The Wege Foundation, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., has pledged to fund a new graduate student fellowship and a professorship in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) as part of its ongoing support of the school and the University of Michigan. Both gifts acknowledge the decades-long relationship between Peter M. Wege, the foundation's founder, and Jonathan W. Bulkley, who retired in June as a University of Michigan professor after 43 years of service. The announcements were made as part of a special academic panel discussion, organized to reflect upon the career and celebrate Professor Bulkley's research, teaching and mentoring accomplishments.

Faced with increasing risks of intense storms, heat stress, clean water availability and economic hardship, municipal leaders are seeking high-quality, location-specific analyses to help plan for climate change impacts. That is the focus of a new $1.2 million University of Michigan research project called the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities.

A merry-go-round that generates electricity to light a rural African schoolhouse is among the sustainability projects tackled this summer by a team of University of Michigan graduate students working with villagers in Liberia. With colleagues from Clemson University and the University of Liberia, the U-M student group also designed and installed a toilet system that creates biogas to fuel the school's kitchen stove and a solar-powered produce dehydrator that allows the villagers to keep dried mangoes, tomatoes and eggplant for up to a year without refrigeration. "The developing countries are a key to global sustainability," said Jose Alfaro, a doctoral student at the School of Natural Resources and Environment and co-founder of the U-M student group, Sustainability Without Borders.