Richard Stevens, the President’s Excellence in Research Professor within Texas Tech University’s Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, has been named Interim Chair of the Department of Natural Resources Management and holder of the Caesar Kleberg Endowed Professorship in Wildlife Conservation, college officials announced this month, effective Sept. 1. Currently, Stevens also serves as a Professor of Natural Resources Management and Curator of Mammals for the university's Natural Science Research Laboratory.
According to Davis College Dean Clint Krehbiel, “Dr. Stevens is a dedicated servant leader willing to empower faculty, staff, and students toward continued enhancement of excellence. I am confident in and excited about his ability to lead NRM in this role.”
“I am honored by the opportunity to serve and lead NRM during exciting times of strategic changes with the goal of being in the top 10% of similar programs in the country,” Stevens said. “Students, staff and faculty in NRM are poised for greatness, and I am excited to be a part of that.”
Stevens has published more than 144 refereed manuscripts and has garnered $4.4 million in research funding from federal and state agencies including the National Science Foundation, U. S. Forest Service, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas Department of Transportation, and Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.
Today, Stevens has an active and high-profile research program underway at Texas Tech, focusing on the basic community ecology of bats and rodents in Paraguay, California and Texas, in particular the effects of species environment interactions, dispersal, seasonality and competition on the structure of communities. In addition, he’s interested in the mechanistic bases of broad-scale patterns in the structure and diversity of communities and how to use this information to better conserve the world's biota.
Stevens joined the Texas Tech faculty as an associate professor in 2014. An internationally recognized quantitative ecologist, he previously served as an associate professor within Louisiana State University’s Department of Biological Sciences and an adjunct professor in Mississippi State University’s Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He also worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the University of California-Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis.
Honors include the Bernie E. Rushing Jr. Faculty Outstanding Researcher Award (2018), Davis College Research Award, (2022); and Office of the Provost Integrated Scholar (2023). He was elected to the American Society of Mammalogists’ Board of Directors and served as associate editor of the Journal of Mammalogy, as well as working on the Publications Advisory Board and the Animal Care & Use Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists. He is past president of the Texas Society of Mammalogists and has served on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Expert Panel for Mammals of Paraguay. Awards for Stevens include the American Society of Mammalogists Award.
Stevens received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Texas Tech. His doctorate in biology is from Texas Tech. He is a member of Ecological Society of America, American Society of Mammalogists, North American Symposium on Bat Research, Texas Society of Mammalogists and the Southwestern Association of Naturalists.
CONTACT: Richard Stevens, Interim Chair, President's Excellence in Research Professor and Professor of Natural Resources Management, Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-6843 or richard.stevens@ttu.edu
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