From Policy World to Academia: Dr. Beth Chalecki's Journey to the Study of Environmental Security

Dr. Beth Chalecki, Associate Professor of International Relations in the UNO Department of Political Science, came to UNO in 2014 to teach IR and grow the field of sustainability on campus. We interviewed Dr. Chalecki about her background and why she chose the intersection of international relations and global environmental issues for a career in environmental security.

Teaching is actually Dr. Chalecki’s third career! She worked for six years in the federal government as an international trade analyst, and it was on a trip to the former Soviet Union that she learned about how pursuing national security in the form of nuclear weapons led to environmental devastation in the areas that mined uranium. She went on to work as a policy wonk in other government agencies and think tanks in the United States and Canada for several years, and got her PhD from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy in 2008. Her dissertation on the national security effects of climate change was one of the first on the subject.

Since then, she has taught at Boston College, held a Mellon Fellowship at Goucher College, and been a research fellow at the Stimson Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is also a Fellow at NSRI, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on climate change and security for NATO, and an official Mad Scientist. Just this past summer, she held a Fulbright Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

She said that the climate crisis will require all of our efforts to solve it, from individual actions all the way to creating and sticking to international agreements to limit GHG emissions and de-carbonize the global economy. “I always tell my students that the task is huge and the work will be hard, but it’s not too hard. We can make the future we want.”

In addition to IR, Dr. Chalecki is the Director of the Sustainability Academic Program at UNO, which currently offers an undergraduate minor. She said they are looking into both a major and a graduate degree, but for now anyone on campus is invited to add a Sustainability minor to their major!

Watch our interview with Dr. Chalecki below: