The main institution focused on environmental issues on the University of Wisconsin campus will have a new director in the fall.
Paul Robbins from the University of Arizona has been selected as the director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW. Currently the director of the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona, Robbins will begin with his new position Sept. 1 of this year.
UW Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Paul DeLuca said the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies was looking for someone with a broad vision for the Nelson Institute and who is able to idealize what it should be like 10 years from now.
“His main responsibility will be not just execute the ‘mission’ but make an impact across campus by working with others,” DeLuca said.
In a UW statement, Robbins said he thinks UW is central to research on wildlife, energy and transportation. He said with so many problems facing the Earth, his main goal will be to make the institute the “international destination for knowledge and community outreach.”
“The main objective of the Nelson Institute is to act as our vehicle to study environmental driven issues, including social problems, contaminations and resource, people, politics and policy issues. Basically, we study any issues that look at environmental change,” DeLuca said.
Robbins also said in the statement that environmental education has become much more than earth science, and that the field has become more interdisciplinary.
Before heading to UW this September, Robbins will continue his current work at the University of Arizona, where he studies human environmental practices and knowledge, the influence non-humans have on humans and the “implications these interactions hold for ecosystem health, local community and social justice,” according to his staff page biography.
He has lectured his students on various topics that include environmental studies, natural resource policy and social theory, according to the statement. Robbins is also a UW alumnus who earned his B.A. in anthropology in 1989. He has a doctorate in geography from Clark University.
