DR. MARY C. PEARL,
Internationally Acclaimed Conservationist Named Dean of Stony Brook Southampton
Brings Global Sustainability Experience to Lead Green Campus

COVER PHOTO CREDIT Christine Connif Sheahan

 

Mary C. Pearl, Ph.D. an internationally renowned conservationist, immediate past president of Wildlife Trust and co-founder of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, has become the first Dean and Administrative Vice President for Stony Brook University Southampton (SBS).

Stony Brook President Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny announced the appointment saying, “After an intensive international search, I am thrilled to have Dr. Pearl leading our efforts at Stony Brook Southampton.” She added that Dr. Pearl’s environmental credentials and exceptional leadership that have helped shape and define sustainability nationally and globally demonstrate her drive and ability to do the same for Stony Brook Southampton.

In accepting the position, Dr. Pearl said, “The academic mission and vision of Stony Brook Southampton (profiled in the November, 2008 issue of Networking® magazine) is an appropriate response to the need for a deeper, integrated and systemic understanding of how to sustain the ecosystems that support human wellbeing.” She is enthused about working with “a creative and energetic faculty to prepare students who will graduate ready to create and take up the ‘green’ jobs that our economy and society will require.”

Commenting on her selection as Dean in a recent interview with Networking® magazine, she said, “I was the long shot. I did my undergraduate work in anthropology and my masters in paleontology and then became interested in the evolution of behavior.

“I’m really an environmental entrepreneur and don’t have the kind of constant academic progression one might expect. I don’t have that secret handshake, but I think (Stony Brook was) enthused by my enthusiasm to make this into the most fabulous campus for undergraduate education. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

New to the East End, the Manhattan-born scientist finds the area “beguiling and enchanting.” She adds, “The light is very special. I would like to retire here. The East End consists of an exceptional community of people who care about culture and nature, and I envision Stony Brook Southampton as a place of celebration and study of both.

“Someone said to me he would love to see Southampton as a college town and I know what he meant. We can be a wonderful resource for the community and there are lots of ways I want to open this up.”

Sustainability throughout the campus
In her welcome message, Dr. Pearl noted that sustainability at Stony Brook Southampton is “lived and breathed,” from their new LEED-certified library heated with geothermal energy, to their greenhouse and organic garden where some foods served in their café are grown. She pointed out that the historic 18th century windmill spins a state-of-the-art wind turbine providing free electricity for two buildings adding that grounds staff uses electric vehicles and campus police are often seen on bike patrol…”These 82 acres in the beautiful Shinnecock Hills are our own green laboratory.”

Dr. Pearl acknowledged that SBS benefits from being a part of Stony Brook University, a major research institution that is ranked among the top one percent of all the universities in the world. At the same time, its students benefit from being members of an intimate community of active learners in which resources to study important problems and come up with solutions are close at hand.

Trans-disciplinary majors
The organizing principle for study at Stony Brook Southampton is the student’s major. There are no separate departments so trans-disciplinary majors bring in differing features. Dr. Pearl, illustrating the advantages of this discipline says, “What is very exciting for a unified non-departmental faculty is looking at ecosystems and human impact so one can create courses that are team-taught by natural and social scientists in that field. For example, I can see down the road teaching a course on the health impact of environmental change.

“I have met with Stony Brook’s vice president of health sciences and with the director of the graduate program in public health and I would like to see a major with a bachelor’s degree in ecosystem health that would also be a five year program for a master’s in public health.”

She explains her vision saying that the day will come, especially here on Long Island where we have unexplained clusters of disease - unexplained because not enough research has been done - when municipal governments and health departments will really consider measurements of toxins in the environment or patterns of infectious disease relating to the environment as being something they want to have staff carry out.

Dr. Pearl says, “There is a growing interest in the public health community to understand infectious diseases because Lyme’s Disease and West Nile Virus in our part of the world, and SARS in Asia are increasing globally. We need professionals who understand and follow these developments. It’s time to train people for that.”

The sustainable life defined
What does it take for a person to lead a sustainable life? Dr. Pearl says, “You have to have health, food, security, an opportunity to seek livelihood and spiritual values. All of these have their basis in sustainable ecosystems. I would like to see majors that address each of these critical issues that make life worth living,” although, she adds that sustainable living is not just about ecosystems.

“Certainly, Networking® readers are concerned about economic sustainability which has a basis in natural resource use. So, there is environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and social sustainability. We often underestimate this last because we – in this nation – are rich in terms of social sustainability because we have a social contract in what it means to be an American and a citizen.

“I tend to think we have relied on this for so long, we don’t realize how precious it is. I have lived internationally where there is no social contract and I have seen that it leads to social violence that leads to conditions that actually destroy the environment and start a negative spiral.”

The three forms of sustainability are closely related and of equal importance at Stony Brook Southampton. Dr. Pearl made it clear that although she comes in as a scientist who has worked on environmental conservation, the underlying principle of sustainability is not a narrow definition but “quite broad.”

The Boyer Commission and Interdisciplinary Education
Dr. Pearl says, “The reason the educational world is looking at interdisciplinary (also called trans-disciplinary) education is because Stony Brook University President, Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny, launched and chaired The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University’s study, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities. That report suggests that undergraduate education be more hands-on, involve students in research, real issues and be interdisciplinary. More than a concept to feed into environmental conservation, (Southampton) is going to, I hope, be a model of the future of undergraduate education.”

She explained that students learn better when the curricula is problems and systems oriented. The traditional system started in 19th century Germany, one that is hard to change, was based solely on departments and solving problems by breaking them down.

“You see where that gets us,” says Dr. Pearl. “Sometimes when you solve problems by breaking them down you miss how the system doesn’t work. At a time of economic turmoil, everyone is questioning institutions and how systems can break down.”

She sees our current downturn as a good opportunity to introduce a philosophy of training people to look at the world in terms of interacting systems, something that is being done at Stony Brook Southampton where study isn’t broken into departments but looks at systems like ecosystems, financial systems or social systems seeing how they work together when you bring in information you need from different traditional disciplines.

She adds, “I have made it emphatic that I am an advocate of excellent science and cross-disciplinary solutions to problems. I think Stony Brook Southampton will become one of the premier colleges that will be seen as a pioneer in a form of education that will be increasingly adopted by our universities.

“We’ve had a 125% increase in applications this year and our SAT scores went up as well. We are a very attractive alternative to students thinking about a private college. Here is an opportunity to have an elite residential college experience at a state tuition price.”

Internationally acclaimed conservation leader
As co-founder of the Center for Conservation Medicine, a consortium of Wildlife Trust with Tufts Veterinary School, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the National Center for Wildlife Health and the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Pearl is a leader in the emerging field that examines links between wildlife, ecosystems and human health. In 2004, as president of the Wildlife Trust and co-coordinator of the Wildlife Trust Alliance in the United States, she was part of a key international decision to reassess wildlife trade practices that have threatened human and animal health as demonstrated in disease outbreaks that originated in wild animals and are now threats to global human health.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversant in Urdu, French and Indonesian, at present, Dr. Pearl will continue to serve in an advisory capacity with the Wildlife Trust, a global organization dedicated to conservation science, linking ecology and health, and building careers of local scientists and educators in 20 high-biodiversity countries in North America, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

She co-founded and is an adjunct research scientist at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, a consortium that includes the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden and the Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo. She serves as a trustee of the Belize Audubon Society and the Institute for Ecological Research in Brazil.

As Governor of the Society for Conservation Biology, Dr. Pearl has authored and edited articles about conservation science. She received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Yale University and holds an honorary doctorate from Marist College. After teaching at Yale and Wellesley College, she worked in the field of wildlife conservation at the World Wildlife Fund and later at the Wildlife Conservation Society. While there, she directed the international grants program and developed their Asia/Pacific program. Her research background is in behavioral ecology and conservation of Old World monkeys and apes, particularly the Himalayan Rhesus Monkey that she studied for two and a half years in northern Pakistan.

Of that experience she says, “It was such a privilege. In the winter I did my research in snowshoes and in the summer we had a monsoon. Seasons changed hour by hour creating a different assemblage of plants, wildlife, temperature and humidity. I think throughout my whole lifetime, I have drawn on that magnificent experience.

“I was doing research that was highly theoretical and, the same time, I was in a reserve forest that was being destroyed. I was at the headwaters of the Indus River when I learned that dams were silting up because of trees being cut downstream. I felt like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, looking at monkey behavior while their forest was disappearing and no one was talking about this.

“Back then, conservation of forests was not on everyone’s list. When I came returned, I told my advisor I simply had to work in nature conservation. My first job was at the World Wildlife Fund in the only job they had open, corporate fundraiser. I took it. I advise students not to wait for the perfect job. Just get your foot in the door. Decide what sector you want and go make a name for yourself.”

Dr. Pearl is married to Don J. Melnick, Ph.D., The Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology at Columbia University. Their daughter, Meredith, studies journalism at Columbia and son Seth, a graduating senior at Columbia, is majoring in both Political Science and Philosophy.