A New Degree for a
Changing Climate

As climate challenges reshape communities and industries, the need for leaders who understand environmental systems has never been greater. The University of Arkansas specifically designed its Master of Science in Environmental Resiliency degree to meet that need. Lance Grigsby is among the program's first students and will graduate in Fall 2026.

"Environmental resiliency is really an answer to the new normal of climate change in our area," Grigsby, 38, said.

According to the degree's website, students who enroll in the environmental resiliency degree program examine the connections between natural systems and human decision-making while preparing to lead sustainability initiatives and gain a comprehensive understanding of the science, theory, and methods needed to assist them in making climate-related policy decisions. The program focuses on how environmental practices can mitigate the impacts of climate and environmental change while helping organizations adapt.

Grigsby is acutely aware of this need in his role as assistant director of operations at the U of A's Arkansas Union. Among his other job duties, he leads sustainability initiatives. He has directly applied skills he's learned in his graduate studies, developing new tools for understanding environmental systems and leading change.

"Working in the Arkansas Union, I get to know everyone around campus," he said. "We're the center, the heart of campus, and I'm the kind of person that likes to get involved, get to know people and make things happen. I learned about sustainability, which is a dimension of environmental resiliency, and needed to form a team here. [The team] consists of eight student workers involved in everything from environmental education to waste diversion to outreach. When I first formed that team, I did not have the knowledge I really needed to make it effective."

Grigsby said he reached out to people such as the director of the Office for Sustainability on campus to get the team to where it needed to be.

"I have implemented things that I have learned in this degree program in this facility," he said. "Resiliency is about capacity. It's about managing that capacity and being able to withstand impacts to the system."

For Grigsby, the field of environmental resiliency focuses on the relationships between major environmental systems that involve past, present and prospective procedures, as well as food, energy and water systems, and how they interact in a very complicated way.

"We're studying those relationships while learning how organizations can operate more sustainably, how to take our practices and how we're interacting with those systems to a new, more sustainable level," he said.

While environmental science is a major component of the degree, Grigsby stated that leadership skills are just as important as a strong grounding in the sciences. Courses such as Adaptive Leadership and Decision-Making Analysis Synthesis teach students how to navigate real-world challenges and work with different stakeholders.

"It's not just about knowing the science about how to make things better," he said. "It's about being able to navigate all the bureaucracy and all the different laws and regulations to get at the goal that you want."

One facet in particular that drew Grigsby to this field is the belief that learning the science and knowledge is not that difficult. Neither is learning how to implement what's learned. The difficulty, according to Grigsby, is finding ways to communicate the concepts to others.

From Grigsby's viewpoint, those skills are critical to implementing environmental change.

One faculty member who strongly shaped Grigsby's perspective was lecturer Sarah Lewis, adjunct faculty in the Environmental Resiliency and Environmental Dynamics Programs and CEO and Founder of Edgewater Coaching and Consulting. A former Fayetteville City Council member, Lewis has a unique perspective on the area's history, conditions and issues, he said.

"Her leadership courses are able to frame how you would interact with someone who opposes what you're saying or someone who doesn't understand what you're saying," Grigsby said. "She has done a fantastic job of laying out all kinds of processes that are not only based in theory but are also based in her own decades of learned experience."

Lewis herself added, "An important part of building environmental resiliency is building the capacity to enact change when we have a vision for a more resilient world. As a society, we have all the tools, knowledge, and research needed to create a more resilient and sustainable future, but what we often lack is the social and political capital to make it happen. Through this program and especially the Adaptive Leadership course, students learn to build their capacity to lead the change they want to create and to bring others along with those new ways of operating. It is very inspiring to see students grow in this way.

"Lance exhibits inspiring leadership in his work to bring about positive change on campus," she added.

Another distinctive feature of the program for Grigsby is the professional experience of its instructors. Faculty members include professionals from organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Defense Fund, along with experts working in sustainability across Northwest Arkansas.

The degree program also opens doors to a wide range of careers. Graduates may pursue roles in city, state and federal sustainability offices, environmental nonprofits, sustainable building certification, consulting and higher education.

"You can get a job running a city's environmental and sustainability team," Grigsby said. "Engineering requires resilience. Architects require resilience. There are many different building certifications…that you learn in this degree program; you can get certified in those particular building certifications and work as a LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] professional helping other groups get those certifications. Or you can also go into all kinds of nonprofit sorts of areas. Higher education is also something that you can pursue; you can become a professor in these types of things."

According to Grigsby, this graduate degree program represents an important step toward preparing leaders who can address environmental challenges.

"Throughout my pursuit of the degree, I've thought to myself, ‘This degree seems to be about everything, and I really do mean everything,'" he said. "This thought was particularly prevalent during my Sustainable Food, Energy, and Water Systems course. The professors repeat the same axiom in each course: ‘Everything is connected. Everything is changing. We're all in this together.' I feel that the professors live that axiom."