Valerie Rountree Ph.D.

Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Valerie Rountree has lived in the Southwest since 2010—first in Arizona and now Southern California. She has long been interested in understanding complex human-environment relations and has grown increasingly passionate about addressing climate change, as demonstrated through her teaching, research, and sociopolitical activism.

Professor Rountree’s teaching and research broadly relate to environment-society relationships—how actions by individuals and societies affect the environment and how the environment, in turn, affects society. More specifically, her work centers on climate change and energy, particularly climate change mitigation, policy and decision-making, stakeholder participation, and renewable energy resources.

Most recently, she has worked with undergraduate environmental and policy students at the University of Redlands on research projects related to just energy transitions; California renewable energy policy design and implementation; California’s mandate for residential composting programs; and estimating CO₂ equivalent emissions from turfgrass maintenance in Southern California.

• Ph.D., natural resource studies, University of Arizona
• M.S., natural resource studies, University of Arizona
• B.S., biology, University of Puget Sound

• Associate professor, environmental studies, University of Redlands, 2018–present

• Climate adaptation
• Climate change mitigation policies and practices
• Environmental policy and decision-making
• Natural resources
• Renewable energy
• Stakeholder engagement practices
• Sustainability

• Rountree, V., E. Baldwin, and J. Hanlon. 2021. “A Review of Stakeholder Participation in Water and Renewable Electricity: Does the Resource Context Matter?” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 11: 1–16.
• Rountree, V. 2019. “Nevada’s Experience With the Renewable Portfolio Standard.” Energy Policy 129: 279–291.
• Rountree, V., and E. Baldwin. 2018. “State-Level Renewable Energy Policy Implementation: How and Why Do Stakeholders Participate?” Frontiers in Communication 3: 6.
• Baldwin, E., V. Rountree, and J. Jock. 2018. “Distributed Resources and Distributed Governance: Stakeholder Participation in Demand-Side Management Governance.” Energy Research & Social Science 39: 37–45.
• Guido, Z., T. Finan, K. Rhiney, M. Madajewicz, V. Rountree, E. Johnson, and G. McCook. 2017. “The Stresses and Dynamics of Smallholder Coffee Systems in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains: A Case for the Potential Role of Climate Services.” Climatic Change: 1–14.
• Gerlak, A. K., Z. Guido, C. Vaughan, V. Rountree, C. Greene, D. Liverman, and K. L. Jacobs. 2017. “Building a Framework for Process-Oriented Evaluation of Regional Climate Outlook Forums.” Weather, Climate, and Society.

• Faculty Award for Outstanding Writing Instruction, 2022
• Voices for Science Advocacy Fellowship, American Geophysical Union, 2022
• Marshall Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, University of Arizona, 2018