Media Information - University of Idaho Athletics

Interim President
Dr. Steven Daley-Laursen
Idaho Women’s Basketball 2008-09
University of Maryland (1975)
University of Idaho (1979, 1984)
Portland, Ore.
Steven Daley-Laursen was appointed interim
president of the University of Idaho in June
2008.
He has 28 years of experience working in land grant universities. He began his
career as a research associate at the University of Idaho in 1979. He joined Montana
State University and the University of Montana in 1984 as an assistant professor
and natural resources extension specialist.
From 1988 to 2002, he worked at the University of Minnesota in several capacities,
including extension professor, director and co-founder of the Interdisciplinary
Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, director of the statewide Regional
Sustainable Development Partnerships Program, director of the Sea Grant
College, program leader for Natural Resources and Environmental Programs with
the University of Minnesota Extension Service, special assistant to the President,
and associate dean in the College of Natural Resources.
His areas of academic and administrative concentration are leadership theory in
natural resource management and environmental education; technology transfer
processes between scientists and management agencies; and organizational and
institutional design for sustainable development and sustainability. He has worked
throughout the United States and in 11 other countries.
In 2002, Dr. Daley-Laursen became dean and professor for the College of Natural
Resources at the University of Idaho. He oversees a college with more than 800
graduate and undergraduate students, 140 faculty and staff, and leading research,
education and outreach initiatives with impact in Idaho, the West and the world.
The college just established the nation’s first undergraduate wildland fire ecology
and management program.
Faculty, staff and students are actively involved in the university’s sustainability
efforts and in three significant new universitywide, interdisciplinary initiatives. The
college houses the Laboratory for Conservation and Ecological Genetics, the Reveley Geo-Spatial Technologies Complex, the Taylor Ranch
Field Research Station in the Frank Church Wilderness and the McCall Outdoor Science School on the University’s McCall campus.
Daley-Laursen received the Secretary’s National Honor Award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for his work on an environmental
science education program on the White Earth Indian Reservation. He was an inaugural fellow in the Mondale Emerging Leaders
Public Policy Program at the University of Minnesota, and an inaugural fellow in the Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Program
at the University of Wisconsin. He currently is the national public policy chair for the National Association of University Forest Resources
Programs and has held several leadership positions at the national, state and local levels in the Society of American
Foresters and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.
Daley Laursen studied international relations at the College of William and Mary, and earned a bachelor’s in conservation and resource
development from the University of Maryland. He earned a master’s in forest resources management and a doctorate in forest science
from the University of Idaho in 1979 and 1984, respectively.
He and his wife, Dianne, have two children – Anna and Kieren.
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