Robert Varady honored for leadership and service to the Udall Center and University of Arizona

Colleagues gathered this past week at a reception in the UA Union Gallery to honor Robert Varady, Research Professor of Environmental Policy at the Udall Center.

The event, hosted by Senior Vice President for Research, Discovery & Innovation, Kimberly Espy, recognized Varady’s recent tenure as interim director of the Udall Center from January 2016 to March 2017 and for his long-standing service to the university.

Varady was lauded – by Espy; Phil Lemanski, Executive Director of the Udall Foundation, Stephen Cornell, former Udall Center Director; Christopher Scott, Udall Center Director; and others – for his leadership in convening dialogues on US-Mexico border environmental challenges and in promoting research and engagement on environmental policy more broadly, as a mentor and supporter of young faculty scholars and students, and the key designer and force behind the Udall Center Fellows program, which is now in its 28th year with a cadre of nearly 150 fellows from more than 40 departments across the UA campus.

In a subsequent message to the attendees of the reception, Varady extended his gratitude and commented, “It means a lot to me to know that all those years of commitment have some meaning. In so many professions, the years just roll by and each one can be indistinguishable from another. In our case, as academics, we hope to leave some imprint and that’s what makes our profession so special. I’ve been fortunate to have so many terrific colleagues at the UA and I look forward to more of the same productive interactions in the near future.”

Varady will be continuing his research on global water governance during a sabbatical in the spring 2018 semester at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.