Gund Institute for Environment
Advance environmental research and solutions at the Gund Institute.
Solutions Start Here
Environmental issues will define this century. Supporting the needs of humanity without destroying the planet is our generation’s grand challenge, one facing the people of Vermont, the United States, and the entire world—and we must act quickly.
To respond to this challenge, UVM has created the Gund Institute for Environment to connect scientists and leaders—from government, business, and society—and catalyze research to solve the world’s most urgent environmental problems.
Global challenges span disciplines—and so does our approach. Gund researchers collaborate across the natural and social sciences, medicine, technology, engineering, and the humanities to accelerate discovery, develop new solutions, and address critical issues facing communities worldwide.
UVM’s environmental leadership includes pioneering research, the nation’s first university-wide environmental program, and top-10 green campus rankings. The Gund Institute advances this leadership with cutting-edge environmental efforts gathered around five pressing themes: climate solutions, health and well-being, sustainable agriculture, resilient communities, and equity and justice.
Your investment in the Gund Institute will support generations of problem-solvers, solutions, and change-makers. Together, we can mobilize minds, accelerate action, and build a more sustainable future. Join us.
Areas You Can Support
Gund Institute Fund
Your gift dramatically enhances our ability to solve urgent environmental challenges. Your support enables the Gund Institute to accelerate world-class research, education, and outreach to leaders in government, business and civil society. Together, these efforts help create solutions to the problems facing the people of Vermont, the United States, and the world.
The Medina Fund
Your gift supports transdisciplinary research at the Gund Institute, focused on real-world problems in environment and sustainability. Research supported by the Medina Fund will emphasize the economic and other connections between nature and people, and will provide research, training and leadership opportunities for promising young scientists.
Eric Zencey Prize
Your gift supports a prize, awarded every other year, to the best book or work of long-form journalism that illuminates current affairs while advancing public understanding of the principles and precepts of Ecological Economics—a school of economic thought that cautions us that the economy can’t grow forever, that there are limits to the amount of economic production our finite planet can support.
Gund Institute Fund
Your gift dramatically enhances our ability to solve urgent environmental challenges. Your support enables the Gund Institute to accelerate world-class research, education, and outreach to leaders in government, business and civil society. Together, these efforts help create solutions to the problems facing the people of Vermont, the United States, and the world.
Apis Fund
Your support will provide grants for projects that benefit bees that are essential for the world’s food supply – including agriculture in Vermont – but experiencing steep declines from climate change, disease, pesticides, and habitat loss.
Leahy Scholars Initiative for the Gund Institute
Your gift will support a permanent endowment for the Leahy Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scholars program at the Gund Institute. Thanks to you, selected doctoral and post-doctoral students will receive funding for customized leadership training and real-world experience collaborating with leaders in government and business, with the goal of promoting a deep understanding of complex global environmental issues.
Vermont Climate Change Assessment Fund
Your gift supports the research activities of the Gund Institute for Environment’s Vermont Climate Assessment project. The project hopes to further scientific understanding of historical, current, and future climate change trends in Vermont.
Other Priorities
The Gund Institute has a number of gift opportunities available for philanthropists looking to have a significant positive impact on humanity and the natural world. These include resources to create unique doctoral and post-doctoral opportunities, to grow competitive grant programs that spark new interdisciplinary research, and to help take promising UVM environmental research projects to the next level.
If you would like to discuss these opportunities, or explore other ways you can help the Gund Institute make a difference, please contact the UVM Foundation at (888) 458-8691 or email us at foundation@uvm.edu.
Mobilizing Minds. Accelerating Impact.
Climate Solutions
Lini Wollenberg is revolutionizing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, a major cause of climate change. She is creating new low-emission farming techniques, exploring innovative finance programs, improving GHG measurement accuracy and establishing new global standards for sustainable agriculture.
Sustainable Agriculture
How to feed a global population of 9 billion on a planet of finite natural resources is a question that drives Taylor Ricketts. His research on bees and pollination, which vital crops need to grow, gives government and farmers economic incentives to conserve species in ways that also increase crop yields.
Health and Well-Being
Brendan Fisher is discovering important links between the environment, health and human well-being. His recent big data study of 300,000 children in 35 nations finds that kids whose watersheds have greater tree cover are less likely to experience potentially deadly diarrhea, the second leading cause of death for children under five.
Resilient Communities
Gund scholars study the risks, impacts and solutions for water pollution. Donna Rizzo studies Lake Champlain and other vital watersheds, developing monitoring tools and other solutions to prevent drinking water contamination, algae blooms, and other water issues that hurt our health, economy and environment.