Clark marks 20 years since opening the Cathy ’83 and Marc ’81 Lasry Center for Bioscience, the first building in Worcester to receive nationally recognized Gold Certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. The 50,000-square-foot building  houses laboratories, conference rooms, lounge spaces, faculty offices, and equipment for research and teaching in biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and environmental science.

The Experimental Plant Investigation Center (called the EPIC lab for short), a climate-controlled, energy-efficient, up-to-date laboratory and greenhouse for plant and insect behavior research — including studies related to the effects of climate and global change on organisms and ecosystems — opens in the Cathy ’83 and Marc ’81 Lasry Center for Bioscience. The EPIC lab includes the research labs of biology professors Chandra Jack and Kaitlyn Mathis.

The U.S. government releases the Fifth National Climate Assessment, including a chapter led by Geography Professor Abby Frazier detailing the impacts of climate and global change on Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands.

Internationally recognized polar scientist Karen Frey, a Clark geography professor, marks her 12th year as the lead author of an entry for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card.

Led by Professor Tim Downs, Clark researchers from the Department of Sustainability & Social Justice, Graduate School of Geography, and Becker School of Design & Technology embark on a three-year, NSF-funded project in Central Mexico to work with local and federal governments, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and community stakeholders on how to alter their fate under climate change.

After devastating hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Sustainability & Social Justice Professor Ramón Borges-Méndez co-founds Fundación Bucarabón, a nonprofit organization supporting women, farmers, and community economic empowerment initiatives in Maricao, a town in mountainous, western part of the island. The foundation’s goal is to “build back better,” ensuring residents can survive — even thrive — in the face of future disasters.

Clark holds its second — and largest yet — Climate Change Teach-In, bringing together the campus for a deep consideration of the challenges to the planet’s health. Activist and author Naomi Klein delivers the opening lecture, followed by more than 50 faculty- and staff-led panels, presentations, and open classes, assisted by a team of student facilitators.

The World Meteorological Organization convenes the Third World Climate Conference in Geneva to achieve “better climate information for a better future.”

In Japan, industrially advanced nations agree to the Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty to mandate the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Clark establishes the George Perkins Marsh Institute, emerging out of earlier research clusters around environmental risk and hazards. The institute is named for George Perkins Marsh, who, in the 19th century, spoke of the impact of humans on the environment.

Clark Geography Professor Roger Kasperson promotes research and international discussions around global environmental change, receiving funding from the United Nations University. He also begins a National Science Foundation-funded examination of “Critical Zones in Global Environmental Change: Comparing Driving Forces, Awareness, and Societal Response.”

Organized by Clark geographers Robert Kates and Billie Lee Turner and Harvard’s William C. Clark, an international symposium, “The Earth as Transformed by Human Action,” draws widespread attention from the global scientific community. The symposium will help lay the foundation for the creation of Clark’s George Perkins Marsh Institute, and encourage Clark’s research in earth system science and sustainability science. Three years later, Cambridge University Press will publish The Earth as Transformed by Human Action, co-edited by Turner and Kates. The book, a major stocktaking of the anthropogenic impacts on the planet and its ecosystems over 300 years, is deemed “a landmark study.”

To further its sustainability practices, Clark opens the cogeneration plant, one of the first grid-connected such plants in the country. The plant’s engine converts natural gas into steam for heat and electricity for lighting. Waste heat produced when generating electricity is captured and reused, while surplus energy in the form of electricity can be sold to the electrical grid.

In Geneva, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) holds what is now called the First World Climate Conference.

On April 22, the world — and Clark University — celebrates the first Earth Day, now an annual event that draws attention to environmental issues, most notably climate change. The first event sees pro-environment demonstrations in Washington, New York, and other cities, and litter cleanup throughout the country.

In its “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” report presented to to President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. President’s Science Advisory Committee raises concerns about the “greenhouse effect.”

Clark first enters the arena of polar and climate studies via Paul Siple, who has accompanied Admiral Richard E. Byrd on two expeditions to Antarctica. Siple defends his Clark geography dissertation, “Adaptations of the Explorer to the Climate of Antarctica,” in which he develops the theory of the wind chill factor. He will join Byrd on three more expeditions and earn three Congressional Medals of Honor.