Director’s Letter
When I took Graham’s helm in 2018, I inherited an impressive legacy that began in the early 2000s with one powerful idea.
Our key benefactor, Don Graham ’55, ’56, ’09—loyal alumnus, successful businessman, lifelong sustainability advocate, and generous supporter of units and initiatives across the university—recognized the necessity of taking an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to tackle existential challenges like climate change. He also saw a unique opportunity for the University of Michigan, through its extraordinary students and faculty expertise across a host of disciplines, to lead the way toward a more sustainable future.
And so the Graham Institute was born, with a mission to deploy U-M’s vast expertise to solve the most complex challenges while training the next generation of sustainability leaders.
We are proud of our early work. We connected disciplines across U-M, established a strong and extensive network of external partners, forged new paths in collaborative, engaged research, and shifted U-M’s culture toward sustainability. We also established some of our most longstanding and impactful programs, such as the Graham Sustainability Scholars Program (the first non-degree sustainability program for undergraduates from all schools and colleges across the university) and the innovative Dow Sustainability Fellows Program, which remains an exemplar of graduate-level co-curricular education. To date, these programs have prepared more than 1,900 future leaders for a lifelong commitment to sustainability, and they are stronger now than ever before.
By the time I assumed Graham’s leadership, we were well established as an effective bridge organization, linking the research excellence of the U-M community with the experiential knowledge of our external partners to co-produce high-impact, scalable, transferable sustainability solutions. In the years since, much has evolved at Graham and across the university, especially in terms of sustainability.
In 2020, Graham refined and formalized its focus with a new strategic plan that identifies five areas of deep expertise where we make exceptional contributions and have significant impact. Climate change and water resources are chief among those.
Our Energy Futures Initiative (EFI)—a key component of our climate work—has grown exponentially since former Dow Doctoral Fellow Dr. Sarah Mills joined Graham in 2019 to lead the effort. Hallmarks of EFI include a strong partnership with Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and a focus on supporting rural communities across our state through the clean energy revolution.
Our Water Center, led by Dr. Jennifer Read and established with a generous grant from the Erb Family Foundation, continues to set the standard for practicing and teaching collaborative science. At the same time, the Water Center has prioritized diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and access in its work, helping our state progress toward available, affordable, safe, and sustainable drinking water and sanitation services for all.
Shortly after arriving at U-M, I was honored to be appointed as co-chair of the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality (PCCN), a group charged with investigating and recommending scalable, transferable pathways for U-M to achieve carbon neutrality. Graham’s managing director, Drew Horning, was also instrumental in that process, and he has continued to move the work forward since the university committed to pursuing carbon neutrality in May 2021.
The PCCN process was vital in raising awareness of and commitment to sustainability across the institution. We are delighted that university leadership provided Graham with the resources to extend our Planet Blue Ambassadors Program to the Flint and Dearborn campuses. This program, which numbers over 8,000 participants, has been pivotal in nudging our community toward greater sustainability, as evidenced by the Sustainability Cultural Indicators Program (SCIP)—another groundbreaking initiative supported by Graham.
Along the way, we’ve expanded our engaged, place-based work to solve problems beyond our campus. In the 2022 fiscal year alone, we partnered with communities from Benton Harbor to Bucaramanga, Colombia. A year earlier, with anonymous donor support, we launched our Carbon Neutrality Acceleration Program, infusing $5 million into U-M research efforts for the ultimate benefit of people across the globe. Across all of our research programs, Graham helps faculty achieve broader impacts by facilitating stakeholder engagement, policy integration, and translational science communication.
As we look ahead, we feel highly optimistic about our opportunities to improve sustainability—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We owe a debt of gratitude to all who have supported and partnered with Graham over the years. Our success is your success. We look forward to your continued partnership as we grow our programs and impact, working together to create a more sustainable future.
Sincerely,
Jennifer A. Haverkamp
Graham Family Director