Lori Bennear, a longtime Nicholas School faculty member, has been selected as the next Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, effective July 1.

Bennear had been serving as the interim dean since former dean Toddi Steelman departed to lead the Duke Climate Commitment in 2023. 

The new Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School recently shared insights into how she got into the environmental field, her leadership style, and vision for the next five years, as well as some favorite memories from her time at Duke, so far.

How did you get into the environmental field?

I grew up in Gillette, Wyoming, which is in the northeastern corner of Wyoming in coal and natural gas country. My parents didn’t work in the industry, but nearly everyone I knew did. This was the 1980s, and in addition to controversies about the environmental impacts of resource extraction, there were several other major resource controversies, including the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone (and the potential impacts of that reintroduction on cattle ranchers) and the “let it burn policy” in national parks which, combined with drought conditions, intense winds and years of fuel buildup, resulted in over 1 million acres (approximately 36% of the park) being burned. But I was a teenager and didn’t really understand much about these issues.

After my first year at Occidental College in Los Angeles, I switched majors from diplomacy and world affairs to economics, and I was looking for an economics class that fit my schedule and only required principles of microeconomics. There was a brand-new class, taught by one of my favorite economics professors, called environmental economics. I had no idea what that course was about, but it fit my schedule so I enrolled. That course literally changed my life. I was exposed to an intellectual framework that helped me contextualize and analyze the major resource conflicts of my youth. I was hooked. I started working with economics faculty on research, and from that point on I feel like my path to a research and teaching career in environmental economics was set.

How does your background, including research and expertise as an environmental economist and more than 20 years as an NSOE faculty member, inform your leadership of the Nicholas School?

The Nicholas School is a unique place. We have faculty that span more than 40 disciplines, such as the physical sciences, the biological sciences, the technical sciences and the social sciences. Some of these faculty members conduct research in the basic sciences, driven by fundamental curiosity and wonder about how the world works. Others are engaged in interdisciplinary research that is directly related to the ideation and testing of solutions to today’s pressing environmental challenges. Some faculty are deeply engaged with local communities in the co-creation of knowledge and solutions that meet those communities’ needs. And many faculty do some combination of these types of research. Being a faculty member at the Nicholas School for over 20 years has given me a deep appreciation for the full range of research activities in which our faculty engage. I have also had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from disciplines across Duke. I am keenly aware of how important interdisciplinary work can be and also of the real challenges in engaging in interdisciplinary work and of what faculty need from leaders to facilitate the success of interdisciplinary research.

On the educational front, I have taught the core class in environmental, resource and energy economics to the vast majority of our Master of Environmental Management students over the past 21 years. I take great pride in having helped generations of future environmental leaders overcome their skepticism of economics and, if not enjoy it, at least come to appreciate the value of understanding the economic perspective when engaging in policy debate on environmental issues. I have a deep appreciation and respect for our students, their goals and ambitions. A desire to see them flourish in their careers as environmental leaders inspires me to make the Nicholas School an even better place.

What are some key challenges the school faces today, and how are you and the Nicholas School community made for this moment?

I begin my deanship in a challenging time for higher education in general, and for research in climate and environmental science, in particular. Federal funding for scientific research is under threat, and this is particularly true for research on topics like climate change that the current administration does not favor. Jobs in federal agencies are uncertain, which may affect students’ choices of career paths.

At the same time, the problems the Nicholas School focuses on — climate change, biodiversity loss, marine and terrestrial conservation, environmental health, planetary health, forestry and others — are not going away. It will be incumbent upon the school, and incumbent upon me as the leader of the school, to identify new sources of funding and to work closely with the private sector and local and state governments to provide jobs for our students and critical leadership on these issues. This is not new for the Nicholas School. Our students have been shifting toward the private sector for the last decade, and our faculty are increasingly interested in potential commercial applications of their science to help drive environmental solutions. These efforts will need to be accelerated, but we are off to a strong start.

If you were to tell people one thing to describe your leadership style, what would it be?

My leadership philosophy is highly collaborative and relational and best framed as strategic transformational leadership. The strategic aspect concerns the ability to “plant the flag” and establish where a unit, program or process should be heading. The transformational component focuses on being able to inspire, motivate and encourage others to work toward the common goal.

In higher education, both require significant collaborations and investments in relationship building because, despite the hierarchical nature of our institutions, there is very little hard power in any leadership position to make people do anything. Rather, successful leadership in higher education requires understanding people (faculty, staff and students), building relationships with them, understanding their goals and challenges, and then both creating a vision that people can agree upon and serving as a model and guide on how to work toward that vision. 

What is something you look forward to building on from your time as interim dean during the next five years?

One of the things I’m most excited about is the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to transform our research and education missions. In research we are already seeing an exponential growth in faculty use of AI which, in turn, is radically improving our ability to measure, monitor and model earth, environmental and marine systems. The Nicholas School already has extensive expertise in remote-sensing technologies, and advances in AI will accelerate research breakthroughs using remote sensing. In our educational programs, we need to pivot from worrying about how students can use AI to cheat to training students to use AI productively, as employers are going to be demanding job applicants are fluent in these technologies.

The Nicholas School is in the very preliminary stages of fostering collaborations in AI with faculty in the Pratt School of Engineering and key departments in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. I very much look forward to building out these efforts over the next several years.

What is a favorite memory from meeting Nicholas School alumni and friends in your travels across the country? What did you learn, or re-affirm, about this community?

I have so many great memories of meeting with Nicholas School and Duke alumni and friends from my time as a Duke Alumni Association Faculty Fellow, through my time as the faculty representative of Duke’s Alumni Board of Directors, and continuing through my time as interim dean. I don’t know that I could pick a single favorite. 

What impresses me with every engagement is how passionately our alumni and friends care about Duke and the Nicholas School and how exceptionally generous they are with their time and their talents. I’ve met alumni who have helped me establish a DukeEngage program in Puerto Rico, I’ve met alumni who have introduced me to key policymakers and stakeholders on a topic I was researching, and yes, I’ve met alumni and friends who have introduced me to people who have become key donors and supporters. I tell prospective students that the Duke Alumni Network is probably the most valuable thing they will get from their Duke education, and I mean it. It is a powerful network for the alums in terms of networking and career development, but it is an equally powerful network for those of us back at Duke because of our alumni’s willingness to share their talents with us.