Dr. Dawn Rodriguez-Ward

Bio

Dawn Rodriguez-Ward is the program coordinator for NC State’s Sustainable Futures Initiative (SFI), part of the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs. Within the SFI, she will work with the Initiative’s director to develop and facilitate programs to help the wider campus community imagine and implement sustainable solutions for society. Her role is to strengthen the bridge between the research, education and extension missions of the university while leveraging the potential of the campus as a living lab. Additionally, she will support campus-wide sustainability goals and commitments, particularly those that engage students.

Prior to joining the SFI, Rodriguez-Ward came to NC State in 2019 as the program coordinator for the AgBioFEWS (Agricultural Biotechnology In Our Evolving Food, Energy, and Water Systems) graduate program at the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. AgBioFEWS is a National Science Foundation-funded graduate research training program offering Ph.D. candidates across multidisciplinary fields of study the opportunity to examine the science, policy and public engagement aspects and impacts of agricultural biotechnology on food, energy and water. Alongside NC State Extension and faculty, she developed and implemented their immersive summer field course on agricultural biotechnology in farming systems in Eastern North Carolina for four years. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses for the Departments of Forestry and Environmental Resources, Crop and Soil Sciences, Life Sciences First Year Program, and the Environmental First Year Program.

For more than 15 years she has been working on conservation and development issues within Latin America. Her research interests are in interdisciplinary and convergent research, sustainable natural resource use and management, certification programs, climate change and REDD+ programs, and landscape governance. She has conducted fieldwork with farmers and foresters in Peru, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.

Rodriguez-Ward received a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary ecology with a concentration in tropical conservation and development from the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Florida; a Master of Arts with high distinction in social anthropology and development from the Universidad de Chile; and a Bachelor of Arts with honors in anthropology and a minor in environmental studies from New York University.