Amy Tuininga, PhD, is the Director of Montclair State University’s PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies (PSEG ISS). She grows partnerships among faculty, students, administrators, government agencies, private corporations, and community groups to solve sustainability problems. Projects involve aspects of the environment, energy, water, food, natural resources, and economies that collectively function to build sustainable communities. She is developing the PSEG ISS as a source for innovation in sustainability and environmental management, a model of academic-corporate-community partnerships that advance sustainability science and build resilient communities that utilize informed, data-driven decision making.

Previously, Dr. Tuininga worked as the Interim Chief Research Officer and Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Fordham University where she was on the faculty as Associate Professor in Biology and taught Ecosystems Ecology. Her research focuses on how ecosystems respond to human perturbations such as climate change, invasive species and urbanization. At Fordham, Dr. Tuininga also served as Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, Partnerships and Assessment, as Co-Director of the Bronx Science Consortium Initiatives at Fordham, and as Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Biological Sciences. There she built a joint MS degree in Biomedical Sciences with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Business of Life Sciences and Communication of Life Sciences programs. She developed graduate assistantships at the New York Botanical Garden and Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Tuininga also initiated the Bronx Science Consortium Poster Symposium, Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity faculty workshop series, and worked with collaborators at the Wildlife Conservation Society to create Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology), an NCSCE-funded, and $2.6m NSF-funded tiered-mentoring program that serves underrepresented groups in STEM.

Dr. Tuininga's research focuses on how ecosystems respond to human perturbations such as climate change, invasive species and urbanization.

Projects that involve aspects of the environment, energy, water, food, natural resources, and economies that collectively function to build sustainable communities. Dr. Tuininga is developing the PSEG ISS as a source for innovation in sustainability and environmental management, a model of academic-corporate-community partnerships that advance sustainability science and build resilient communities that utilize informed, data-driven decision making.