A gift to support the University of Connecticut's interdisciplinary Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering (CESE) is designed to help position UConn as a national leader in solving the environmental problems of today and tomorrow.
Sheldon Kasowitz '83 (BUS) and his wife, Samantha, have made CESE the sole beneficiary of their six-figure endowment.The couple focuses their philanthropy on child welfare, education and the environment, a combination that Kasowitz says makes CESE a natural choice.
"CESE bridges many of the areas that we're interested in, and this is a great opportunity for the University to make a name for itself in environmental studies," he says."There are big, obvious environmental problems that the whole world is now thinking about how to solve.What a great time to support this."
A member of the UConn Foundation Board of Directors, Kasowitz views the gift as "philanthropic seed money," and says the decision to give was made using the same logic that he applies every day as the co-founder and managing partner of Indus Capital Partners,LLC in NewYork City,which manages approximately $6 billion in assets worldwide.
"CESE is what we would call an early-stage investment. When you're 'investing' in something like this, you don't have a reputation to base your decisions on, so you have to instead invest in the people behind it, like Mike."
Mike is Michael Willig, Ph.D., the director of CESE and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Kasowitz met Willig in the fall to discuss the center's goals, and both men walked away impressed with the vision of the other.
"[Kasowitz] understands investing in the future, which includes some aspects of risk-taking, and that's what we're trying to do,"saysWillig."The only way we can make transformative discoveries is to take risks with our research and science in all of these critical environmental areas. Private giving complements our public support, but gives us a flexibility to be innovative in our work and, most importantly, build a new program, which is very difficult with public funds."
Willig and more than 80 UConn faculty from virtually every area of the University are now affiliated with CESE; the center will become an "environmental commons" where faculty members, graduate students, governmental scientists and policy professionals from the sciences, agriculture, law and dozens of other specialties come together to interact and collaborate. Willig says the convergence of disciplines has helped to create a new generation of graduate student at UConn, spurred on by CESE grants, more than 25 of which were recently awarded for summer work.
"We're training the scientists of the future, who look beyond their narrow specialty," he says. "They can see connections between disciplines that I don't think I could when I was a graduate student. They're comfortable talking to and working with others in engineering, in medicine, in agriculture. We're creating interactions that wouldn't happen before, and we have to in this field."
Both Kasowitz and Willig envision a future where UConn takes the lead in environmental science in part because of the interdisciplinary efforts at CESE.
"When students and professors are looking for a place to study environmental science or teach, I want them to view UConn as one of the top 10 places to do that," Kasowitz says. "The big solutions to environmental problems are going to come from academia and private sector business. I want my gift and others like it to sway donations to this area.There's a chance to be a great catalyst."
To support CESE, please contact Frank Gifford, director of development, at 860.486.6798
