Furman professor Weston Dripps named director of Shi Center Center for Sustainability

GREENVILLE, SC – Dr. Weston Dripps, an associate professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Furman University, has been named director of the university’s David E. Shi Center for Sustainability.

Dripps, who joined the Furman faculty in 2005, replaces Angela Halfacre as the Shi Center director.  Halfacre was named Special Advisor to the President for Community Engagement earlier in the year.

Dripps began his new duties at Furman May 1.

Before coming to Furman, Dripps was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering and an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.  A graduate of Amherst College, he earned a master’s degree at Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.

During his time at Furman, Dripps has been heavily involved with the university’s sustainability efforts and student living communities.  He has received Furman’s Meritorious Teaching Award (2008) and Meritorious Advising Award (2015), Student Organization Advisor of the Year Award (2009) and Engaged Living Award (2013). He has given more than 50 presentations at professional meetings and published more than a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles on his research. He recently returned from a year-long sabbatical in Sweden working at Lund University’s Center for Sustainability Studies.