Dr. Tom Kelly is the founding director of the UNH Sustainability Institute and the Chief Sustainability Officer. Dr. Kelly collaborates with faculty, staff, students and community members in the development of policies, programs and practices related to the Sustainability Institute’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 sustainability for more than twenty years in the US and abroad. Current activities include working with UNH colleagues and many related partners on projects across the university’s curriculum, operations, research and engagement (CORE) activities; examples include regional approaches to sustainable food and energy systems, incubating sustainability science, the central place of culture in sustainability and sustainability education and pedagogy. Dr. Kelly was a founding member of the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium and the Inter-institutional Network for Food and Agricultural Sustainability (INFAS). He currently collaborates with Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and Second Nature on curricular and pedagogical innovation through the design and facilitation of regional symposia of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and the annual curriculum convocation of the AASHE national conference. In addition, Dr. Kelly was a principle designer and facilitator of Sustainability Unbound, a two-day, “advanced track” offered at the 2012 AASHE national conference in Los Angeles. 

Dr. Kelly was a visiting scholar at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, and a visiting professor of trans-boundary 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 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)
• 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
• "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)