Peter Buck
Director for Education & Co-Director of the Local Climate Action Program
Dr. Peter Buck believes everyone who comes into contact with Penn State can become literate and competent in sustainability. To achieve that goal, he instigates our faculty, staff, students, and the public to imaginatively integrate sustainability into all we do. Whether working one-on-one with instructors, interns, or government leaders, teaching courses, serving the public, or communicating in the media, Peter’s goal is to support rich exposures, experiences, and expertise development for a just and sustainable world.
Peter catalyzes, communicates, and connects people for sustainability. Currently, he serves as a primary resource to assist two structural endeavors: the creation of a Program for Sustainability in the Interdisciplinary Schools (to open in Fall 2025) and the development of Penn State’s Sustainability Learning Outcomes. Peter supports these institutional goals through the Roe Fund for a Just and Sustainable Future, the Penn’s Woods Workshops, as well as consulting and teaching in first-year seminars, advanced climate dynamics, sustainable architecture, and beyond.
Since 2022, Peter has co-directed the Local Climate Action Program with Brandi Robinson (Associate Teaching Professor, Energy and Mineral Engineering). In partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, ICLEI, and Centre Region Planning Agency, the Local Climate Action Program (LCAP) is built on a simple idea: cooperation and collaboration can make Pennsylvania’s communities draw down carbon emissions and support the places we call home. The LCAP brings Penn State students, faculty, local governments, and experts from different fields together to attain the Paris Agreement’s goals to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by supporting a thriving and prosperous future for all Pennsylvanians.
Peter also manages EnvironMentors, a college access program for underrepresented and underserved high school students. Created by the Global Council for Science and the Environment (GCSE), EnvironMentors provides high school students from underrepresented and underserved communities with rich experiences in structured environmental Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) projects. Their projects support equity and community-building while facing some of the world’s most entrenched and wicked socio-environmental challenges.
Through his endeavors, Peter celebrates his diverse students, interns, and peers. Over the last several years, his interns have done so much. They have organized Penn State’s Student Sustainability Summit and hosted the Colloquium on the Environment with Dr. Robert Bullard. They have attended the climate talks at COP 28, interned in the City of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office, and led the student chapter of Black Lawyers Association at the University of Cincinnati Law School. Today, they are designing systems at solar, green architecture, water resources, and biorenewable firms, coordinating programming at the Urban Institute and Brennan Center, serving in federal, state, and local government, and teaching in publicly funded schools.
Peter communicates extensively on sustainability and life in the Anthropocene. His scholarship has appeared in Springer’s Educating the Sustainability Leaders of the Future and Universities and Sustainable Communities: Meeting the Goals of the Agenda 2030, Routledge’s Teaching Climate Change in the United States, The Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, and more. He has also appeared in The Washington Post, on Democracy Works and Citizen’s Climate Radio, and spoke at TEDxPSU in 2018 with his talk “What’s the Future Hold? Ask a Metalhead.”
Leadership in professional, governmental, and civic organizations is important to Peter. Currently, Peter serves on the Pennsylvania Climate Change Mitigation and Resilience Network and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay’s Local Government Advisory Committee. Locally, her serves on the State College Area School District’s School Board, the Centre Region’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan Technical Advisory Group, and the Centre County Intergovernmental Solar Power Purchase Agreement Working Group.
Peter holds a Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy and an M.A. and a B.A. in Music with a minor in Creative Writing. He lives in State College with his wife Hilary and son Sacha. He enjoys single speed mountain biking, playing his electric guitar, eating inordinately spicy food, and writing fiction and creative non-fiction.
Lara Fowler
Jack Rumery
Sustainability in the Workplace Intern