The C.T. de Wit Graduate School for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC) is a collaborative research and PhD training institution coordinated by Wageningen University (WU). The Graduate School is named after professor C.T. de Wit, the founding father of the Systems Approach in Wageningen, was established in 1993 by various research groups with the aim of increasing the potential of agro-ecological sciences and providing a platform for addressing major scientific issues such as sustainability and agro-ecology.
The mission of PE&RC is to understand the functioning of (agro)ecosystems to design and enable the development of sustainable and multifunctional production and land use systems. This mission can be viewed from a local, regional and global perspective, considering socio-economic and biophysical objectives and constraints. The actual research in PE&RC ranges from aspects of intensive agricultural production systems (e.g., glasshouses) to extensive (semi-)natural production systems (e.g. agro-forests and savannas). Production refers to products as well as services (e.g. recreation, biodiversity). The natural sciences (Planet) are the corner stone of (agro-)ecosystem research in PE&RC. However, communication and collaboration with social sciences (People-Profit) are required to adjust a conceptual framework on sustainable and multifunctional land use systems.
The main tasks of PE&RC are:
The ambition of PE&RC is to be at the international forefront of the scientific field it operates in, tackling both fundamental and societal relevant cutting-edge research. The research and education provide up-to-date and high-quality opportunities for PhD candidates. PE&RC provides a stimulating platform for scientists and candidates to communicate and interact at various scales and levels. PE&RC facilitates the training of PhD candidates and post-doctoral fellows by organising a wide variety of activities such as post-graduate courses, seminars, discussion groups, theme days and annual meetings. An external evaluation panel in 2009 performed an assessment of PE&RC as a whole and most of its participating groups within Wageningen University according to standard evaluation protocol (SEP) for public research organizations in the Netherlands. They assessed the research and the teaching programmes of the PE&RC Graduate Programme to be of very good to excellent quality. Furthermore they noticed that the “Graduate school provides an excellent platform for effective collaborations of the groups of the school and associated groups”. The Graduate School PE&RC has been accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (most recent accreditation: 2005).
At present PE&RC consists of approximately 130 staff members from 22 chair groups of Wageningen University (involving four Departments: Plant Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Agrotechnology & Food Sciences and Social Sciences), one group from Utrecht University and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. In addition approximately 300 PhDs and 30 postdoctoral fellows are registered at PE&RC. Per year, about 40 PhDs graduate and the great majority of them follows the training and supervision programme. Many PhDs and postdocs are from outside The Netherlands, underscoring the international ambition of PE&RC. The Graduate School also has approximately 40 associated members from related research institutes within Wageningen University & Research Centre (WUR), such as Alterra and Plant Research International, as well as outside the WUR, such as the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede which is part of the University of Twente.