Georgetown University recently received an anonymous $20 million gift to help establish a multidisciplinary environmental initiative. The anonymous gift was made by a family that's affiliated with the university and will allow the school to hire three new employees for its science research team and fund studies that link the environment and society.

"The Georgetown Environment Initiative exists to build capacity for scholarship and education in the environment in the broadest possible sense of the word," Matthew Hamilton, faculty chair of the initiative, said in a recent press release. "The well-being of humanity depends on the health of natural systems and that myriad complex factors are involved in sustaining them."

This is part of an overarching goal of the university to become an environmentally friendly campus. By 2020, Georgetown has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half and it has already made significant strides in becoming more sustainable. For example, the university has introduced the environmental biology major at Georgetown College and the Environmental and Regulatory Policy Program at its Public Policy Institute.

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