Faculty & Staff

Dr. Travis Wagner

Travis received his B.S. in environmental science at Unity College in Maine. His focus was wildlife management; however, his experiences with counting rabbit scat in the unorganized territory of Maine erased his grand ideas of a wildlife management career. Immediately following graduation, Travis accepted an internship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Toxic Substances in Washington, DC. He quickly found his niche - environmental policy and management. Travis worked for a series of environmental firms focusing on a variety of environmental projects including solid and hazardous waste guidance and policy development; NEPA compliance; contaminated site remediation; pollution prevention; and regulatory compliance. Travis has also taught environmental policy and written and spoken about various aspects of waste management and pollution control. Since leaving Unity, he has lived in Washington, DC; Raleigh, NC; Wuerzburg, Germany; Kaiserslautern, Germany; and New Bern, NC. Having become satiated with environmental consulting, and having relished his teaching experience, Travis decided to return to graduate school fulltime to fulfill his dream of teaching college.

Ph.D., Public Policy, Environmental and Natural Resources Policy concentration, The George Washington University, 2003
M.P.P., Environmental Policy Concentration, University of Maryland-College Park, 1998
B.S., Environmental Science, Unity College in Maine, 1983

• ESP 101 Fundamentals of Environmental Science
• ESP 102 Fundamentals of Environmental Science Lab
• ESP 203W Environmental Communication
• ESP 220J Environmental Policy: Pollution
• ESP 308 Global Environmental Problems and Sustainability
• ESP 375 Environmental Risk Assessment and Management
• ESH 341 Environmental Regulations
• ESP 421 Natural Resource Policy

Research interests include the identification and evaluation of model environmental policy programs with special emphasis on waste management; the socioeconomic influences on the development and implementation of environmental policy; and the historical evolution of environmental policy.

Wagner, T. and Arnold, P. 2008. "A New Model of Waste Management? An Analysis of the Nova Scotia Solid Waste Strategy," Journal of Cleaner Production.

Wagner, T. 2007. "Reframing garbage: solid waste policy formulation in Nova Scotia," Canadian Public Policy, (33)4.

Wagner, T. 2006. "Using Comparative Risk Surveys in Environmental Communication Pedagogy," Applied Environmental Education and Communication, 5(3):199-211.

Wagner, Travis and Robert Sanford, Environmental Science: Active Learning Laboratories and Applied Problem Sets (John Wiley & Sons, New York: 2005).

Wagner, Travis, "Hazardous Waste: Evolution of a National Environmental Problem," Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2004.

Wagner, Travis P., The Complete Guide to the Hazardous Waste Regulations: Third Edition, (John Wiley & Sons, New York: 1999), 560 pp.

Wagner, Travis P., In Our Backyard: A Guide to Understanding Pollution and Its Effects, (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold: 1994), 320 pp. (This book was translated and published in Spanish in 1996 and in Arabic in 1997.)

Email: twagner@usm.maine.edu