The Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B) at Columbia University was established in 2001. In creating E3B, the university recognized that the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, and environmental biology constitute a distinct subdivision of the biological sciences with its own set of intellectual foci, theoretical foundations, scales of analysis, and methodologies. E3B's mission is to educate a new generation of scientists and practitioners in the theory and methods of ecology, evolution, and environmental biology. Our educational programs emphasize a multidisciplinary perspective to understand life on Earth from the level of organisms to global processes that sustain humanity and all life.