Florida International University (FIU), the public university in Miami, has close to 38,000 students, almost 1,000 full-time faculty and 113,000 alumni, making it the largest university in South Florida. The University offers more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in 17 colleges and schools. Ninety-five percent of the university’s full-time faculty hold doctorates or the highest degrees in their field. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission. Sponsored research funding (grants and contracts) from external sources for the year 2004-2005 totaled nearly $80 million. The University is ranked as a Research University in the High Research Activity category of the Carnegie Foundation’s prestigious classification system.
Institute for Sustainability Science in Latin America and the Caribbean (ISSLAC)/Department of Environmental Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199. Dr. David Barton Bray, Director.
The Institute for Sustainability Science in Latin America and the Caribbean (ISLACC), Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC), Florida International University. I. ISLACC, which was founded in 2002, is based on the idea that a “sustainability science” should be place-based, interdisciplinary, and problem-oriented. Its current activities are drawn largely from the faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies at FIU. The Director, Dr. David Barton Bray, Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at FIU, and at least one of his MS graduate students from the Department of Environmental Studies, would represent FIU in the proposed activities. Over the last six years Dr. Bray has led a large-scale research, action, and policy project on Mexican community forestry in close association with a group of Mexican and US colleagues. With major funding from the Ford, Hewlett and Tinker Foundations, this project is producing a stream of books, book chapters, refereed articles, and memorias of workshops with local community organizations. Particularly notable is the policy publication, Los Bosques Comunitarios de México: Logros y Desafíos, which summarized the recent research for a policy and general public audience, and which was presented in a workshop in the offices of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and presided by the Secretary of the Environment, Ing. Alberto Cárdenas and Mexico’s highest ranking forestry official, the General Director of the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR), Ing. Manuel Reed.
