A vigorous advocate for healthful and environmentally "green" workplaces, Edward Cohen-Rosenthal died Jan. 19 at Gilchrist Hospice Center in Baltimore, Md., after a six-year struggle with cancer. The senior extension associate in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell University and founding director of the Work and Environment Initiative in the Cornell Center for the Environment, Cohen-Rosenthal was 49.

"Ed was an advocate for environmental, labor and social issues who succeeded in working across academic disciplines," said John Forester, professor of city and regional planning at Cornell. Forester praised Cohen-Rosenthal for his fierce optimism. "Everyone who worked with him will miss that hopeful gleam always in his eyes. His persistence, his continual creativity and his political commitment and courage, always against long odds, forced attention to inconvenient problems of industrial ecology that citizens of every industrial nation have to face."

He was born Aug. 16, 1952, in Baltimore and earned a B.A. in philosophy (1974) at Rutgers College and an Ed.M. (1975) at Harvard Graduate School of Education. At Rutgers, he formed the Academic Activist Caucus, which grew into the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, and he was known to answer its phone with: "Change the world!" At Harvard he became coordinator of the school's Recurrent Education Policy Group.

Before joining the Cornell ILR extension staff in 1991, he was coordinator of the Education Advancement Project for the Rutgers University Labor Education Center (1975-77); associate director of the Washington, D.C.-based American Center for the Quality of Work Life (1978-79); and assistant to the president for educational programs (1987-91) of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen (AFL-CIO), also in Washington. Cohen-Rosenthal's initial interest in labor education and negotiation strategies eventually led him to explore the environmental aspects of, first the workplace and then the world. As an ILR extension associate in Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems and executive director of the ILR International Initiative, he consulted for companies, government agencies and unions on organizational effectiveness and labor-management relationships.

In 1992 he established the Cornell Work and Environment Initiative (WEI) to address environmental issues affecting employers, workers and their communities, with the goal of improving environmental performance and increasing green employment opportunities. WEI works with economically distressed communities across the United States to help replace toxin-contaminated "brown fields" with eco-industrial parks that offer job opportunities in healthful workplaces, conserve energy and use materials sustainably. Project partners have included the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Just a few years ago, the promise of sustainable growth without trashing the environment was a fringe idea," Cohen-Rosenthal said in 2000 when he was appointed co-director of the National Center for Eco-industrial Development. "Now, eco-industry is moving into the mainstream of economic development, bringing with it a focus on new partnerships and new, rewarding jobs in healthful workplaces."

The author of more than 50 articles on industrial ecology and labor-related topics and co-author of two books, Mutual Gains: A Guide to Union-Management Cooperation and Unions, Management and Quality: Opportunities for Innovation and Excellence, Cohen-Rosenthal also was the principal partner in the consulting firm, ECR Associates, in Foster, Va. At the funeral service in Baltimore on Jan. 20, his business partner, Cynthia Burton, read excerpts from letters sent by clients from around the world praising Cohen-Rosenthal for his broad-ranging knowledge, seemingly endless energy, contagious enthusiasms and often-outrageous communication style. She related how, during an initial meeting with clients, he launched into a rendition of the Motown classic "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" to demonstrate the trait he hoped would define their relationship.

Cohen-Rosenthal is survived by his wife, Ellen, and by his daughters, Janna and Mollie, and son, Jacob.