2006 Ted Mills Award for Outstanding Faculty Environmental Teaching

Dr. David Lewis began teaching at Oklahoma State University in 1982 as an Associate Professor in Forestry.  Since that time he has developed a number of courses with an environmental focus, including Forest Research Management:  Planning and Decision Making, Forest Economic and Finance, Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Environmental Science Application and Problem Solving.  Throughout his teaching career, David has been guided by the principal that “Learning is an active process.  The function of a teacher is to guide the process and to challenge students to think and act beyond their expectations.”  Dr. Lewis was selected by the US Environmental Protection Agency to participate in the development of the US position on global forest policies for the 1992 Earth Summit.  He also worked in cooperation with the EPA to develop methodology to evaluate forest management on a global scale to mitigate the impacts of global climate change.  Dr. Lewis was elected as Chairperson of the Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Program Steering Committee from 1998 to 2002 and served as the Director of the program from 2002 –2005.