The University announced a $10 million donation from alum Stuart Levenick and his wife, Nancy Levenick, to fund a new center aimed at creating climate change solutions.
The University plans to create the Levenick Center for a Climate-Smart Circular Bioeconomy. It will be housed in the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment and will be the first establishment of its kind in the United States, pending approval by the Board of Trustees in November.
The Levenick Center focuses on minimizing the use of fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals and utilizing technological resources to evaluate natural systems. The process to achieve that is by implementing a bioeconomy, which prioritizes recycling through waste to create new materials.
Madhu Khanna, director of iSEE, believes implementing environmentally beneficial strategies like the bioeconomy is important.
“(The process of recycling waste) is a very holistic approach to dealing with multiple environmental problems that we have,” Khanna said. “Water quality is a problem, as well as air quality and climate change.”
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Khanna described the circular bioeconomy as a comprehensive approach to addressing environmental issues, with the “circular” aspect emphasizing the goal of achieving zero waste.
The Levenick Center will also support faculty hiring and attract resources to enable interdisciplinary team science and partnerships with the public and private sectors to develop environmentally and economically beneficial strategies.
Additionally, iSEE plans to develop a corporate sustainability training program.
“This would be for corporate professionals who are interested in getting a sort of reskilling or upskilling their expertise in the area of environmental sustainability,” Khanna said.
The team at the Levenick Center has also set metrics to evaluate the overall performance of the new program.
“Our major metrics would be to firstly engage a diverse number of faculty across our campus that are participating and affiliated with this center and through the amount of external funding we are able to raise to support additional research,” Khanna said.
Currently, the department is selecting a director and intends to have the Levenick Center up and running as soon as possible, with no set opening date established yet.
