Charles David Keeling Lectures, 2016-2021

Established on December 16, 2013, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (ISEE) is an academic unit under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.¹ It is physically based out of the National Soybean Research Center on campus. The ISEE professes three main focuses for their work: (1) the development of actionable research into sustainability, energy and environmental needs; (2) furthering campus sustainability, and (3) education and outreach. Their research more specifically targets the following areas of study: climate solutions, energy transitions, sustainable infrastructure, water and land stewardship, and secure and sustainable agriculture.² Through their education and outreach efforts they offer a sustainability minor through the SEE Fellows program as well as a Certificate in Environmental Writing at the undergraduate level.³ Additionally, they annually host an iSEE Challenge around a specific sustainability issue, the Charles David Keeling Lectures, the MillerComm Lectures, and the open forum discussion Critical Conversations.⁴  Before their establishment in 2013, they were preceded by the Center for a Sustainable Environment (CSE) which resulted from the merging of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and the Office of Sustainability (OS).⁵ The ISEEâ??s SEE Fellows Program was also approved for on September 21, 2015 as a revisal of the Environmental Fellows Program that had previously been administered by the School of Earth, Society, and Environment in the College of LAS.⁶ The SEE Fellows Program is headed by iSEE, but is supported by the following six other academic units: the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), the School of Integrative Biology (SIB), the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES), the School of Earth, Society and Environment (SESE), and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP).⁷ 

The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment is supported by the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund who had also funded the preceding CSE and ECI. More financial support from Nancy J. Levenick and her husband Stuart L. Levenick (a 1976 alumnus) forms the endowment for the Levenick iSEE Fellows Program.⁸

1. "About | ISEE." Institute for Sustainability, Energy, And Environment. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://sustainability.illinois.edu/about/.

2. Ibid.

3. "Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Fellows Program." Institute for Sustainability, Energy, And Environment. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://sustainability.illinois.edu/education/sustainability-minor/.

4. "About | ISEE."

5. Ibid.

6. "Board of Trustees, Minutes Archive." University of Illinois System. Accessed September 13, 2021. https://www.bot.uillinois.edu/meetings/minutes/minutes_archive/.

7. "Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Fellows Program."

8. "About | ISEE."