The core mission of the Center for Applied Environmental Research (CAER) is building creative research partnerships within and outside the University of Missouri-Kansas City to address urban environmental challenges, with emphasis on resilience. Our approach to resilience adopts and incorporates both shocks from natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, wild fires, floods) and the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day to day or cyclical basis. For some Kansas City metro area communities, these stresses might include high urban air pollution levels, inefficient public transportation system, endemic violence, or chronic food and water shortages. 

CAER leverages faculty expertise and supports the emergence of multidisciplinary partnerships to explore and address these issues in creative and innovative ways. The center intends to be a catalyst for generating ideas, building bridges between the university and urban environment (both local and beyond), and creating partnerships to drive the implementation of those ideas that have the most potential for transformative impact.

CAER was established in 1990 with Dr. Syed Hasan as the founding director. After 30 years of meritorious service to UMKC as a faculty member in the UMKC Department of Geosciences he retired in 2014. Subsequently, Dr. Wayne Vaught, Dean of the UMKC College of Arts & Sciences, appointed Dr. Jimmy Adegoke in January 2015 as Director of CAER.