Until VCU’s Center of Environmental Studies hires a permanent assistant director, Clifford Fox will continue serving as its interim assistant director.
“The position that Dr. Fox is in is a very, very unique position,” said Greg Garman, director of the center. “There aren’t any comparable positions that I’m aware of anywhere else in the university.”
Fox, formerly a senior research associate in VCU’s Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory, applied for the position last summer via a search waiver and will continue as assistant director until the position in filled.
“Dr. Fox is an excellent teacher,” Garman said. “He also has to have unique characteristics …really good with students because he’s the sole adviser for our entire undergraduate program. …We are very fortunate to convince him to join the center.”
Fox, who earned his doctorate at Rutgers University in 1999, began teaching at Rhoads College in Memphis before moving to Richmond.
“I grew up on an island in Northeast Florida the size of Manhattan with 8,000 people on it.” Fox said. “I grew up in a place where the environment was very, very special.”
The Rutgers graduate earned his bachelor’s and law degrees at the University of Florida in the ’70s.
“I really thought that I was going to be an aerospace engineer and go to law school and do copyright and patent law, which would have made me much, much wealthier,” he said. “But I didn’t do it because I decided I cared about people more than that. It’s people and science for me.”
Rob Maple, a graduate student in environmental studies enrolled in Fox’s environmental policy class, said he thinks Fox’s law degree is an asset to the class.
“Having only the academic side and being a lawyer as well . . . you sort of get what lawyers think as well as the academic and the real world,” he said.
Before accepting the interim position at the environmental center, Fox worked six years as the senior research associate for VCU’s survey laboratory.
“I started realizing how much I cared for environmental law and environmental policy and trying to do some things to protect the environment,” he said, urging student interested in the environment to have a passion for it. “For our future environment it’s so important with the number of human beings that we have on the earth right now and the number of problems that we face in terms of our natural environment.”
A member of several University committees, Fox is the director of the undergraduate environmental studies program and advises its undergraduate students. In addition, he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses plus works on contracts concerning air pollution and childhood lead poisoning. He also directs the environmental training program.
“It’s critical that we have people who are trained to work to preserve and restore those things that we have in terms of natural resources and common resources,” he said.
Fox said his two daughters are the products of reproductive technology; thus, science has changed his life.
“When I look at them – for the first time in my life I really understand how important all of this work that I do is to the future … I see the future when I look in their faces in a way that I never did before. …our children and our grandchildren are the future and we owe it to them.”