After a successful year of grass roots efforts to promote and sustain environmental stewardship University-wide, a search committee for Columbia’s environmental stewardship director has begun the task of selecting a candidate to galvanize future efforts. The 12-person committee comprises administrators, faculty and students, under the chairmanship of Joseph M. Harney, Assistant Vice President, Administrative Planning.

Harney said the environmental stewardship director, a new position, will report to Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin. Creation of the director position reflects “an interest that spreads across all kinds of groups – faculty, students, staff – and recognizes their interest, commitment and readiness” in furthering environmental stewardship within the Columbia community.

”This is the moment to really catalyze that interest,” Harney said.

Search committee member Kathleen Crowley sees the committee’s present responsibility as facilitating the recruitment of a “champion” for the stewardship initiative. Crowley, Associate Vice President, Environmental Health & Safety, said the search committee “has met to refine the scope and responsibilities of the new position and to identify sources that will be helpful in getting the word out.”

Crowley said that Columbia is in a “unique position” to attract an ideal candidate drawn by Columbia’s commitment to environmental preservation and sustainability, and their vital, emerging role within the community. “Perhaps we will attract a candidate mentored by a strong program at the University of Michigan, Yale or Harvard,” she said.

Harney said the position has been widely advertised, and that the search committee and others are networking broadly, both internally and externally. Although some applications have been received, “it is still very much an active search,” Harney said.

The job description seeks “someone able to act as a catalyst, recognize present activity and how to build and grow that success, identify new activities and make them possible, work with a broad group of people in their ‘green activities,’ and able to play a key role in growing success,” Harney said.

Crowley said the person must approach the position with “a vision and an understanding of environmental stewardship as a way of life – not as a response to regulatory compliance.”

Student committee members Coogan Brennan, CC ’08; Eva Carpenter, CC ’09; and Julie Raskin, CC’08; were unanimous in their hope that the director would assume an advocacy role for student efforts and involvement.

Raskin said she is “primarily concerned with how this person will serve as advocate for individual students and student groups as we embark on this gigantic project of greening Columbia. Students involved in environmental activism on campus are smart, progressive, daring and forward-thinking and will serve as Columbia’s greatest resources for green ingenuity.”

Carpenter suggested the need for a director “who will reach out to the student body and really invigorate them to care about environmental issues.” She said she is looking for “the right person to create awareness which students will listen to, (that) perhaps in years to come we will be both a campus and a student body who care about our environment at school and leave Columbia genuinely valuing our Earth.”

Brennan, who hopes the university will welcome the new director with the same enthusiasm it has given the search committee, said it is important that the director be able to “maneuver the system,” especially within available resources.

Harney said the search committee’s goal is to begin candidate interviews in July, always staying open, however, to the best possibilities and best fit. “It would be nice to have someone in place early in the new academic year, he said.

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Visit Jobs at Columbia for more information on the position of Director of Environmental Stewardship.

Full search committee roster:

Joe Harney, Chair
Assistant Vice President
Administrative Planning

Maura Bairley
Director
Sexual Violence Prevention & Response Program
Health Services @ Columbia

Peter Coogan Brennan
Columbia College Class of 2008

Dave Carlson
Director,Project Engineering
Columbia University Facilities

Eva Carpenter
Columbia College
Class of 2009

Kathleen Crowley
Associate Vice President
Environmental Health & Radiation Safety/Environmental Health & Safety

Tanya Heikkila
Assistant Professor
School of International & Public Affairs

Gordon McCord
Special Assistant to Jeffrey Sachs
PhD Student in Sustainable Development

Wil McKoy
Project Director
Administrative Planning & Financial Management

Julie Raskin
Columbia College
Class of 2008

Michael van Biema
Assistant Vice President
Purchasing

Paula Goodman, Search Coordinator
Director
Recruitment & Career Development
Human Resources