Professor Robert Manning retires this summer from the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources after forty years of research, service, teaching, and advising in the Parks, Recreation and Tourism (formerly Recreation Management) Program. Bob’s nationally renowned expertise on the country’s national parks and his longtime research and collaboration with the National Park Service (NPS) and related agencies leave a tremendous legacy in the School. His impact goes well beyond the School in the continued work of his many graduate students employed throughout the United States.

“I first met Bob Manning when I was a National Park Service ranger in Yosemite National Park and a year later found myself as his PhD student at UVM,” wrote Peter Newman (PhD-NR ’02), Professor and Department Head for Recreation, Park and Tourism Management at Penn State University. “I know of no one else who has demonstrated such passion, focus, and productivity related to improving our national parks and the way we manage recreation. His record is extraordinary. His work and research has shaped how the U.S. National Park Service views and executes the NPS Organic Act that turns 100 years old this year. As a professor, Bob was my role model in both classroom teaching and how I work with graduate students. I strive to be the graduate advisor that he was to me.”

Chesapeake Bay, Coast Guard, Yosemite National Park, and Michigan State

Bob grew up in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay area where he was influenced by his father, a marine biologist stationed at a small research facility. With his own boat, Bob spent his youth exploring the ecosystems of the Bay and became fascinated with the natural world. Not surprisingly, he earned a B.S. degree in biology from Washington College in Maryland in 1968. He and his high school sweetheart, Martha, married that same year.

Bob graduated during the Vietnam War era and chose to enter the Coast Guard. He excelled at seamanship and navigation at Officer Candidate School and upon graduation, received a priority assignment in San Francisco for three years. He and Martha found the late 1960s in California to be an eye-opening time. As novice campers, they experienced the grandeur of Yosemite National Park, a place that kindled Bob’s passion for the national parks. He considered becoming a ranger and possibly a superintendent of a national park after graduate school.

At Michigan State University, Bob earned an M.S. in park and recreation resources in 1973 and a Ph.D. in resource conservation in 1975. “For the first time in my life, I felt completely engaged in school,” shared Bob. “I enjoyed the research and classes and got hooked on academia. I decided I wanted to teach about and study national parks rather than manage them.”

University of Vermont, Teaching, Advising, and Curriculum Design

While working briefly in Maryland as an outdoor recreation planner, Bob chanced upon a notice for an assistant professor position in park management at the University of Vermont. In 1976, he joined the faculty in UVM’s then School of Natural Resources and began forty years of dedicated scholarly activity that shaped the School’s recreation program and helped to build the School into the nationally prominent Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Bob, who chaired the then Recreation Management program for nearly fifteen years, taught about the history, philosophy, and management of parks and related areas in courses including Introduction to Recreation Management, The American Wilderness, and most notably RM/PRT 240 Park and Wilderness Management, which he taught for his entire career in the School. Working closely with then Dean Don DeHayes, Bob helped lead development of the School’s core curriculum, a series of interdisciplinary courses taken by all undergraduate students in the School. Bob designed the second course in the curriculum, NR 2 Nature and Culture, which he taught for more than twenty years.

Bob’s influence went far beyond the classroom, especially in the mentorship of his more than thirty graduate students. “What started out as entry into a master’s degree program quickly turned into the most important professional and personal learning experience I have had,” wrote Rebecca Stanfield McCown (MS-NR ’06; PhD-NR ’11), now Director of the National Park Service Stewardship Institute. “For over 12 years, I have had the honor to work for and with Bob. During this time, he has shown me what it means to be a professional, a scholar, and a life-long learner and explorer. His commitment to his students, research, and public lands is obvious from the way he would start RM 240 with the lights out and a candle, mimicking a small campfire, to the passion with which he talks about sharing national parks with all people.”

Research, Writing, and the National Parks

Bob’s first year-long sabbatical leave in the early 1980s at Grand Canyon National Park set the stage for his prominent research on national park visitor carrying capacity. He began a long professional relationship with the National Park Service and helped them make informed decisions about how much and what kinds of uses can be accommodated in parks to maximize the visitor experience while protecting our natural and cultural resources.

“The parks have become crowded in certain places and at certain times, but it’s important that parks remain as accessible as possible to the public,” explained Bob. “But given that these areas are finite and human populations are increasing, we ultimately have to make difficult decisions about how the parks should be managed.”

In addition to Grand Canyon, Bob spent sabbatical years and forged collaborations at Yosemite National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the NPS headquarters in Washington, DC. His sabbaticals provided time and places to write his books, network with National Park Service colleagues, and gain an insider’s view of the workings of a national park – perspectives and case studies he brought back to the classroom to share with his students.

With a growing demand from the Park Service for his expertise, Bob created the Park Studies Laboratory in the School to conduct his national program of research in the national parks and contribute to the professional and scholarly literature. With Bob and research specialist William Valliere (MS-NRP ’94) at the helm, the Lab, made up of numerous graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and undergraduate work study students and interns conducted research at dozens of national parks throughout the country.

Bob helped develop a planning process that park managers can use as a tool to decide when there are too many visitors at a site. The model uses computer enhanced photography to suggest how a site would look with a range of visitors and associated impacts. Many undergraduate and graduate students in the Park Studies Lab spent their summers at various national parks throughout the country and used the photos to survey visitors. Bill and graduate student research assistants analyzed survey responses to recommend acceptable carrying capacities for the sites.

“It has been my distinct honor and privilege to work with Bob for the last quarter century,” said Bill. “The creativity and imagination of his work has moved the field of park and recreation management forward in significant ways. I am privileged to call him my mentor and my friend.”

Bob applied the innovative research methods he and his students developed to many of the national parks, recreation areas, historic sites, monuments, and other units that make up the more than 400 parks of the national park system. He and his Lab worked at Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, Isle Royale, Olympic, Denali, Hawaii Volcanoes, Yosemite, and Acadia National Parks, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Cape Cod National Seashore, the Appalachian Trail, and Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island National Monuments, to name but a few.

It is fitting that during Bob’s career at the University of Vermont, the National Park Service established the first national park in Vermont — Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock. There, Bob and the Park Studies Lab conducted a study of the trolley transportation system.

Bob’s research resulted in more than one hundred scholarly journal papers and more than ten books, including Studies in Outdoor Recreation: Search and Research for Satisfaction (1986, Oregon State University Press, Third edition in 2011); Reconstructing Conservation: Finding Common Ground (2003, Island Press); Parks and Carrying Capacity: Commons without Tragedy (2007, Island Press); Parks and People: Managing Outdoor Recreation at Acadia National Park (2009, University Press of New England); Managing Outdoor Recreation: Case Studies in the National Parks (2012, CABI Publishing), among others.

“We congratulate Professor Bob Manning on a long and exemplary career that has helped to bring national recognition to the Rubenstein School for his interdisciplinary, pragmatic, yet passionate research to inform the management of our national parks,” stated Dean Nancy Mathews. “Bob’s teaching and advising have inspired countless undergraduate and graduate students who have gone on to become leaders in the National Park Service and in academia throughout the country.”

Awards and an Inaugural Appointment

Bob received both the UVM George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching and advising and the University Scholar Award for excellence in research and scholarly activity, a rare and honorable achievement to earn both. He also received the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Excellence in Recreation and Park Research and the National Literary Award from the National Recreation and Park Association; the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Outdoor Recreation Professionals; and the Social Science Achievement Award from the George Wright Society.

“When I came to UVM to work with Bob more than twenty years ago as a young grad student I knew that I was getting a chance to work with a top flight researcher,” wrote Ben Minteer (MS-NR ’96; PhD-NR ’99), Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Professor at Arizona State University.  “What I didn’t know then was that I’d also be getting a generous mentor and more importantly, a lifelong friend.  I like to think that my best moments as a teacher and scholar reflect Bob’s influence.”

In 2013, Bob was named the inaugural Steven Rubenstein Professor of Environment and Natural Resources. He spent three years contributing to work on student engagement in the School. He also finalized the writing and editing of his most recent book, A Thinking Person’s Guide to America’s National Parks (2016, George Braziller Publishers) with longtime colleagues Rolf Diamont and Nora Mitchell of the National Park Service and David Harmon of the George Wright Society. Appropriately, the book was published during the centennial year of the National Park Service.

Retirement and Beyond

Bob and Martha are moving to Prescott, Arizona, but their first stop is Grand Canyon National Park where Bob will be the park’s first Scholar in Residence. As longtime hiking partners and co-authors of two books in a series called Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People —Walking Distance (2013, Oregon State University Press) and Walks of a LIfetime (In press, Globe Pequot/Falcon Guides), Bob and Martha will continue to explore the worlds’ hiking trails. In Arizona, they’ll be closer to all those iconic national parks and public lands where Bob left his mark and where he first discovered his professional passion.  And they’ll be closer to their daughters and their families as well.

“As I travel across the country, visiting National Park Service sites and meeting employees,” noted Rebecca Stanfield McCown, “Bob’s work is always mentioned with appreciation and gratitude for the scientific rigor and practical use that it provides park managers. And Bob’s reach extends beyond the Park Studies Lab and the University of Vermont. The legacy of professors, professionals, and public land managers that have studied under Bob stretches across the country. Our academic family tree is immense and will continue to flourish. I just hope Bob’s Airstream is big enough for us all to come visit in Prescott.”