The Ecology Center
The next generation of environmental leaders won’t learn about the world’s challenges from a textbook. They’ll learn from the river, through hands-on experience and action.
No single discipline, technology, or perspective will solve the environmental challenges facing our world. It takes all of us—working together as problem-solvers who connect scientific insight with societal impact, grounding every decision in evidence and action.”
— Janeen Putman, Director, Ecology Center
The Susquehanna River runs right outside our door. Most universities would call that a view. Bucknell calls it a classroom.
A living one. Where watersheds meet communities. Where ecology meets engineering. Where data meets decisions. Here, students and faculty don’t just read about how complex environmental systems work. They step into the river and experience it firsthand.
The Bucknell Ecology Center brings it all together, turning the river and the region into a classroom for the next generation of environmental and sustainability leaders.
The students are here. The river is here. The resources aren’t. Yet.
Today, students who want to do research are turned away when funding runs out. Summer research spots are limited. Environmental work is scattered across fragmented facilities. Each of those gaps is one a donor can close.
This investment changes that. It opens hands-on experiential learning to every student ready for it, gives faculty the leadership to build what comes next and creates a home where Bucknell’s interdisciplinary environmental work can thrive.
Impact and Giving Opportunities
A Living Laboratory — in our own Backyard
For student researchers: More students each year will do sustained research across the academic year. More will spend their summers in the field. They’ll travel to conferences, join specialized programs and connect what they learn in class to the challenges that will shape their careers. They graduate with the skills to work together, lead across disciplines, and deliver practical solutions to complex environmental challenges — all before they ever leave campus.
For faculty and the region: The Ecology Center is where faculty from across colleges meet around shared questions, and where Bucknell steps forward as a leader in regional revitalization and environmental stewardship. Named leadership gives the center the continuity and strength to build enduring partnerships, advance high-impact interdisciplinary scholarship and carry Bucknell’s knowledge into transformative community impact.
Already in Motion: Bucknell is one of only a few U.S. universities with a major river bordering campus. Fourteen field stations stretch from Miller Run on campus to creeks and marshes across the region. And every fall since 2006, the River Symposium has brought the region’s scientists and engineers to campus.
Students are ready. Classes and research are underway. The river is waiting. What turns that momentum into a nationally distinctive program is investment: leadership, expanded student experiences and research, and a home worthy of Bucknell’s ambition.
Recognition Opportunities
- Bucknell Ecology Center: $10 million
- Funds and names the Center as a permanent foundation for campus-wide environmental and sustainability leadership, connecting research, teaching and regional engagement across disciplines.
- Center Director: $6 million
- Funds and names permanent leadership for the Ecology Center, driving program strategy, faculty collaboration, public engagement and Bucknell’s regional environmental vision.
- Program Directors: $600,000 each
- Funds named directors for Place Studies, Watershed Sciences and Sustainable Technology, providing the academic leadership to build programs, engage students and advance interdisciplinary research.
- Experiential Student Scholars Fund: $1 million
- Names a fund for year-round student experiential opportunities—including research stipends, travel, internships and conference presentations.
- Sustainability Fund: Current use or endowed funds
- Funds agile annual grants that empower students, faculty and staff to identify and implement environmental health and sustainability projects across campus.
- Sustainability Programming: Current use or endowed funds
- Supports field research, experiential trips, study away and abroad, conference presentations, internships and signature events including the Susquehanna River and Sustainability Symposia.
Be the headwaters of what comes next. Be the ’ray!
Fuel Bold Exploration
Give students the opportunity, resources and mentorship to pursue big questions, cross boundaries and turn curiosity into discovery. Your support makes the full Bucknell academic experience possible. Be the catalyst that makes bold academic exploration possible. Be the ’ray.