Contact: Samuel Hughes

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State is hosting a well-known landscape architecture and environmental planning professor for Thursday's [April 25] Waldorf Lecture on the Environment.

North Carolina State University’s Andy Fox will present “Adaptation and Agency: Strategies for Recovery, Resilience and Sustainability in Flood-Vulnerable Communities” at 11 a.m. in the Bost Theater. The event is part of MSU’s environmental science program, which spans several colleges including the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“Recent catastrophic floods and sea-level rise predictions highlight the need to develop and deploy more holistic methods of planning for flood risks,” Fox said. “I will share strategies that synthesize data, policies, and programs into an integrative, scenario-based landscape planning approach to provide stakeholders with the information needed to address issues and inform priorities related to adapting their communities to a changing environment,” Fox said.

Scott Willard, CALS dean and Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station director, said Fox’s presentation is timely and relevant given the recent flooding that has plagued the U.S. The U.S. saw 28 separate weather events costing at least $1 billion in 2023, according to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, and four of those events were floods.

“We conduct research and train students to help build and manage sustainable, resilient communities,” Willard said. “As more communities face uncertainty of life after a catastrophic weather event like a flood, Andy’s expertise can help us all prepare for a better tomorrow.”

Fox is director and co-founder of the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, an interdisciplinary technical assistance initiative that addresses critical ecological and environmental challenges in climate-vulnerable communities. Under his direction, the CDDL has helped numerous low-resource communities pursue more than $30 million to fund the implementation of community-based projects. He is also a university faculty scholar and community-engaged faculty fellow at NCSU.

The Waldorf Lecture on the Environment is made possible by Elizabeth Waldorf and the late David Waldorf, who both shared a passion for environmental conservation. David, a physicist and native of Montana, and Elizabeth, a zoologist and Mississippi native, received doctoral degrees from Ohio State University. After postdoctoral research at the University of Nottingham in England, they conducted research and taught at LSU, Lasell College, Northeastern University and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

The Waldorfs retired from MGCCC in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Continuing to uphold their passion, they chose to invest in environmental science scholarships at MSU to help students attain educational backgrounds to help them in fighting the critical environmental issues of today.

In addition to CALS, the interdisciplinary environmental science program includes the MSU College of Arts and Sciences, Bagley College of Engineering, College of Forest Resources, College of Veterinary Medicine and the Office of Sustainability. For more on the program, visit www.ens.msstate.edu.

Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.