Penn State mourns loss of beloved teacher and ecologist Christopher Uhl
The Penn State Eberly College of Science, Department of Biology, and University community are mourning the loss of Christopher F. Uhl, professor emeritus of biology, who died on Feb. 11.
During his 30-year Penn State career, Uhl conducted research in the rainforests of South America, championed sustainability practices at Penn State, and created the pathbreaking course BISC 3: Environmental Science, which from its inception has enrolled more than 15,000 undergraduate students.
“Chris had a broad and profound impact on Penn State,” said Tracy Langkilde, interim executive vice president and provost at Penn State and professor of biology. “Through his research and teaching, as well as his passion for the environment and the natural world, Chris inspired individual students and scientists while also motivating them collectively to raise the bar on our sustainability as an institution.”
Uhl’s commitment to promoting sustainability and ecological awareness led him to examine Penn State’s ecological record and help drive University-wide recognition, advancement and implementation of early sustainability efforts. For example, he authored the early-2000s proposal “Process and Practice: Creating the Sustainable University” and led the development of “sustainability indicators” to track the University’s performance in areas such as water use, energy consumption, waste generation, and recycling efficiency.
“Chris Uhl was, quite simply, the shepherd, farmer, and navigator of sustainability at Penn State,” said Denice Wardrop, research professor of geography at Penn State and director of the Chesapeake Research Consortium. “If ever a person lived by the saying, ‘Walk on the Earth as if it feels pain,’ Chris Uhl did; he extended that definition of Earth to include the humans who inhabited it.”
Wardrop first met Uhl while earning her doctorate in ecology at Penn State in the late 90s and, after years of Uhl’s leadership at the University, was alongside him in 2013 for the founding of Penn State’s Sustainability Institute, which she said she was “honored to be part of.”
“Chris saw the signal of the Earth’s pain before many of us, initially observing it in Amazonia and shifting his gaze to his very own Penn State,” she continued. “He didn’t keep that observation to himself, and in his unbounded generosity he committed himself to making us all aware of it and showing us how one did something about it. His initial efforts in developing Penn State’s first list of sustainability indicators demonstrated the farmer in him, planting a seed and engaging students to water it and care for it until it could bear fruit. As that fruit produced the seeds of making the invisible visible, the shepherd in him produced the Penn State Indicators report (first released in 1998) which he faithfully delivered to the steps of Old Main with just the right approach: not a confrontation, but the start of a long term collective conversation and reflection. The educator in Chris occurred at a DNA level; he was always setting us all up to learn, and then to teach others. It was time for the navigator to appear, and it came in the form of the Green Destiny Ecological Mission for Penn State (the stars by which to navigate) and a ship to sail (the Environmental Stewardship Strategy).
“While these institutional impacts are enormous, it’s Chris’ impact on those of us individually that seems to be the great magnifier. Both my sense of responsibility and my confidence in being an agent of change came from simply watching the way in which he moved through the world. Once I became an educator, his style of teaching became a guiding model: conversational, thoughtful, substantive, soul-stretching. May we all walk on the Earth as he did.”
“Chris was a true pioneer of sustainability,” said Lara Fowler, chief sustainability officer at Penn State. “He championed change at Penn State and more broadly through steady advocacy in his writing, impact-driven research, and thoughtful discourse in the classroom and beyond. He laid the foundation for what has become a fundamental and integral part of our culture as an institution.”
On his Eberly College faculty profile, Uhl summarized his personal ethos: “As a Penn State researcher and teacher, I was guided by one overarching question: How can humans live harmoniously with each other and with the sustaining Earth that has birthed us?”
That question led Uhl to the Amazon Basin, where he worked as a field ecologist investigating how humans could live in harmony with rainforests without destroying them. He spearheaded the creation of a research institute — IMAZON — in Belém, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River, with the avowed purpose of educating both policy makers and citizens in ways that would engender stewardship rather than harmful exploitation of Amazonia’s natural wealth.
“Chris’s research legacy has impacted multiple generations,” said Mary Beth Williams, acting dean of the Eberly College of Science. “His innovative teaching model endeared him to thousands of Penn State students, and his unwavering principles inspired his colleagues and mentees — including me — who will continue his work.”
A commitment to ecological healing permeated Uhl’s scholarship in the realm of teaching.
His first book, “Developing Ecological Consciousness: Path to a Sustainable World” —third edition and co-authored with his colleague, Jennifer Anderson — aimed to engender in readers a sense of abiding respect, even reverence, for the natural world, while at the same time offering tools and practices for becoming more awake and alive.
His second book, “Teaching as if Life Matters: The Promise of a New Education Culture,” co-authored with his wife, Dana L. Stuchul, grew out of a deep yearning to create learning environments that expand awareness and engender relational intelligence.
A third book (co-authored with former student Melissa DiJulio), “Awaken 101: Discovering Meaning and Purpose in Uncertain Times,” invoked the colloquial moniker for Uhl’s environmental science course at Penn State. The project — Awaken 101 — also inspired a website of the same name. A “love letter” to young people in particular, Uhl’s intent with “Awaken” was to invite participants to “experience their lives, not as spectators, but as reflective, courageous, and purposeful participants.”
“After three decades of research and teaching,” Uhl wrote in his faculty bio, “I have come to believe that the ecological and social problems confronting humanity can only be addressed through a profound shift in how we see and understand ourselves — a shift in our worldview from ‘separation consciousness’ to ‘relational consciousness.’ Through my teaching, research, and writing I am endeavoring to contribute to this shift.”
In 2016, preparing for retirement, Uhl began the transition of leadership of the BISC 3 course to his colleague Jennifer Anderson, program director at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, who took over the course fully in 2020.
“Chris was an incredible teacher,” Anderson said. “He chose to add layers of student leadership within the class structure of BISC 3. Many teaching assistants have had the opportunity to practice responsibility, deep listening, compassion, creativity, critical thinking, integrity, adaptability, and relationship building — all skills they take with them when they leave BISC 3 and Penn State. These students continue to use their expertise to build community in their hometowns, organizations, and workplaces. By building connections and collaborations, we have more opportunity and strength to face the challenges of separation from each other and the natural world (climate change, pandemics, deforestation, etc.). Chris understood and shared connection with so many, and I am honored to be part of his community and vision.”
Uhl’s impact reached far beyond his Amazon research and impactful teaching on Penn State’s campus.
“Chris's friendship, his books, and the ‘BiSci’ course model have transformed my life and my teaching (and so far, there are about 800 [Boston College] students that would agree),” said Laura E. Hake, associate professor of biology at Boston College, who met Uhl after reading the second edition of “Developing Ecological Consciousness” in late 2013, when she was looking for a text to use in a nonmajors course that would fulfill part of her college’s natural science requirement. “I was immediately taken in after reading the preface.”
An email to introduce herself and ask Uhl about his lecture format turned into a lifelong friendship in which the two shared curriculum ideas, and Hake participated for several years in Uhl’s training retreat to prepare teaching assistants.
“He was always incredibly generous with me in sharing course materials,” Hake said. “Through Chris’s teachings, friendship, and encouragement, I learned how to trust myself and recognize that I have gifts this world needs right now. My personal life has been transformed. I’ve changed the way I teach and now bring much more of my authentic self into the classroom. I’ve realized that showing vulnerability in the classroom allows students to show up much more authentically. This experience of Chris’s life work/influence is certainly not unique to me: I’ve witnessed transformation in my hundreds of [Boston College] students and TAs, opening up to a compassionate curiosity about themselves, Earth, and others. Making conscious choices with consideration of their impact on Earth, not out of guilt or ‘shoulds’ but from getting curious, questioning, learning more, recognizing impacts, and following their own internal call for change.”
Eugenio Arima captured the sentiments of many of Chris’s former IMAZON colleagues in the following remembrance (within the “Uhl Lab’s” WhatsApp group):
“Yesterday, I was deeply saddened to learn of the unexpected passing of Chris Uhl, emeritus professor at Penn State University. Chris's influence on my career is immeasurable. He was the founder of IMAZON, an environmental think tank in Brazil, where I landed my first job after college. He was incredibly helpful in my journey to Penn State for my M.S. in agricultural economics. Beyond academics, he and his family played a vital role in helping Brazilian students like myself navigate the challenges of those long, cold winters. Happy Valley wouldn't have been nearly as ‘happy’ without Chris and his family's generosity and warmth. They truly made a difference in our lives.
“Chris was more than just an advisor; he was my first mentor. He introduced me to the rigorous world of scientific inquiry, a process that was, to put it mildly, challenging at first. I vividly remember spending an entire year working on proposal drafts, only to have them returned covered in his insightful (and sometimes daunting!) comments. He instilled in me a healthy skepticism, the kind that encourages critical thinking and questioning assumptions. It was a valuable lesson, and one I carry with me still. He pushed me to question the relevance, logic, cohesiveness, and practical application of our ideas. It was painful at times, but those early experiences shaped me into the researcher I am today. He taught me the importance of precision, clarity, and thoroughness in scientific work, lessons that have stayed with me throughout my career. I am eternally grateful for his guidance and the foundation he helped me build.
“Chris Uhl was a leading figure in tropical ecology, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. His groundbreaking research on forest degradation caused by fire and the processes of forest regeneration remains highly influential even today. He was ahead of his time in recognizing the crucial link between human activities and the fate of tropical ecosystems. Transitioning from purely ecological studies, he shifted his focus to what would later become known as human-environment interactions. Chris understood that the tropical forests he so deeply admired could not be understood, much less saved, without a thorough understanding of the human motivations that were rapidly reshaping those landscapes.
“It came as a surprise to me, at least initially, when in the early 2000s, Chris seemingly stepped away from his successful career as a prominent tropical ecologist to dedicate himself fully to teaching an introductory ecology course (I'm quite certain he could have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences had he chosen to continue his research trajectory. I remember talking to him about this decision, and he even mentioned how some of his department colleagues pushed him aside). This transformation stemmed from a profound realization: He recognized how disconnected we, as a species, and Americans in particular, were becoming detached from the natural world, increasingly preoccupied with career advancement, wealth accumulation, and material possessions. He saw a growing disconnect that threatened not only our understanding of the environment but our very connection to it. In this shift, Chris truly lived what he preached, prioritizing the education and connection of future generations over personal accolades. I am eternally grateful for his mentorship and friendship. He will be greatly missed.”
Sam Richards, a colleague and friend, shared the following remembrance: “In my early years at Penn State, I heard from so many students about BiSci 3 and this professor who was having such a profound influence on not only their views of the natural world, but also their inner worlds and their understanding of purposeful living. At some point in probably 1998, my curiosity got the best of me, and I finally felt compelled to reach out to ‘that guy’ to experience a little bit of that magic that he was bringing into his classroom. That meeting turned into an endearing friendship that lasted until the day he left his body. I learned many things from Chris and I miss him immensely."
Uhl’s family and friends invite all to join them on June 21, 2025, for an “Honoring Chris Uhl” event to be held on Penn State’s University Park campus. RSVP via Partiful.
An obituary is available via Legacy.com.