Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment

After a year’s consideration of the most efficient and effective ways to structure UT’s significant interests and accomplishments related to the environment, the new Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment became operational on July 1, 2006. The institute represented a restructuring and expansion of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute—a Center of Excellence established by the State of Tennessee in 1985—to focus more broadly on environmental challenges. Programs previously contained in the Energy, Environment and Resources Center, the Joint Institute for Energy and Environment, the Water Resources Center, and the Community Partnerships Center were refocused and included within the new structure. The first issue of the institute’s quarterly newsletter, Indicator, was distributed in January 2007. In 2008 the Environmental Protection Agency designated ISSE (pronounced “ice”) and its partner, the Cumberland River Compact (CRC), as the Center of Excellence for Watershed Management in Tennessee. The new Center for Watershed Solutions was the second EPA center to be designated in the southeast and the first involving a partnership between a university and a nongovernmental agency.