Professor Thomas Hudspeth arrived at the University of Vermont in 1972 to assist founding Director Carl Reidel in establishing one of the first university-wide Environmental Studies programs in the nation. The success of the UVM Environmental Program is just one of the many legacies that Tom leaves behind as he retires from UVM and the Rubenstein School at the end of May 2015.
Tom began his long, dedicated, and fulfilling career with a BA in liberal arts from Williams College, followed by an MS and a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan where he concentrated on environmental education, outdoor recreation, and behavior and environment. At UVM, he contributed scholarly work and a passion for teaching and engaging students and communities in creating a shared vision of a more sustainable world, transitioning toward an ecologically resilient and socially equitable future, brought to life in “real world” community projects near and far.
“As the most senior member of the Environmental Studies faculty, Tom is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about our students, our alums, and pretty much all of the education organizations around the state,” acknowledges Professor Stephanie Kaza, current Director of the Environmental Program. “He knows everybody! Tom has the most comprehensive grasp of Environmental Program history and loves to share stories from the entire 43-year history, which he has personally witnessed. He has made an enormous contribution to the success of the Program and to environmental and sustainability education in Vermont, and we are incredibly grateful for his countless full-hearted efforts. He is irreplaceable!”
During his 43 years at UVM, Tom has held several administrative roles, including Assistant Director (14 years) and Acting Director (1 year) of the Environmental Program, Chair of the Natural Resource Planning graduate program (5 years), and Interim Director of the UVM Office of Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning (1 year).
Tom is proud of the Environmental Program and its goals of creating community, action, and service-learning and addressing local and global environmental issues. He took the Program to another level by introducing international travel courses beginning in the late 1990s. These courses were ground-breaking at the University of Vermont, and Tom poured his energy into them, leading students on 18 trips throughout Central and South America, including Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, Ecuador, and Brazil.
In the early days, without convenience of the internet, Tom traveled to the countries before the course trips to scout out appropriate destinations, lodging, and guides. His course objectives were to reinforce and contextualize the Environmental Program's goals, and Tom focused on sustainability, community-based ecotourism, environmental interpretation, natural history, and cultural heritage. The groups stayed at small-scale ecotourist lodges where Tom challenged students to determine if ecotourism was a valuable tool for sustainability in that country. Were they sourcing food locally? Did they provide financial support to protect the habitats of wildlife and plants that ecotourists were coming to experience? Were locals able to work and move up in the management structure? He used the same approach on interpretive tours, pushing students to critically think about their experiences.
Not surprising, given his love of nature and fascination with Charles Darwin and natural selection, Tom’s favorites were 22-day trips in the summer to Ecuador. He enjoyed giving students the experience of a lifetime as they studied in Quito and the Andean highlands and traversed the Andes – passing through 12 ecological zones! – to experience the Amazon Rainforest and its incredible biodiversity. They explored the Galapagos Islands to witness natural history where Charles Darwin studied and where it was not uncommon to see Galapagos tortoises, as many as 200 green sea turtles, whales, and terrestrial and marine iguanas.
Tom’s travel courses were so successful that the idea spread throughout the University of Vermont campus. UVM's Offices of International Education and Continuing and Distance Education now offer travel courses in a variety of disciplines in numerous countries. Tom’s travel-study courses to Belize over spring break were subsequently adopted by the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics and turned into a semester-long course.
The time and effort that Tom invested in starting and running the Environmental Program and then his travel courses, show his unending dedication to creating opportunities for students of environmental studies and education. He worked tirelessly to provide vibrant, “hands-on,” authentic learning opportunities for his students that would challenge their worldviews and influence their lives for years to come. He employed high-impact learning experiences in which students worked collaboratively in a community of peers to pose and solve problems, experience real-world applications of knowledge, and reflect on their learning processes.
Embracing “scholarship of engagement,” Tom researched such topics as: citizen participation in urban waterfront revitalization in Burlington and forest management in the Green Mountain National Forest; perceptions of wetlands in Vermont; interpretation and education related to the Lake Champlain Basin, living machines, and the Burlington Intervale; ecotourism in Island Pond, Vermont; and quality of life and well-being as elements of sustainability.
He built on his research findings related to the Burlington waterfront as an activist, co-founding Citizens Waterfront Group to work on the Burlington Bicycle Path on an abandoned railroad bed along the waterfront and Burlington Waterfront Central to work on the Lake Champlain Basin Science Center, predecessor of ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center. He engaged in research, often combined with training, in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Cuba.
Much of Tom’s scholarly work involved applied research tied into the community, partnering organizations, his courses, and his students. Many of his senior capstone courses incorporated service-learning projects on which he and his students collaborated with community members in the local Burlington area and beyond.
For example, his Environmental Interpretation class worked with Intervale Center, Burlington’s revitalized agricultural center, to develop and implement a master plan for telling the Intervale’s story. The class also partnered with Green Mountain Audubon Nature Center, Green Mountain National Forest, Island Pond, Lewis Creek Association, Aiken Center, and Colchester Bog and Shelburne Pond and other UVM Natural Areas.
His Sustainability Education class partnered with the Sustainability Academy at Barnes, Orchard Elementary School in South Burlington, many other K-12 schools, UVM’s Greenhouse Residential Learning Community, and many sustainability NGOs. Students field-tested activities from education curricula they created on sustainability topics such as: community-based food systems, climate change adaptation and resiliency, eco-machines, green roofs, overconsumption, cooperatives, Genuine Progress Indicator, valuing ecosystem services such as pollination, and GMOs and their labeling in Vermont.
In his Creating Environmentally Sustainable Communities course, over the past two decades, students have written and videotaped Sustainability Stories about individuals and groups in the Burlington area who serve as sustainability role models for others to emulate in bringing about transition to more environmentally-sustainable communities. These place-based stories help make the concept of sustainability come alive, make it more concrete, humanize it, put a face on it, and help work toward a paradigm shift and a change in mental models toward sustainability.
Many of Tom’s countless publications, projects and presentations have student co-authors. His students were his colleagues, and his role was to lead, share, educate, and learn. He loved to see his students recognized, published, and have their work viewed by the public.
Tom advised and served on the committees of 70 Master’s students and 6 PhD students and for the last two decades advised from 12 to 18 undergraduate senior capstone theses or internships each year.
In 2002, Tom received the UVM George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award given by alumni to honor excellence in teaching as demonstrated by effectiveness in motivating students in ways that have a lasting influence on their lives, commitment to student advising, and the ability to provoke student interest and enthusiasm and constructively influence campus life beyond the classroom. It seems the award was made for Tom Hudspeth!
“Tom was always an incredibly supportive and attentive advisor and friend,” shares Robyn Bath-Rosenfeld (ENVS ’14). “Meetings with Tom were always relaxed, as he helped me find the value in my work and offered much needed encouragement when times got tough. Thank you so much, Tom, for your years of dedication and support to the ENVS community and especially to us as your students.”
Tom also received an Excellence in Teaching Award from Vermont Campus Compact (2005), a CUPS Outstanding Achievement Award (2010), Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Merit Award (1996), and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Germany in 1999. He is a Fellow at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, a Sustainability Faculty Fellow, a Service-Learning Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Research on Vermont.
Tom never stopped digging into new projects, and as he transitions away from the University of Vermont, he will devote more time to co-coordinating Burlington’s sustainability education programs with Megan Camp of Shelburne Farms. The United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies of Sustainability recently recognized the Greater Burlington area as a Regional Center of Expertise (RCE) because of its collaborative and groundbreaking education for sustainability programs, such as UVM’s service-learning partnerships with local schools and non-governmental organizations, Shelburne Farms' education program, and the Sustainable Schools Project, among others.
The program focuses on creating a multi-stakeholder network of educators, NGOs, government, business leaders, students, faith groups, and community members within our region to facilitate and deliver sustainability education to local communities and to learn from other RCEs around the world that are documenting promising practices in education for sustainability. This example of ceaseless dedication is a hallmark of Tom's career at UVM and a perfect way to honor his years of service to UVM and the Burlington community.
“Tom is the definitive sustainability educator,” states Lecturer Rick Paradis, Director of the UVM Natural Areas Center. “Whether through his scholarship, his numerous classes on campus and travel courses to Latin America, the hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students he has mentored, or his service through dozens of committees at UVM and in the community, Tom has left an indelible mark on us all.”
All of Tom's work at UVM cannot be summarized in one article. However, it can be seen throughout UVM, Burlington, Vermont, and beyond in the thousands of connections he has made whether through teaching, advising, research, or outreach. Tom's warm smile, twinkling eyes, and enthusiasm will be missed around the halls and walkways of UVM. He has left behind a great legacy to foster the next generation of environmental educators and change makers.
“As my advisor, Tom put a human face on an institution that could be intimidating and helped me navigate the bureaucracy in order to reach my goal of creating a self-designed major that I could achieve as a part-time student,” recalls Jeff Glassberg (ENVS ’83). “As a community member and mentor, Tom’s work to envision and help create the Burlington bike path inspired a lifetime commitment of community service and volunteerism in me, which I have since seen blossom in my four children. A great legacy.”
Tom and his wife Ginny plan to travel internationally and domestically and visit their two daughters and one grandson. They will remain active residents of the Burlington community where they enjoy gardening, walking their two Labrador retrievers, hiking, and canoeing.