“The failure of integration is making it difficult for us to solve complex societal problems”
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University
“Reality is a great integrator”
Mike Wiley, University of Michigan
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers”
James Thurber
Research interests
I am interested in sustainability science as a new and growing field to address applied societal problems and issues in an integrated way. I am also interested in discovering how we researchers in universities can work effectively together across disciplines on the complex, real-world environmental and resource problems of the Anthropocene. One of my goals as SEAS Associate Dean for Research and Engagement is to help faculty at the University of Michigan to improve our ability to do this well.
My research specialty is creating dynamic process models of ecosystems such as forests and wetlands, including the biogeochemistry of nutrient and carbon cycling, and including systems heavily impacted by human activities. More broadly, I am passionate about models, seeing the world through models, understanding theory and models, data and models, and philosophical aspects of models such as how models embed our understanding. Models that can help us to work across disciplines to understand complex societal problems at appropriate scales and levels of organization are needed. Models that can help us to understand joint outcomes that include environmental quality, economic, and social equity outcomes are are needed.
Some of my work focuses on the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, USA, including the land and its connections to coastal ecosystems and lakes, as well as urban systems, as sets of functioning human-environment systems across a range of scales. I am also using a case-study approach to understand how a wide variety of environmental issues interconnect and overlap within the Great Lakes region. Read more about my current research here.
Selected synergistic and leadership activities
I currently serve as the Associate Dean for Research and Engagement in SEAS, the School for Environment and Sustainability, at the University of Michigan. I am responsible for enabling and developing research across the school of about 75 faculty, 100+ staff and 600+ graduate students, managing research activities and expenditures to enhance the societal impact of SEAS research and external engagement, ensure that faculty, research staff and students have access to resources for cutting-edge research, and facilitate engagement by the SEAS community on applied issues with external partners outside of the university.
I served a leadership role in the planning of SEAS, chairing the Provost’s Faculty Transition Team to plan the school, an effort involving 37 faculty working over a 9-month period in 2016-2017. I also formed and currently lead the SEAS Deans’ Junior Faculty Mentoring Program.
I previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan (2010-2012). Duties included approval of faculty teaching portfolios, joint oversight of the undergraduate Program in the Environment (PitE, with 500+ students as majors and minors), and oversight of the graduate Office of Academic Programs (graduate student admissions and recruiting, financial aid, career services, allocation of teaching assistants). As part of this position I also participated in the UM Provost’s Campus Leadership Mentoring Program.
I have recently served on program review panels for the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Contact and CV
email: wcurrie@umich.edu
I am always interested in working with new motivated, talented students. I typically advise about 5 to 8 new graduate students each year in our two-year Master’s degree program. Learn more about the SEAS Master’s degree program at seas.umich.edu.
Twitter: @WilliamSCurrie