Nan Jenks-Jay served as dean of Environmental Affairs and taught in the Environmental Studies Program at Middlebury College. In her role as dean of Environmental Affairs, Jenks-Jay worked to advance the college’s environmental initiatives and academic programs, as well as foster an integrated institutional vision for sustainability.
For more than two decades Nan has been actively involved in the advancement of environmental studies programs, their transformation of higher education and their impact on regional sustainability. She has been immersed in a full spectrum of environmentally-related work as an educator, field scientist, land trust founder, consultant, board member, and administrator. Current areas of specialization include institutional culture and organizational change.
At Middlebury, she created an integrated, institutional vision through strategic planning and implementation that advanced the college’s already exemplary environmental academic program and award-winning sustainable campus programs to new heights.
She has been associated with the two oldest undergraduate environmental studies programs in the country- at Williams College in Massachusetts for 15 years and with Middlebury College in Vermont since 1994. Between them, she took a sojourn to the West Coast where, as director of Environmental Studies and Hedco Endowed Professor, she developed new undergraduate and graduate environmental programs for the University of Redlands in California.
Nan has held appointments on state governmental boards and national committees, and locally is a trustee for Shelburne Farms in Vermont. Additionally, she served on external review committees for 11 college and university environmental programs. Nan has been an advisor to Orion Magazine, The New England Board of Higher Education, Project Kaleidoscope in Washington, D.C., the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
Nan has written extensively and speaks throughout the United States on topics related to the environment, sustainability, community, and higher education.