A message from Chair of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Dear friends and donors,

Greetings from Ann Arbor! We are off to a great fall term at U‑M Earth. In August we welcomed a cohort of 21 new graduate students, among our largest in recent memory. We launched the term with a kickoff party at Burns Park and the annual grad student picnic. We have embarked on a search for a new faculty colleague in any field of Earth and environmental science (you can imagine the number of applications that our dauntless search committee is reading!). And we wrapped up another successful Camp Davis summer. Many of our students could not have attended camp without donor support, and for this, we are deeply grateful.

As I write this, we are coming off a season of climate extremes that have hit the western US particularly hard: heat, drought, wildfire, and poor air quality. We feel these impacts more than other campus units because, every year, we bring more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff out to camp in Jackson, Wyoming. As our Camp Davis courses have expanded, we are creating new data about the natural world that will, over time, paint a multi-dimensional picture of how the region is changing.In their class projects, students are tracking and analyzing these trends in real-time through stream hydrology, water chemistry, vegetation surveys, and gas fluxes in soil and plants.

In this fall fundraising drive, we aim to raise funds to upgrade our Camp Davis equipment, including both instrumentation used for data collection and our gear library to keep students outfitted, helping to lower the financial barrier for many attending camp.

We are particularly excited to raise funds for a research-quality weather station at Camp Davis, along with a live webcam and linked sensors that will provide real-time data for students. This instrumentation will also allow you to check out camp conditions, any time, with a click on our home page.

Stay tuned for more on Camp Davis—we are closing in on the final phases of a long-term camp renewal program. We’ll cap off this effort with a new dining hall, environmental classroom, and outdoor plaza in the next few years. That campaign will also include expanded student support for field camp, field trips, and other experiential opportunities. We’ll be hosting events in many parts of the country. I can’t wait to share those details with you in the near future! Visit our website for more.

Today, I encourage you to consider a contribution to our expanded instrumentation and student gear library at Camp Davis. Every donation of any size makes a big difference to our students’ experiences.

Warmly,

Julia Cole
Chair, Earth and Environmental Sciences