Our Team
Branda Nowell, Ph.D.
Director of the Environmental First Year Program
Office Location: Caldwell Hall 227
Branda_Nowell@ncsu.edu
I was raised in rural Idaho, where I developed a keen appreciation for the importance of sustainable living early on. Although it was decades before these technologies were readily available, I grew up in a house powered by wind and heated by solar. While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Papua New Guinea in a rural community development program, I became fascinated with both formal and informal institutional systems for addressing complex problems. My graduate degrees are in organizational and community psychology, and my research program specializes in institutional design, networks, and network governance. In 2008, I co-founded the Firechasers research initiative, which works with federal, state, and local agencies on institutional elements of wildfire resilience and cross-boundary wildfire and natural resource governance. I also served as a faculty fellow for NC State’s Office of Research and Innovation and consulted with institutions of higher education on institutional designs to support cross-boundary and interdisciplinary education and research.
I joined the Environmental First Year program as its director in 2023. NC State is an incredible place to be a student if you are interested in issues of the environment and sustainability. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with our first-year students and build stronger pathways to connect them to the amazing network of environment- and sustainability-oriented opportunities across NC State University.
John Resnick-Kahle, M.A.Ed.
Associate Director of the Environmental First Year Program
Instructor of ENV 100: Student Success in the Environmental First Year
Office Location: Biltmore Hall 3005
jfresnic@ncsu.edu
Throughout my life, I have grown and lived in many different places. I spent my childhood and high school years in Jersey City, NJ, before moving to Florida to attend Stetson University. Coming to college was an overwhelming but exciting new challenge as a first-generation student. At Stetson, I majored in political science with a minor in communications, and I also became deeply engaged with the community in various ways. I enjoyed engaging in a college environment through orientation, student government, and other leadership opportunities. After graduation, I moved to Washington DC and earned my Master of Arts in Education and Human Development from The George Washington University. In 2018, I joined NC State, and my wife and I relocated to Raleigh. During my career, I have been grateful to be able to support so many students as they pursue their goals and earn their degrees. Beyond work, I love to read, run, and spend time with my friends and family. My wife and I love taking our son and dog to all the parks and trails here in Raleigh to explore!
Kaly Wall, M.S.
Academic Advisor and Coordinator of Student Success Initiatives
Instructor of ENV 100: Student Success in the Environmental First Year
Office Location: Biltmore Hall 3004
kaly_wall@ncsu.edu
I grew up and spent my childhood in Lexington, North Carolina before arriving in Raleigh in 2011 to attend NC State, where I earned a Bachelor of Science in zoology. Following graduation, I served a 10-month term in AmeriCorps before returning to NC State to earn my Master of Science in fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology. After graduate school, I taught high school-level earth and environmental science in the Wake County Public School System before returning to NC State to serve as an academic advisor. I have been serving in my current role since April 2020. I also recently began my Ph.D. in educational leadership, policy and human development. My favorite thing about my job is that I get to support students during their transition from high school to college. I am particularly passionate about supporting under-resourced students, as I was a low-income, first-generation college student myself. Outside of work, I enjoy baking, watching movies, reading (especially Harry Potter), traveling when I can, and spending time with my husband Blane and our cats, Enzo and Millie, and our dog Huck.
Dr. Dawn Rodriguez-Ward
Lead instructor for ENV 101 – Environmental First Year
Office Location: James B Hunt Jr Centennial Cam NA
dtward2@ncsu.edu
My journey began amidst the concrete jungle of New York City, where I discovered a passion for urban gardening and treasured any green space I encountered on the streets and local playgrounds as a kid. In high school, my interest in environmentalism and social activism blossomed during a transformative internship with the environmental nonprofit organization, Rainforest Alliance, and evolved into a five-year commitment with them throughout college. I graduated from NYU with a dual major in Anthropology and Environmental Science and after a few years working at the New York Botanical Garden, I returned to school to obtain a Master’s in Anthropology, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology. In graduate school my research focused on understanding why people chose to adopt sustainable natural resource management practices. Trying to answer that question, led me to conduct fieldwork with floodplain farmers in Peru, artisans in Chile, and foresters in Mexico.
Returning to the U.S., I landed at NC State, where I coordinated an agricultural biotechnology graduate traineeship program (AgBioFEWS) and taught Advanced Agroecology, World Forestry, and First Year Seminar in the Life Sciences. Joining the ENVFY program, my favorite part of my job is meeting and getting to know our ENV101 students, and training them with the tools they need to become critical thinkers and collaborative innovators who (I know) will solve the grand environmental challenges we face. Beyond academia, I enjoy cooking, gardening, and hiking with my family.
Haley Smith
Coordinator of Experiential Learning, Environmental First Year Program Director, EcoVillage
Office Location: Lee Hall 109, Biltmore 3003
hesmith2@ncsu.edu
Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, I grew up surrounded by the beauty and biodiversity of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My early love for the natural world was fostered by summer camp experiences hiking and backpacking throughout the mountains of Western North Carolina and opportunities to conduct benthic macroinvertebrate samples, test water quality, and perform research on acid mine drainage in middle and high school. My interests led me to pursue a double major in Biology and Environmental Studies as an undergraduate at Washington and Lee University, located just up the Blue Ridge in southwest Virginia. While in college, I had the opportunity to participate in research on the soil microbial ecology of an invasive garlic mustard in Yellowstone National Park. I also studied abroad for a semester in Kenya and Tanzania at the School for Field Studies’ Center for Wildlife Management Studies, where I conducted collaborative research on water resources and public health. This experience opened my eyes to the complex relationships between humans and the environment, and set me on a path to becoming an environmental social scientist. After graduating, I spent two years serving as an Education and Outreach Associate with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy through the AmeriCorps Project Conserve Program, before relocating to Fort Collins, Colorado to pursue my Masters in Conservation Leadership from Colorado State University. In 2020, I returned to North Carolina, this time to Raleigh, to begin a PhD in Forestry and Environmental Resources at NC State, with a focus on studying the educational and behavioral outcomes of participatory science experiences. I have been involved with the Environmental First Year Program since the Fall of 2022, first as a TA, then as an instructor. I became the Program Director of EcoVillage in Fall 2024, and continue to serve as an instructor for ENV101 and the Coordinator of Experiential Learning for the Environmental First Year Program.