The Center for Human Environments (CHE), one of 29 Research Centers and Institutes located at the City University of New York Graduate Center, brings together psychologists, anthropologists, geographers, health professionals, designers and planners whose research addresses the relationship between people and their physical settings. CHE offers a forum for environmental research where the primary emphasis is on examining the problems faced by neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, not-for-profits, policy-makers, and government agencies.

CHE is comprised of five separate research groups, representing the major areas of expertise and interest of its Graduate School faculty affiliates: the Children's Environments Research Group, the Health and Society Research Group, the Housing Environments Research Group, the Public Space Research Group, and the Youth Studies Research Group. CHE also partners with ActKnowledge, an organization located at the Graduate Center that works with community groups, not-for-profits, foundations, and government agencies to understand, evaluate, and transform programs and policies and to disseminate research findings.

Sponsors of recent CHE research projects have included: the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute; the National Science Foundation; the US Department of the Interior; the Ford, Rockefeller, Spencer, W. T. Grant, and Russell Sage Foundations; the American Educational Research Association; and numerous corporate funders. In the period 2005-2007, CHE projects have provided salaries and/or stipends for more than 60 students from the Graduate Center (or occasionally from elsewhere in the CUNY system). Eight faculty members from the Graduate Center or other CUNY divisions were engaged as Principal Investigators on CHE projects over the same period.

Here are some of the projects undertaken by CHE-affiliated researchers in recent years:

• investigating and reducing the disproportionate burden of cancer in minority groups in New York City
• story-writing as an intervention and educational vehicle for youth in nations emerging from conflict (such as the states of the former Yugoslavia)
• children's social reasoning about exclusion and rights
• changing use of free time among children in a Vermont town
• urban youth programs in the US and their relationship to community and social justice
• ethnographies of Fire Island National Seashore and the Statue of Liberty National Monument
• public policy and teen women's sexuality
• sexual quality of life for female cancer survivors
• trajectories of disadvantage for the homeless mentally ill
• the impact of foreclosure on low-income homeowners and the nonprofit education and intervention programs designed to assist them