Dr. Tom Kelly is the founding director of UNH's endowed sustainability program and the UNH Chief Sustainability Officer. Dr. Kelly collaborates with faculty, staff, students and others in the development of curriculum, operations, research and engagement policies, practices and initiatives related to UNH's four educational initiatives in biodiversity, climate, culture, and food.

Co-editor and co-author of "The Sustainable Learning Community: One University's Journey to the Future" (2009), Dr. Kelly has been working in the field of higher education and sustainable development for more than fifteen years in the US as well as Colombia and Brazil. Current activities include working with UNH colleagues and outside partners on the UNH organic dairy research farm, Food Solutions New England, Carbon Solutions New England, the Ecology, Climate and Health Working Group, and more. A founding member of the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium working to coordinate activities in New England for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and a past guest director of the National Association of College & University Food Services (NACUFS) Board of Directors, he currently serves on advisory or steering committees and councils for the Real Food Challenge, the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, the Community, Food and Agriculture Program at Cornell University, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and NHPTV's "Planet Granite." On campus, Dr. Kelly chairs the UNH Sustainability Academy Collaborative Council and participates in the Provost's Staff Council, Energy Task Force, Transportation Policy Committee, Healthy UNH, Ecosystem Task Force, UNH Lands Committee, Concerts Committee, and more. Dr. Kelly was a co-principal investigator on the INHALE project, a NOAA-funded research effort by the UNH Climate Change Research Center in collaboration with the UNH College of Health and Human Services to investigate the effects of climate variability, air quality, and weather on human health in New England, a visiting scholar at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, and a visiting professor of transboundary environmental issues in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands at El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico DF.  In addition to an undergraduate and master's degree in musical composition and conducting, he holds a master's degree and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

More Information

• Dr. Kelly's CV
• The Sustainable Learning Community: One University's Journey to the Future (2009)
• December 2011 interview on Radio Green Talk
• Delta Sky Magazine July 2010 interview
• New Hampshire Business Review in 2009
• KRCU at Southeast Missouri State University 2009 interview
• 2009 UNH Sustainability Speaker Series guest lecture on sustainability
• 2008 Association of College Unions International's Bulletin
• 2008 NewEngland.com's "Faces of New England" interview
• Mindrum, Bob. (July 2008). "Beyond the Buzz: Higher education leader offers insight into sustainability." Interview with Tom Kelly, UNH's chief sustainability officer. ACUI Bulletin, Association of College Unions International.
• 2008 New Hampshire Business Magazine on WMUR Manchester by Fred Kocher
• "Higher Education & Sustainabilitiy: universities can have no greater mission than this" (2008)
• 2007 UNH Presidential Award of Excellence
• "Virtuous Globalization: A Dialogue for the University of New Hampshire Discovery Program" (2005)