936 | CU-Boulder Environmental Studies Program

News Nov 01, 2008

An Interview with the New CSTPR Director, Bill Travis

William Travis. View Biography

The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research welcomes William (Bill) Travis as its new director. Travis, an Associate Professor of Geography who has taught for more than 20 years at CU-Boulder and was the former director of the university’s Natural Hazards Center, was named director of CSTPR this September. He has researched and written extensively about humans and the environment, including in his latest book "New Geographies of the American West: Land Use and Changing Patterns of Place," which was published in 2007. One of his current research projects focuses on how Colorado communities perceive and react to the mountain pine beetle outbreak.

This edition of Ogmius introduces Bill and highlights his work.

Ogmius (O): Tell us a bit about yourself.

Travis (T): I’m a Geographer trained in the “environment and society” school of research. I’m starting my 25th year at CU, having arrived in 1984 as director of the Natural Hazards Center in the Institute of Behavioral Science, a post I held for eight years and which put my office just three doors west of the Policy Center on Grandview Ave, so I’ve returned to my old neighborhood. I work on social dimensions of hazards, climate change, and land use. In the last couple of years I’ve come back to an area that motivated my early career: the societal effects of climate change. Since I was a kid in Florida I’ve been fascinated by how people responded to the weather and climate, and the problem of climate change came up just as I was choosing early research projects. My last significant contributions to that field pre-date the IPCC, but my interest was re-kindled by the growing potential for extreme, even abrupt climate change, a topic that nicely combines hazards and climate research.