DURHAM, N.C. – From Arctic ice floes to the equatorial jungles of Gabon and Peru, Nicholas School faculty and students are spanning the globe to help solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. 

“It’s astonishing to see the scope of our global engagement today. We’re on all seven continents and in every ocean,” says Erika S. Weinthal, associate dean for international programs and associate professor of environmental policy. 

Last year, more than 50 faculty members and PhD students worked on a total of 154 research projects in 74 countries, oceans and non-governed international territories. More than 40 masters or undergraduate students com- pleted overseas internships or communi- ty-based volunteer service. 

Their work addressed a broad range of issues, including: 

  • Working with local communities to identify environmental risk factors and develop more effective screening and prevention for malaria, fluorosis and pediatric febrile illness in East Africa; 

  • Documenting changes in the breeding and foraging behaviors of endangered humpback whales in warming Antarctic waters; 

  • Reducing coffee production’s impacts on surface waters, forests and wildlife in Central America; 

  • Evaluating how human disturbance is affecting forest biodiversity and health in Malaysia, the Amazon and Gabon; 

  • Measuring carbon fluxes in the polar oceans; 

  • Tracking the impacts of large-scale agricultural water diversion on sub-Saharan groundwater supplies; 

  • Developing sustainable eco-tourism in poor, rural communities across Thailand; 

  • Assessing the effects of poorly regulated gold mining on environmental and human health in Madre de Dios, Peru; and


  • Examining dietary exposure to halo-genated flame-retardants in communities near e-waste recycling sites in China.

In February, the school launched a new website, at , to help showcase its international focus. The site features a world map with pins identifying locations where faculty members and their teams are working. 

By clicking on one of the pins, you can find out who the faculty member
is, what’s the focus of his or her work, 
if other Nicholas School faculty or students are involved, who funds the work, who the local partners are, and other key information. You also can zoom in or switch to satellite imagery to view the research location in greater detail. 

The map was developed to help government agencies, environmental NGOs, local communities, international aid organizations and prospective students quickly and easily identify Nicholas School projects being conducted in their regions of interest. 

“Environmental issues transcend borders,” Weinthal says. “Providing opportunities for faculty and students to travel abroad for research and scholarship—and for students and young scholars from other countries to come here—supports the core mission of our school by helping us identify areas of potential collaboration and learn new approaches to the concerns we all share.”
 This year, the school provided more  than $50,000 to help defray the costs
of international travel for two dozen PhD and masters students conducting research or internships in Uganda, Peru, Denmark, France, Thailand, Guatemala, Panama, India, China, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Namibia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Jordan and Nepal. Money came from the Dean’s Office, the Office of Career Services and endowed funds earmarked to support student internships and research abroad. 

The school also hosted one of the 51 Africa Initiative’s first cohorts of visiting scholars. Sithabile Titivarombo, a recent PhD graduate
of Rhodes University in South Africa, studies the impacts of climate change on water resource management in the Zambezi River basin. She spent nearly two months at 51 this spring collaborating with Weinthal, an expert on international water policy, and meeting with faculty and students who conduct research in related fields. 

Additional opportunities for international learning and exchange are provided through the Beaufort Signature Travel Courses, which combine intensive classroom learning at 51 with immersive, on-the-ground exploration overseas, and through the 51 Marine Lab Global Fellows Program, which brings students from abroad to the Marine Lab’s campus in Beaufort, N.C., each summer for an intensive five-week academic program on marine conservation. 

“Learning from a community provides a much more powerful and useful cultural perspective than learning about it,” says Xavier Basurto, assistant pro- fessor of sustainability science. Basurto leads a Beaufort Signature course each spring to Mexico’s Gulf of California, where students learn the ins and outs
of managing sustainable common-pool sheries from the local shermen themselves. This year, an extra $20,000 in funding from the Nicholas School allowed him to extend the course’s length and expand its study area. 

Weinthal, who sits on the Africa Initiative’s steering committee, notes that many Nicholas School faculty members are now helping lead courses and programs designed to promote international engagement and collaboration through research, teaching and outreach. 

Among them: Paul A. Baker, professor of geochemistry, is co-director of the new 51 Brazil Initiative; Randall A. Kramer, professor of environmental economics and global health, is deputy director of the 51 Global Health Institute; John Terborgh, research professor emeritus, directs the 51 Center for Tropical Conservation; and Krithi K. Karanth, adjunct assistant professor, will direct the Bangalore component of a new 51 Semester in India program for undergraduates. 

Nicholas School alumni are also leading the charge. 

Karanth PhD’08, is executive director of India’s Centre for Wildlife Studies and associate conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. In 2011 she received the National Geographic Society’s historic 10,000th grant to support her pioneering work on wildlife conservation in India’s national parks and preserves. 

Kyle Van Houtan PhD’06, leads the Marine Turtle Assessment Program at NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. He’s leading efforts to track long-term changes in wild fish populations in the northern Pacific, with support from a prestigious 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. 

Henrique Tono PhD’07, has co-founded Ingrain Inc., a company that helps governments and corporations worldwide reduce environmental disturbances from energy production by using advanced 3D imaging technologies to identify high-potential zones, or “sweet spots,” in underground hydrocarbon reserves. 

Paige McClanahan MEM/MPP’08, is an award-winning investigative journalist who covers economic, political, environmental and cultural issues in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan and other international hotspots. Her work has been published by BBC News, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. 

Brent Wanner, MEM’09, is an economist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ofice of Policy and International Affairs. He helped draft the in uential 2011 World Energy Outlook for the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), where fellow alum Tali Trigg MEM ’10, now works as an energy analyst. 

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, Weinthal says. 

“Being global isn’t just about being place-based or having institutional relationships,” she says. “Water, energy, climate, conservation these are issues that affect people from all walks of life in every country and region. As a school of the environment, it’s only natural that the Nicholas School is helping lead the way.”