The University announced Tuesday that Timothy Profeta would head a new institute in the Nicholas School, which will try to translate research into practice.
To most people, naming a director of environmental policy looks like a simple expansion of Duke’s administration. But the way the University sees it, this is the first step toward changing the way universities interact with what’s outside.
Timothy Profeta, counsel for the environment to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., will become the first director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, President Richard Brodhead announced Tuesday. With seven years of legal and political experience, Profeta will shape the direction of the newly formed institute and set a new precedent for Duke’s role in environmental public policy.
Drawing from existing faculty resources, the new institute will be a part of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. Plans for a new building to house the institute and the Nicholas School are in the preliminary stages.
William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School, said environmental researchers have sometimes struggled to communicate the relevance of their work to businesses, politicians, non-governmental organizations and other groups engaged in forming public policy.
“So much science is written in ways that people can’t understand it,” Schlesinger said. “Everybody just sort of glazes over. What the institute can best do is to have people come together and help people work through the translation of that research.”
To support the fledgling institute, the University will also establish a board of advisers with leaders from industry, government, non-governmental organizations and other groups. William Reilly, who served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President George H.W. Bush and is currently president and CEO of Aqua International Partners, will chair the board.
A constant stream of visiting fellows and professors will likely spend time at the institute, working on questions of environmental relevance, Provost Peter Lange said. The goal is to improve the way universities disseminate information.
“There is a void of this kind—of really bringing the knowledge that we’ve been developing in universities to deal with these kinds of problems in the world,” Lange said. “Tim has seen that from the other side, and he’s going to be really excellent at helping figure out how to fill that void.”
The Nicholas Institute will be the first environmental policy-centered think tank with a university affiliation. Among Duke’s programs, it also breaks new ground as the the University intensifies its efforts to make ivory tower research applicable to world issues.
“Part of what Duke is doing with the institute is inventing the future university in which we take ideas from academic research and put them into policy practice and in which we foster collaboration across disciplines to generate more integrated understanding,” said Jonathan Wiener, professor of law and of the environment, who chaired the search for the director.
Plans for the institute began in December 2003 when Board of Trustees Chair Peter Nicholas and his wife Ginny gave $70 million to the Nicholas School to spur Duke’s role as an environmental policy leader. Although the gift has funded several professorships, the institute’s creation and plans for the new building are its first tangible products.
Administrators have not yet envisioned the institute’s long-term relationship with the School of Law or the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, but they expect Profeta to work closely with Duke’s myriad schools while he carves out the institute’s role as a non-partisan advocate for the environment.
“By the end of the decade, I want the Nicholas Institute to be on the ‘first-call-made list’ by a wide range of groups interested in environmental issues,” Profeta said in a statement.
Profeta, who will come to Duke June 1, earned a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University in 1992. He graduated from Duke with a master of environmental management and a J.D. in 1997. Before joining Lieberman’s staff, he served as a clerk for Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Schlesinger said Profeta was chosen after a lengthy search that extended months beyond its expected timetable. University administrators pointed to Profeta’s interdisciplinary background and prior affiliations with Duke as specific strengths. Schlesinger also noted Profeta’s relationships with politicians and experience working over partisan lines as assets he will bring to the job.
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