energy

Rachel Richards              1999     Management Consultant, Deloitte and Touche, Los Angeles

Julie Rodriguez                1994     Attorney, Jenner & Block, Chicago

Todd Sax                         1993     Air Pollution Specialist, California Air Resources Board

Paul Seilo                        1999

Tom Sheets                      1998     Senior Associates, Trammell Crows Company

Jeffrey Stein                     1999     Stanford Business School ‘05

Gregory Tansey               1993

Deena Tibshraeny            1994     Group Sales Manager, Macy's

Michael Trowbridge        1996     Soseiworld Corporation Group, Japan

Calandra Turner               2001     Associate Consultant, Bain & Company

James Uwins                    1998     Environmental Compliance Officer, U. S. Marine Corps.

Rachel Van Dusen            2003     PostBac pre-med program, Johns Hopkins University

Brian Vlasich                   2000     Air Quality Instrument Specialist, South Coast AQMD

Tina Wang                       1998     Law student, USC ‘05

Megan Wargo                  2000     Duke University MA program in Resource Economics ‘03

Eric Wilson                     1996     Project Manager, EDAW, Inc.

Rachel Wilson                 2003     Risk Analyst, Marsh Associates

Ryan Wingo                     2001

Stewart Winkler               1993     President, Winkler Reality Investments LLC

Mary Wong                      1995     Project Coordinator, Tele Atlas North America, Inc.

Maxwell Woods              2001

Trevor Yeats                    1996     Research Analyst, ICF Consulting.Washington D. C.

Comments from Graduating Seniors

“At first, when people hear what my major is, some of them look confused and say, "What do you do with that?"  When I point out how crucial it is to understand economic and political issues as well as science in order to accomplish any environmental improvements, the "light comes on," and they express relief that SOMEBODY is planning to do something about the environment.  I get a lot of positive feedback about my major.

 The courses are from diverse departments at the school, and yet they all fit together amazingly well.  Ecology, Environmental Economics, and Environmental Law, for instance, complemented each other perfectly.  The EEP clinic was great exposure to how corporations are publicly responding to environmental concerns. 

The major requires many courses, but still provides sufficient flexibility for a student to specialize towards science, economics, or government, or to remain general.  It even allowed me to get the extra math and science classes required to get into a graduate school program in environmental science and engineering.”  -  Peregrine Lahm, ‘02

“I found the Roberts Environmental Center as well as the staff to be
accessible, welcoming and helpful.  Each student was allowed his or her
own key and was able to use the Center's state of the art facilities,
resources and amenities, even to use the large meeting table as a quiet
place to study.  Professor Morhardt, chair of the major and head of the
institute is himself a valuable resource as he has many professional
ties and connections and he is extremely knowledgeable and patient with
students.  I also found the other students in the major to be rich
resources as they came from such different academic backgrounds and had
such diverse research interests and connections.

Through my experience with the EEP major and Roberts Environmental
Center, I feel that I am now able to critically analyze both sides of
complicated environmental issues.  For one interested in pursuing a
career in any environmental field it is crucial to be able to understand
the motives, perspectives, as well as costs and benefits of both the
industry leaders and environmental stakeholders.  Having taken courses
such as Natural Resource Management and Environmental Economics, I feel
that I now have a realistic grasp on highly political environmental
issues. 

Given its flexibility of course requirements and multi-disciplinary
nature, the EEP major has also enabled me the freedom and complimentary
benefit of being able to study abroad through an ecology and
conservation program in Madagascar, intern at the Environmental
Protection Agency, as well as to take a wide range of courses.  I feel
that I have received a true liberal arts education because of this.
This major gave me the freedom to pursue my own specific interests and
avenues of curiosity in an exciting and progressive field.  Because of
the diversity of course options and different disciplines, I was able to
explore so many areas while at the same time being able to relate them
to one another and meld them into a single area of study. I was also
able to get the most of the five college consortium as I experienced a
variety of different professors and styles of teaching.  During my time
in Claremont, I took micro and macro economics at the technical school
of Harvey Mudd, conservation biology first hand in the field while in
Madagascar, environmental economics at Scripps, biology and ecology at
the Joint Science Department, and the math-related bio-statistics course
at Claremont McKenna”  -  Rachel Van Dusen, Scripps ‘02

“The partnership between the Environmental, Economics, and Politics (EEP) major and the Roberts Environmental Center (REC) enables students to seek a better world.   The major provides a strenuous, holistic curriculum focused on the forces affecting man’s relationship with the environment: science, money, and culture.  It is based on the theory that effective environmentalism requires an understanding of economics and society; no part of the triad exists outside the others. This innovative approach to bridging the natural and economic worlds opens the door to creative solutions in all sectors of the world.  The REC provides funding for student internships and independent research.  It allows for real world application of the EEP major.  Both the EEP major and the REC teach the principles of realistic resource management and inspire real world application.

As a recent graduate of the Environment, Economics, and Politics major, I intimately know what both the major and the Roberts Environmental Center offer.  During the summer before my senior year, the REC funded my internship with the Los Angeles office of the Environmental Defense, a non-profit working on international environmental issues.  During my internship I learned about government structure, environmental advocacy, and the endless hours and reams of paper that go into social change.  I saw the facets of my education in action.  After graduating, the REC funded my continued work with the evaluation of corporate sustainability reports, a research project founded and run by Dr. Morhardt.  This has made possible my pursuit of a healthy, environmentally minded, economy.”  -  Sara Leverette

Board Members

The annual board meeting was held on August 16 at Silver Lake.

Richard C. Adams, Jr. '62

Dale Burger

Terry D. Evans '59

Michael G. Graber '74

Brent F. Howell '62 Chair

Suzanne Maltby-Burger

J. Emil Morhardt Director

George R. Roberts ‘66

Marshall C. Sale '62

Gary J. Smith ‘73

Jack L. Stark '57

 

 

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