Case Western Reserve University has received a $10 million gift to create a new center to increase understanding surrounding environmental law, the university announced on Tuesday.
The contribution, pledged by Coleman P. Burke to the School of Law and the largest in the school’s history, will establish the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law. The center will expand students’ learning opportunities and interdisciplinary research in the rapidly growing field.
The new center will also support faculty positions, create scholarship opportunities for students, sponsor student research and fund environmental law externships across the country.
“Our natural world faces increasingly critical and complex environmental challenges,” Burke said. “This center will combine the law school’s significant expertise in the subject with the university’s broader related strengths to make meaningful contributions to address them.”
The university has appointed law professor and environmental law scholar Jonathan H. Adler as the center’s director.
According to Adler, the center will play a pivotal role in preparing students in meeting present and future environmental challenges.
“Today’s environmental problems require a willingness to work outside and across disciplinary boundaries,” Adler said. “It is our hope that this center will foster productive dialogue and analysis of these issues and prepare a new generation of environmental lawyers.”
Later this fall, the center will organize a symposium on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and another symposium on environmental health in 2020.
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