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Amy Tuininga, PhD, is the Associate Dean for Research and Partnerships in the College of Science and Mathematics and is a Professor in the Earth and Environmental Studies Department. For Spring 2026, she also is serving as the Interim Director of the School of Computing. Her primary role is to support faculty and students in their research endeavors. She does this by growing partnerships among faculty, students, administrators, government agencies, private corporations, and community groups to solve real-world problems. Projects involve aspects of the environment, energy, water, food, natural resources, and economies that collectively function to build sustainable communities. She is contributing to the College serving as a source for innovation in STEM research and solutions for society through academic-corporate-community partnerships that advance STEM and builds a resilient society that utilizes informed, data-driven decision making.

Previously, Dr. Tuininga worked as the Director of the PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies at Montclair State University where she created the Green Teams Program, a nationally competitive, multi-award winning, trans-disciplinary summer internship program. Over 10 years, 470 interns have participated, coming from 119 colleges and universities and 175 majors, partnering on teams of five with 58 different hosting organizations to address their Sustainability challenges. This program as received awards from the NJ Governor's Excellence Awards, CIANJ, ROINJ, USGBC, and several others. Funding has come from the PSEG Foundation, NSF, USDA, several corporations, non-profits, universities, and individuals. Graduates are now serving globally in roles in many different sectors, contributing to a stronger and more stable communities, environments and economies.

Prior to that Dr. Tuininga was 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, and 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.

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• Explore my research at Research with Montclair
• Explore my research at Research with New Jersey