Email Sent to Mary Sue Coleman on February 9, 2022

re: Provost Search Committee

Dear President Coleman, Provost Search Committee Chair

We are writing to you on behalf of  Voices for Carbon Neutrality (VCN), a broad coalition of faculty, alumni and students launched in April 2018 to serve as a catalyst and accelerator to drive U-M to carbon neutrality with urgency. We are writing to you as Chair of the Provost Search Committee to express our concern that the University’s commitment to carbon neutrality is not included in the published Provost Position Description.

In May of last year, the president and regents committed to implement the recommendations from the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality (PCCN) to put the University on a path to carbon neutrality saying: 

“Today’s commitments place carbon neutrality at the center of U-M’s mission. To fulfill our mission as a public research university, we must address the climate crisis by leading the way on our campuses and beyond, creating, testing and teaching the knowledge and technologies that will transfer to other large institutions, and inspiring and empowering others to solve the defining scientific and social challenge of our time.” 

Given this commitment, the provost, as chief officer of academic affairs and budget, must play a key leadership role in the implementation of the PCCN recommendations.  A responsibility of this magnitude must be a key criterion for the selection of a new provost.  As stated in the PCCN report, “[Climate change] is intertwined with our most significant challenges in health, public policy, and social justice, and it demands an urgent, inclusive, and just response.”

The provost will assume duties at a time when the University must be accelerating the implementation of the PCCN’s recommendations for achieving carbon neutrality. The provost will be expected to lead the University’s efforts with respect to its culture and its curriculum, will play a role in budgeting expenses associated with the recommendations, and will help support all recommendations. VCN urges the Provost Search Committee to seek a leader who will drive the University to a leadership position in preparing students to live and work while existentially threatened by a rapidly warming planet.  

We can no longer continue to think that climate change will be something we can deal with later or as part of a normal strategic planning process. We are already feeling catastrophic impacts from climate change, and they will only get worse. To implement the PCCN recommendations and to be leaders and best in education we need urgent action that to-date, has been sadly lacking at the University.

We urge you to include leadership for implementing the PCCN recommendations as a leading criterion for the selection of a new provost for the University of Michigan.

Cordially,

Voices for Carbon Neutrality Leadership Team 

Michael Craig - faculty in the U-M School for Environmental Sustainability (SEAS)

Bentley Johnson - U-M alumnus

Larry Junck - Professor, Neurology, Medical School

John Mirsky - CoE alumnus, retired Bosch executive

Knute Nadelhoffer - Professor Emeritus, LSA Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Tom Porter - former Executive in Residence, Ross School of Business

Richard Rood – Dow Distinguished Sustainability Fellow, CoE

Kevin Self - CoE alumnus, Sr VP, Schneider Electric

Mike Shriberg - LSA Lecturer; Great Lakes Executive Director, National Wildlife Federation

Adam Simon - Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Earth & Environmental Sciences

Steve Skerlos - Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Mechanical Engineering, CoE

Joe Trumpey - Associate Professor, Art & Design, PitE, SEAS

Jane Vogel - LSA alumna, Economics, Retired Ford Manger

John Williams – Emeritus Horace W. Davenport Collegiate Professor of Physiology