It is a basic tenet of university research: Economists do joint studies, chemists join forces in the laboratory, political scientists share ideas about cultures — but rarely do the researchers cross disciplinary lines.Academia has always fostered competition more than collaboration. But the push to stop global warming may change all that. Take the Rochester Institute of Technology. In September the school established the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, to get students and professors from different disciplines to collaborate in studying the environmental ramifications of production and consumption.“The academic tradition is to let one discipline dominate new programmes,” said Nabil Nasr, the institute’s director. “But the problem of sustainability cuts across economics, social elements, engineering, everything. It simply cannot be solved by one discipline, or even by coupling two disciplines.”Neil Hawkins, Dow Chemical's vice president for sustainability, sees it that way, too. Thus, Dow is giving $10 million, over five years, to the University of California, Berkeley, for a sustainability center. As the realisation spreads, more universities are setting up stand-alone centers offering neutral ground on which engineering students can work on alternative fuels while business students calculate the economics of those fuels and political science majors figure how to make the fuels palatable to governments. It is impossible to quantify the growth of such centers. Some are called sustainability centers, some environmental institutes, and some global warming initiatives. And many are part of an existing school.Nor do environmentally themed names necessarily convey an envirocentric agenda. Many “sustainability” centers — the Kenan-Flagler Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina is one — address global cultures, business ethics and corporate social responsibility along with environmental issues. Many of the centers have one foot set squarely outside the ivory tower. Duke University’s Corporate Sustainability Initiative, a joint venture of its earth sciences, business and environmental policy schools, is also a founding member of the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance. Its faculty and students have developed a wind turbine for private use, and have helped local businesses reduce carbon footprints.
