Center for Collaborative Conservation
The Center for Collaborative Conservation (CCC) is a place where stakeholders come together to define, discuss, study and act on critical issues affecting the earth’s ecosystems and the people who depend upon them. Its Fellows program works to strengthen engagement among students, faculty, conservation practitioners and other stakeholders by promoting collaborative research, education and action on critical issues concerning conservation and livelihoods on landscapes around the globe. The CCC Fellows are part of a network where principles and practice of collaborative conservation are developed, exchanged, tested and adapted.
Center for Protected Area Management
The Center for Protected Area Management (CPAM) is an outreach center that promotes protected area management around the world. Their mission is to contribute to the conservation, planning, and management of the world’s protected areas and the landscapes and seascapes that connect them through capacity building, applied research, and technical collaboration with the organizations that help manage them and the communities whose well-being depends on them. CPAM provides a bridge between academic researchers and front lines protected area practitioners, working on issues related to protected area planning, visitor management, interpretations techniques, and much more.
Center for the New Energy Economy
Founded in February 2011, the Center for the New Energy Economy is a privately-funded initiative to support the growth of a clean energy economy across the United States. The Center, a part of Colorado State University, is led by former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and is assisted by some of the nation’s most important thought leaders in clean energy research, development and commercialization. The Center works directly with governors, legislators, regulators, planners, policy makers, and other decision makers, providing technical assistance to help them create the policies and practices that will facilitate America’s transition to a clean energy economy. The mission of the Center is to incorporate best practices from around the nation and world to accelerate the development of a new energy economy.
Changing Climates Initiative
The Changing Climates Initiative is a campus-wide project launched in 2007 and supported by faculty and researchers from every CSU college, whose interests and research unite around climate change. This effort helps faculty infuse information and research on climate content into their courses in all majors and disciplines. It also provides seminars to train faculty and staff on climate change topics.
Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection
The mission of the Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection at CSU is to facilitate botanical research, teaching, and public service. It is especially concerned with encouraging student success by providing positive research and internship mentorship opportunities, creating and participating in outreach opportunities that increase engagement with the public, providing digitized specimen images and data online, and encouraging collaborations within scientific communities at CSU as well as other regional professional herbarium users. The herbarium documents Colorado’s flora and provides primary data for evaluating the status of plant species of conservation concern as well as tracking invasive species and how the flora responds to climate change. As permanent records of the past, the herbarium specimens are a valuable resource for biodiversity research, resource management, and conservation in the Rocky Mountains.
Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station
The Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station hosts eight research centers in 10 sites throughout Colorado. The agency conducts interdisciplinary research addressing economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social acceptability of activities that have an impact on the agriculture, natural resources, and consumers in Colorado.
Colorado Natural Heritage Program
The Colorado Natural Heritage Program is Colorado’s only comprehensive source of information on the status and location of Colorado’s rarest and most threatened species and natural plant communities. We share information with a wide range of stakeholders in partnerships that work to ensure the Colorado’s biodiversity resources are not diminished. CNHP has an enormous impact on conservation in Colorado through these partnerships.
Colorado State Forest Service
CSU operates the Colorado State Forest Service with a mission to provide stewardship of the state’s forest resources and to reduce related risks to life, property and the environment for the benefit of present and future generations. The Forest Service operates 17 district offices across Colorado, with a range of services that include forest management, wildland fire, urban and community forestry, and conservation education.
Colorado Water Center
The Colorado Water Center (CoWC) is one of 54 Water Resources Research Institutes created by the Water Resources Act of 1964, which collectively form the National Institutes for Water Resources. As a division under CSU’s Office of Engagement, the Center aims to connect all water expertise in Colorado’s higher education system with research and education needs of Colorado’s water managers and users, building on the rich water history at Colorado State University. CoWC staff conduct research, teaches courses and seminars, and convenes and facilitates water-related discussions. They offer research grants, internship opportunities, scholarships, and provide water-related information to the citizens of Colorado through the web, publications, informal and formal education, and events.
CSU Extension
Extension programs in Colorado serve residents in 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties. Extension provides extensive educational information, based on Colorado State University research, to the public to meet local needs in topics such as water conservation, sustainable agricultural practices, drought management, food safety and nutrition, and more. It also operates programs, such as the 4-H Youth Development Program and ‘Master’ volunteer programs such as Colorado Master Gardeners, Native Plant Masters, Master Food Safety Advisors and Clean Energy Masters.
CSU Mountain Campus
At an elevation of 9,000 feet, Colorado State’s mountain campus and conference center sits in a beautiful, secluded mountain valley. As a site for conferences, workshops, meetings, and retreats, this campus offers a unique opportunity for visitors to enjoy nature in the Rocky Mountains. The campus’ location also offers a unique opportunity for students in the Warner College of Natural Resources. Academic classes are held here during the summer months that include outdoor labs, field study, and classroom work. NR-220 is a four-week field course for undergraduate students and F-230 is a one-week program for Forestry majors.
CSU System Spur Campus
The CSU System Spur campus is designed to engage the public, students, faculty, and partners in a new three-facility campus in north Denver. It is part of the redevelopment of the National Western Center, and will be a global destination for understanding and education related to issues at the intersection of food, water, and health. The Spur campus will continue the CSU System’s commitment to sustainability, with all three facilities designed to be minimum LEED Gold, and innovative practices around water, energy, and facility operations.
In addition, the Spur campus and the larger National Western Center campus are envisioned to be a living laboratory, leveraging CSU’s presence to evaluate the redevelopment’s performance (e.g., energy, water, biodiversity) and impacts on Denver (e.g., educational attainment, economic development). Ten CSU Fort Collins faculty and staff, in addition to the Institute for the Built Environment, have begun collecting data about the site itself, and information about the surrounding communities, allowing CSU and others to conduct research and enhance outcomes in planning, development, and urban ecology.
Energy Institute and Powerhouse Energy Campus
The Energy Institute is a multidisciplinary alliance that integrates experts from many fields with the goal of improving quality of life – by taking research innovations to the global marketplace more efficiently and at an accelerated pace. The Energy Institute team has the breadth, depth, and entrepreneurial drive to make a global impact. Over one hundred and sixty faculty represent fields as diverse as the natural sciences, engineering, agricultural sciences, natural resources, humanities, applied human sciences, veterinary medicine, and business. In addition, a growing number of students and industry leaders are tapping into our growing network.
Envirofit International was founded on the idea that enterprise principles can transform the development of household and commercial energy technologies for people living in extreme energy poverty. In 2003, Envirofit set out to change the way energy products were developed for people living in remote parts of the world. With a goal of improving harmful traditional cooking methods, Envirofit innovated a product line of aesthetic, high performance cookstoves tailored to the needs of customers in emerging and underdeveloped markets. Years of consumer research and product development proved that people who lack access to electricity and clean cooking solutions do desire and will buy high quality products that can improve their lives. They are internationally recognized as the thoughts leaders in this field, and have sold close to 1.5M improved stoves to date.
OptiEnz LLC: OptiEnz Sensors LLC is a university startup that is developing biosensors for detecting food and water contaminants co-founded by Ken Reardon, a Colorado State professor of chemical and biological engineering. Reardon formed OptiEnz in tandem with Cenergy, the university’s vehicle for commercializing innovative clean and renewable technologies. OptiEnz is expected to develop, manufacture and sell the biosensors, which rely on the reaction of cultured enzymes to identify and quantify organic chemicals. With these devices, contaminants such as melamine, gasoline, solvents and nerve agents can be continuously measured in real-time without handling or pretreating a sample in any way. The biosensors can also be used to monitor chemicals in industrial processes, including those for food, beverage and biofuel production.
Solix Biofuels Inc.: A startup company based in Boulder, Solix is working with the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory to commercialize technology that can cheaply mass produce oil derived from algae and turn it into biodiesel – an environmentally friendly solution to high gas prices, greenhouse gas emissions and volatile global energy markets. Solix officials plan to commercialize the technology. After ramping up to widespread production, the company expects to eventually compete commercially with the wholesale price of crude petroleum. Solix officials estimate that widespread construction of its photo-bioreactor system could meet the demand for the U.S. consumption of diesel fuel – about 4 million barrels a day – by growing algae on less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. land area, which is otherwise unused land adjacent to power plants and ethanol plants. The plants produce excess carbon dioxide, which is necessary to turn algae into oil. In addition to producing biodiesel, the process would prevent a large portion of the greenhouse gases produced by coal-burning power plants from being expelled directly into the atmosphere.
Spirae Inc. is a privately held company based in Fort Collins working with Colorado State in the Integrid Electric Power Systems Laboratory to test “smart grids,” which are new ways to connect electrical generators and users to increase the efficiency and reliability of the electrical grid in large, complex distributed power systems. Distributed power refers to generating electricity from many small sources close to where it’s needed – such as next to a factory or neighborhood or other major power user. The closer it is, the smaller the transmission losses and the more energy – and money – saved. These sources can be engines or turbines or they can renewable sources such as wind and solar photovoltaics.
Environmental Governance Working Group (EGWG)
The Environmental Governance Working Group (EGWG) at Colorado State was created in 2008 as a joint project of the Department of Political Science and the School of Sustainable Futures at Colorado State University. It’s a multidisciplinary community of scholars seeking to advance research on environmental governance and sustainability. Its network includes faculty, researchers and graduate students from across the Colorado State University campus; decision-makers working for federal, state, and local agencies and non-profits; and scholars based at institutions around the world. EGWG’s leadership team includes Michele Betsill (Political Science), Tony Cheng (Forest and Rangeland Stewardship), and Peter Leigh Taylor (Sociology).
Environmental Learning Center
The Environmental Learning Center (ELC) is a unique learning environment and a valued natural resource in Northern Colorado. It’s situated on 212 acres of land, approximately three miles east of CSU’s main campus, on the banks of the Poudre River at the end of the Poudre River Trail. It’s managed through CSU’s College of Natural Resources and staffed primarily by students. With four ecosystems on the property — wetlands, riparian, cottonwood forest, and prairie ecosystems — the ELC is home to a diversity of flora and fauna. The mission of the ELC is to connect people with nature by facilitating educational, inclusive and safe experiences in the natural environment and to advance the field of environmental education through sound research and practice. That mission is accomplished through the provision of programs for schools, scout troops, the general public, and families. The ELC also conducts and hosts many research projects affiliated with Colorado State, from evaluating the effectiveness of experiential learning to studying the song patterns of chickadees.
FEScUE
FEScUE is a multidepartmental program at Colorado State, funded by the National Science Foundation, that engages undergraduates and faculty in mathematics, statistics, and the life sciences in jointly mentored interdisciplinary research clusters and in structured multidisciplinary coursework. The program is built around actively engaging students in research clusters mentored by two senior faculty members, one from mathematics and one from the life sciences. The need for interdisciplinary research that combines the mathematical and life sciences is increasingly urgent as our abilities to gather data outpace our ability to effectively analyze the data we collect — and as we seek to understand phenomena over ever wider ranges of scales. While the jointly-mentored research experience is the program’s focal point, FEScUE is a comprehensive educational experience that includes special seminars, gateway and fusion courses, and career advising.
Institute for the Built Environment
Colorado State’s Institute for the Built Environment is an interdisciplinary research and education center for environmentally responsible building design and construction. In addition to a graduate emphasis in sustainable building, IBE works with industry professionals to offer coursework, training and design charrettes in addition to conducting research. In 2009, the CSU’s Institute for the Built Environment created the certificate program in direct response to the growing need for specially trained professionals who can adapt to the changing industry.
Little Shop of Physics
CSU’s hands-on science and physics education program, Little Shop of Physics, is collaborating with the University’s Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP) in taking science education and environmentally focused science projects to schools and the community.
Master Gardener Program
The Colorado Master Gardener Program through Colorado State’s Extension, trains volunteers to assist in delivering knowledge-based information about home gardening to Colorado residents. The Master Gardener training consists of more than 66 hours of classroom instruction offered in counties statewide. While content is focused on the interests of home gardeners, 20% of the students who participate are in the green industry and use the classes for career training.
Natural Resources and Sustainability Residential Learning Community
Warner College of Natural Resources and the College of Agriculture at CSU host the Natural Resources and Sustainability Residential Learning Community, where students interested in sustainability live in a community in Summit Hall and take a service based seminar on sustainability. The first class worked to help Great Sand Dunes National Park create the nation’s first Visit Green initiative that helps park visitors learn how to be sustainable in the San Luis Valley. This program is designed to be a pilot for the National Park Service and by using students, helps train the next generation of green workers in tourism and park management.
One Health
The purpose of One Health is to benefit the health of animals, peoples, and environments by collaborating across boundaries in a way that sees and integrates the whole system. We seek to accomplish this through these principles. We see the whole picture. Together, we can create the futures we desire. We engage our partners and vibrant academic community as they search for the relationships and outcomes that create health. When we consider and value diverse perspectives, looking across disciplines, professions, and sectors, the power of collaboration can inspire the futures we wish to birth. We work together. The One Health Institute at CSU is growing through financial support from all eight colleges and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Land-grant roots inspire us to work hard and collaboratively toward health through interdisciplinary research, learning, and discovery that welcomes, and thrives because of, diverse ideas and talents. We don’t work to fight disease. We seek to create health. It’s a positive and proactive movement toward a healthier tomorrow, and it takes diverse people, many new ideas, and many ways of thinking about old ideas.
Partnership for Air Quality, Climate & Health
A CSU Partnership, reaching inward and outward, that provides comprehensive science-vetted information in useful form to stakeholders in air quality, climate, and health issues. The Partnership envisions implementing a structure and support facility that integrates CSU-wide capabilities in air quality, climate, and health in a comprehensive and synergistic way, and that focuses on communicating to stakeholders scientific findings relevant to their unique challenges. The Partnership will enable and foster policy-relevant research aimed at filling knowledge gaps identified jointly with our stakeholders, and will focus on effective partnering to formulate, plan, conduct and disseminate our knowledge in useful formats.
Program for Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Ecology, and Statistics
The Program for Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Ecology, and Statistics (PRIMES) at CSU is designed to address the challenges of studying complex ecological systems. Modern studies of ecological systems incorporate an extremely wide range of scientific and quantitative techniques, from the collection of data in the field, to the modeling of complex systems. Quantitative ecology has become an inherently multi-disciplinary activity. The idea underlying PRIMES is to equip graduate students from ecology, mathematics, and statistics with the skills to work at the interface of the three disciplines and to support research on ecological problems involving advanced quantitative tools. PRIMES activities concentrate in the areas of Ecology of Managed Ecosystems, Ecology of Global Change, Dynamics of Introduced Disease, Aquatic Resources Modeling, and Evolution in Structured Populations. These activities include innovative course offerings, early exposure to team-based research, and the hosting of long- and short-term visitors, workshops, and internships and mentoring for students by ecologists working in national laboratories and agencies.
Protected Area Management & Training
The Warner College of Natural Resources offers the Wildlands and Protected Area Management course. This course has been in place for 17 years with more than 350 past participants from 26 countries. Each year, the course strives for carbon neutrality. This year, it calculated the CO2 emissions emitted by participant travel and course operation, and then offset these emissions by donating money to construct energy efficient cookstoves.
Public Lands History Center
Founded in 2007, the Public Lands History Center at Colorado State University produces historical knowledge that helps resource managers, scientists, and citizens understand and protect public lands and resources. The PLHC’s projects facilitate the development policy on complex issues relating to the environment, land and water used, agriculture, and cultural resource management.
School of Sustainable Futures
The School of Sustainable Futures or Sustainable Futures is an umbrella organization that was established in 2008 to encompasses all environmental education and research at the university. The school positions CSU to address the multiple challenges to global sustainability through broad-based research, curricular, and outreach initiatives. Areas of emphasis include food security, poverty, inequality, water management strategies and desertification, globalization, industrial ecology, sustainable engineering, population growth, and urbanization. This approach capitalizes 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.
Sustainable Livestock Systems Collaborative
In a move to address the dramatic global demand for safe, high-quality protein-based food sources, Colorado State University has announced the creation of a first-of-its-kind collaborative to support profitable, sustainable and healthy livestock production.
The Sustainable Livestock Systems Collaborative is designed for CSU livestock and animal health experts to work alongside industry, government and other stakeholders in addressing 21st-century challenges as well as training current and future livestock industry professionals.
Spearheaded by the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the collaborative will look at enhancing sustainable and healthy livestock systems through the examination of new technologies and disease treatments as well as soil, plant, animal and atmospheric microbiomes, among other areas.
Western Center for Integrated Resource Management
The Western Center for Integrated Resource Management’s mission is to improve the sustainability and profitability of forage-based agriculture and natural resource systems through integrated, innovative multidisplinary research and education programs. The program offers a Master of Agricultural Sciences degree that involves contributing faculty from the College of Agricultural Sciences, the Warner College of Natural Resources, and the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The long-term goal of the Western Center is to “improve the competitive position and sustainability of independent livestock producers and the economic and environmental health of rural communities.”
CSU has faculty and staff experts on a wide range of sustainability topics including Agrivoltaics, Air Quality, Atmospheric Research, Biodiversity, Climate Change and Resiliency, Food Security, Indigenous Natural Resource Stewardship, Renewable Energy, Sustainability Policy, and much more!