About Us

 

"Research and Education on the Environment" was declared one of four strategic thrusts for Carnegie Mellon in 1998. In 2002, a Trustee Subcommittee was created to update the strategic plan, including educational as well as research activities and thrusts. The final report was presented in December 2002 recommending that:

The goal of environmental work at Carnegie Mellon should be to change the ways the world thinks and acts about the environment, through our educational and research methods and results, through the issues we raise, and through the outcomes we produce. We must adopt a broad viewpoint in this work. Environmental issues have important technical, economic, and social dimensions, dimensions that are joined, not separate. We should build upon our collaborative strengths in science and technology (including information technology), design, economics, and the social and policy sciences. We should apply these capabilities to the principal environmental problems of the 21st century. In so doing, our focus will center on critical issues for building a sustainable, green future, primarily by pursuing multi-disciplinary themes and outcomes across Carnegie Mellon's colleges. The Steinbrenner Institute was established in 2004 with the generous support of Lowell and Jan Steinbrenner to realize these goals.