On October 1, Jon D. Erickson, professor of ecological economics, was appointed Interim Dean of the Rubenstein School following former Dean Mary Watzin's move to North Carolina State University. Jon joined the faculty of the School and Environmental Studies Program in 2002 and is also a fellow in UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. He was the managing director of the Gund Institute from 2009 to 2012 and recently completed terms as president of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics, editor of the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies, and service on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Lake Champlain Basin Program.

Since joining the Rubenstein School, Jon has been alternating between teaching core curriculum, environmental studies, and graduate courses in the Gund Institute's certificate program. He was honored with UVM's inaugural Service Learning Award in 2004 for his collaborations on problem-based learning and started an annual service-learning abroad program in the Dominican Republic in 2005 with his wife Pat, a veterinarian and senior lecturer in UVM's Department of Animal Science.

Jon has published widely on energy and climate change policy, land conservation, watershed planning, environmental public health, and the theory and practice of ecological economics. His books include The Great Experiment in Conservation: Voices from the Adirondack Park (2009), Frontiers in Ecological Economic Theory and Application (2007), and Ecological Economics: a Workbook for Problem-Based Learning (2005). Jon is also an Emmy award-winning producer of films such as the four-part PBS series Bloom on sources and solutions to nutrient pollution in Lake Champlain. His latest project entitled Lake Defenders with Bright Blue EcoMedia, a non-profit film company he co-founded, premiers October 18 on PBS and highlights the successes and challenges of managing aquatic invasive species in our lake systems.

Jon's scholarship and teaching has also brought him around the world. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania in 2011 where he has an active research project on the influence of climate and land use change on infectious disease pathways. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Iceland, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic, and Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. Jon was on the economics faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before joining the University of Vermont and completed his Ph.D. in natural resource economics at Cornell University in 1997.

Jon and Pat are the proud parents of Louis, a former environmental studies student at UVM, and Jon, currently a film student at Burlington College. They live in South Burlington with a menagerie of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and other life forms.