Clark University’s Center for Technology, Environment, and Development (CENTED) was launched on August 10, 1978, by geographers Roger Kasperson and Robert Kates, physicist Chris Hohenemser, and international development faculty Richard Ford and Barbara Thomas-Slayter.
The Center focused on the analysis of technological hazards, comparative risk assessment, and international development problems at the intersection of society and environment. In addition, its member groups produced studies in climate and society, energy problems, and water resources planning.
About thirty faculty and numerous graduate students from various disciplines were assisted in their research through the CENTED connection. Research affiliations developed through the World Resources Institute, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, and a number of other international and American research groups. CENTED’s specialized library — now the Jeanne X. Kasperson Reearch Library — quickly became one of the outstanding research collections in the United States on risk assessment, management, and emergency planning.
CENTED became the George Perkins Marsh Institute in 1991.
Source: “Clark University, 1887–1987: A Narrative History” by William A. Koelsch (Clark University Press, 1987)
