The New School to study Environment and Design.

The New School has announced the establishment of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, a major education and research initiative in the field of environmental studies.

The center, officially launched in January 2006, will build an undergraduate curriculum in environmental and allied sciences and support cross-disciplinary, long-term research projects. The university has appointed Joel Towers, an architect and educator, as the director of the center and the associate provost of environmental studies for the university. Towers formerly served as director of sustainable design at Parsons The New School for Design and will continue to serve its faculty of Parsons.

"In a democratic society, we have an obligation as citizens to be environmentally literate in order to participate in some of the great debates of our time and to affect change on a local and global scale," said New School president Bob Kerrey.

"Through the Tishman Environment and Design Center, undergraduate students will receive a core education in environmental studies, with the opportunity on both the undergraduate and graduate levels to contribute to research projects and earn degrees in the field. I am pleased that we can build on the efforts already underway at Parsons to launch a university-wide program in environmental studies."

The center will support design-led research alongside historical and social inquiry that places an emphasis on innovation within the context of cultural, economic, and ecological factors. It will firmly establish environmental literacy as central to an undergraduate education at The New School, with new curriculum developed in collaboration with Lang College, Parsons and The New School for Social Research. The center will bring together core faculty across the university to teach and develop cross-disciplinary programs, as well as work with the New School divisions to offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in the field and facilitate faculty and post-doctoral research.

"One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Tishman Environment and Design Center will be the critical role of design," said Joel Towers. "Design and design processes will be central to how we structure research, imagine possible future scenarios, and construct specific interventions that address the limits of human adaptation to a changing environment. The goal is to stimulate innovative research, develop viable solutions to ecological degradation, and have that flow back to the school through teaching."