School of Global Environmental Sustainability Description
A first for the state, the School of Global Environmental Sustainability is an umbrella organization that encompasses all environmental education and research at the university.
Addressing global challenges
The school will position CSU to address the multiple challenges to global sustainability through broad-based research, curricular, and outreach initiatives. Areas of emphasis will include food security, poverty, inequality, water management strategies and desertification, globalization, industrial ecology, sustainable engineering, population growth, and urbanization.
This approach will capitalize on the University's historic strength in environmental research and education, and will build upon the education and research that already exists within all eight colleges on campus; from the Warner College of Natural Resources to the College of Business.

Presenter Bio
Dr. Richard Conant’s research focuses on understanding the feedbacks between human activities and ecosystem biogeochemistry. Specifically, he is interested in how land use and land management practices impact carbon and nitrogen cycling in agricultural and grassland ecosystems. He believes that knowledge about the relationship between human activities and ecosystem ecology can empower policy makers to make wise decisions with respect to biogeochemistry and ecosystem services. He is involved in efforts to develop indicators of ecological condition for ecosystems close to home and contributes to state, national, and international efforts to develop tools to accurately quantify human impacts on the carbon cycle. Dr. Conant has been at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory in the Warner College of Natural Resources since earning his Ph.D at Arizona State University in 1997. He is the Assistant Director of Research for CSU’s new School of Global Environmental Sustainability.