Richard N.L. “Pete” Andrews (’70, ’72) leaves legacy of environmental leadership, service 

May 31, 2024

Richard N.L. Andrews, 79, fondly known by colleagues and friends as “Pete” died unexpectedly, May 5, 2024. Andrews had a distinguished career in environmental policy as a professor and mentor, but also was known for his leadership in creating and growing interdisciplinary environmental research, education and public service opportunities at Carolina and around the world.  

“Pete Andrews was a visionary scholar, an engaging teacher and an amazing person,” said Mike Piehler, director of the UNC Institute for the Environment and chief sustainability officer at Carolina. “He was an invaluable resource for me, from taking his class in graduate school to providing insightful counsel when I became director of the Institute.  He enhanced all the groups he was a part of and will be sorely missed by so many.“

Andrews is a 1966 graduate of Yale University, where he studied philosophy. He later earned his master’s of regional planning in 1970 and a Ph.D. in environmental planning and policy in 1972, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Andrews spent the first nine years of his career teaching at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, before returning to Carolina in 1981. Andrews served as a professor in the Department of Public Policy, the Department of City and Regional Planning, the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program and as a faculty fellow of the UNC Institute for the Environment. 

Andrews led the UNC Institute for Environmental Studies for a decade, also beginning in 1981. The interdisciplinary, campus-wide initiative sought to convene the breadth of environmental expertise across campus in research, education and public service and to create new areas of study in response to the world’s most pressing and rapidly evolving environmental challenges. During this time, he authored a report calling for the expansion of environmental programs offered at Carolina. The Carolina Environment Program was formed and later became the UNC Institute for the Environment.  

Andrews recognized the ecological and environmental enterprise was a major strength at Carolina, but was sorely underdeveloped. He also recognized the role universities play in sharing the knowledge and leadership necessary to tackle environmental challenges facing society. He spent his career continuously building on the momentum of each iteration of the Institute for the Environment with the intention of standing up an entity that could apply the multidisciplinary expertise at Carolina to environmental challenges in the state and beyond. 

“The Institute should be a place to organize initiatives that are bigger than anything an individual faculty member can do through their home department, or more interdisciplinary than one department could do alone,” Andrews said in article on the history of the environmental field at Carolina.  “It also provides a unified public face for the diverse range of Carolina’s environmental expertise.” 

“For me, Pete was always a leader and is a legend,” said long-time colleague David McNelis, a research professor emeritus in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School of Global Health and the UNC Institute for the Environment.  

McNelis met Andrews not long after McNelis joined UNC in 1995. Andrews and McNelis served on an advisory board with Bill Glaze, who was the inaugural director of the Carolina Environmental Program, to begin developing the mission and selecting personnel. 

Andrews was a beloved and thoughtful leader and served as chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning from 2006 to 2011, chair of the UNC Faculty from 1997 to 2000. In retirement, he led the Retired Faculty and Professionals Associate as president. He also served as vice president and president of the Residence Association at Carolina Meadows, where he lived.   

In his research and teaching, Andrews was the authority on the history of environmental policy. His book, “Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy” was released in 1999 with an updated second edition in 2006 and a third edition in 2020. The book, published by Yale University Press, is used in policy courses across the country. The book was a career-long endeavor that he was inspired to write when challenged by a respected colleague to investigate why the federal agencies who environmental advocates considered “villains” thought that pursuing their historical missions was the right thing to do.   

Andrews was committed to public service and hired the first director of the Environmental Resource Program, now the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the UNC Institute for the Environment, which initially focused on connecting UNC-Chapel Hill environmental scientists and North Carolina community members to advocate for health-protective environmental programming and policies.   

Left Photo: The original staff of the Environmental Resource Project (from left to right): Fran Lynn, Melva Okun, Mary Beth Powell, and Pete Andrews. Photo courtesy of Pete Andrews. Right Photo: In 2015, the Environmental Resource Program was recognized with a provost’s award for engaged scholarship for their work on water quality. Left to right: Neasha Graves, Dana Haine, Kathleen Gray, Pete Andrews, Sarah Yelton and Michele Drostin. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Gray.

“Pete saw the potential for environmental faculty at UNC to contribute their expertise to helping N.C. communities solve environmental problems, and he not only helped to build our institutional capacity to do that, but he remained a steadfast supporter and adviser over decades,” said Kathleen Gray, director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science and a research associate professor at the Institute for the Environment. 

Throughout his career, Andrews received many prestigious appointments and recognitions, including being named the first Parr Fellow in Ethics of the UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities in 2000. In 2004, he was presented the Most Outstanding Faculty Award of the Public Policy Majors Union. He held the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Professorship in Public Policy from 2004 to 2009. In 2015, he was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, conferred by the Governor of North Carolina for exceptional public service to the state.  

He has served on study committees for the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, as well as two terms on the National Research Council’s Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change. Before joining the UNC faculty in 1981, he held an appointment for two years in the Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. He also was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from 1966-68.  

He was a mentor to many, including Frances Seymour ’81, who was graduating when Andrews began his career at UNC. Seymour, an aspiring environmentalist, majored in zoology since Carolina did not yet offer degrees in the environmental field.  

“I have a very vivid memory of the two of us sitting on one of the low stone walls around campus and asking his advice about graduate school. His advice was to combine a public policy degree with cultivation of in-depth knowledge on a particular subject. It was good advice,” Seymour recalled. 

She later got her master’s of public affairs from Princeton University in 1986 and went on to have a distinguished career investigating tropical forests and climate change in developing countries, especially Indonesia.  Now a senior advisor in the Office of the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in Washington, D.C., and board member of the UNC Institute for the Environment, Seymour is credited with inspiring Andrews with her course of study and advocacy as the foundation for the first environmental major at Carolina. 

Outside of work, Andrews was a staunch supporter of the arts, an avid singer, world traveler and devoted family man. He was a member of the Choral Society of Durham from 1990 to 2024. In recent years, he sang and performed in his community at Carolina Meadows. Andrews loved his family and could often be found recounting stories of travels and visits with his children and grandchildren to colleagues and friends. 

Andrews’ legacy will live on at Carolina through the lives and programs he touched. The Department of Public Policy established the Richard N. L. (Pete) Andrews Environmental Policy Fund, which is awarded annually to a rising senior in public policy, environmental studies or environmental sciences engaged in research and/or service on solutions to local, state, national and/or global environmental policy challenges. 

“Pete was truly a guiding light in the field of environmental policy,” said Angel Hsu, associate professor of public policy and director of the Data-Driven EnviroLab at the Institute for the Environment. “Not only did he write the textbook for budding scholars of U.S. environmental policy, he extended his scholarship beyond the classroom into real policy settings, serving on a range of government science and policy committees at the state and national levels. On a more personal note, he was the most generous person with his time and mentorship, particularly for the students who were lucky enough to receive the fellowship bearing his name.”

A memorial service was held for Andrews at Chapel of the Cross, 304 E. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 on Friday, May 17, 2024 at 2 p.m. He is survived by his wife Hannah of nearly 55 years, his brothers, Paul and John, his children Sarah and her husband Roland, Chris and his wife Emily Harville, and his grandchildren, Amber and Nicholas Roehrich, Charles and James Andrews, and Marjorie Harville. 

More on Andrews’ legacy

• Read more from the Department of Public Policy
• Read more from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
• Read more from the Office of Faculty Governance
• Read Andrews’ full obituary

Andrews in the news

• Faculty Fellow Pete Andrews weighs in on regulatory challenges for EPA after West Virginia v. EPA Decision in Scholars’ Circle (Scholars’ Circle | July 17, 2022) 
• The Persistent Effort to Address Climate Change with Dr. Pete Andrews (Management Matters Podcast | Apr. 25, 2022) 
• LISTEN: Pete Andrews discusses his new book “Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves, 3rd Edition, A History of American Environmental Policy” (Institute for the Environment YouTube Channel | Apr. 2020) 
• Book Release: “Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves, 3rd Edition, A History of American Environmental Policy” by Richard N. L. Andrews (’70, ’72) (IE News | Mar. 16, 2020) 
• Unearthing Environmental Research (Endeavors | July 15, 2019) 

• Two inducted into Order of the Long Leaf Pine (Arts & Sciences Magazine | Spring 2016)

• We Meet Again (Carolina Alumni Review | July 2003)