Mike Gunter, Jr. Ph.D. Professor & Chair Political Science  Department      International Affairs Director  Rollins College    Box 2762 – 1000 Holt Ave. Winter Park, FL  32789

Office Hours: By Appointment  214 Cornell Hall 407-646-2263 mgunter@rollins.edu

Dr. Mike Gunter, Jr. is an author and speaker on global environmental affairs and sustainable development. Named a distinguished Fulbright Scholar, Cornell Distinguished Faculty, and Arthur Vining Davis Fellow, Dr. Gunter teaches courses on climate change politics and sustainable development as well as international organization and international security at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL.

A veteran traveler with a decade of experience working for scientists and interviewing ecotourism operators on all seven continents, Gunter has over 50 popular and academic publications to his credit such as this work in the British, Czech and Slovak Review on Brexit. His most recent book, Tales of an Eco-tourist: What Travel to Wild Places Can Teach Us about Climate Change, explores the politics of climate change and positions ecotourism as a lens to better understand this complex, polarizing issue. Available in December 2017 with SUNY Press, Tales of an Eco-tourist showcases travel to an array of high profile destinations, from the hot and humid Amazon jungle to the frozen but dry Antarctic. Part travelogue, part current events expose, these tales of eco-adventure mix history, ecology, and politics, while fleshing out a much-needed personal context to perhaps society's greatest threat of all.

Other recent projects include a 2017/2015 (paper/cloth) book chapter on environmental protests in China within Nimby is Beautiful and a 2016 book chapter with Dr. Julian Chambliss on understanding our urban environment in Teaching Education for Sustainable Development at University Level. Additional biographical material follows below, with a detailed CV here.

Gunter's first book was Building the Next Ark: How NGOs Work to Protect Biodiversity (2006 paperback & 2004 cloth) with Dartmouth College and University Press of New England.  A 2006 Sprout Award nominee, the work was favorably reviewed by both trade and popular periodicals such as Environment, the North American Association of Environmental Educator's Communicator, and the United Nations Environmental Program’s magazine, Our Planet, as well as academic journals such as Global Environmental Politics, International Studies Review, Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, and the non-profit journal Voluntas. 

Gunter has also written a number of articles, editorials, and reviews for publications such as Biological Conservation, Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change, Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, Green Politics: An A to Z Guide, International Affairs, The Journal of Politics, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of College Teaching and Learning, Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Organization & Environment, Orlando Sentinel, Politics and the Life Sciences, The Review of Policy Research, Richmond Times-Dispatch, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Tennessean and William & Mary Policy Review. He currently reviews books for New York Journal of Books, Anthem EnviroExperts, and the American Library Association's Choice Magazine.

In February 2011 and 2010 Gunter addressed  the National Security Institute at the University of Delaware on the Environment and U.S. National Security through a U.S. State Department grant.  In June 2010 Gunter was selected to participate in Saint Anselm College's Learning Liberty Initiative, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.  During June and July 2009 he was invted by Studienforum Berlin to attend their workshop on Climate Change and Germany’s Environmental Strategy.  In May and June 2009, along with ten colleagues, he participated in Rollins' China for Professors field study, part of a series of nationally recognized internationalization efforts on the Rollins campus.

In 2007 Gunter served as a distinguished Fulbright Scholar for the U.S. State Department targeting civil society and sustainable development in the Slovak Republic at Univerzita Komenského Fakulta Sociálnych a Ekonomických Vied.  During that time Gunter spoke at the Gustav-Stresemann Institut in Bonn, Germany, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy.  Here he addressed the politics of climate change in U.S. foreign policy as well as the links between terrorism and unsustainable development for their annual Fachleiter Conference.  Additional grants targeted Tambopata Research Center in the Peruvian Amazon, Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa, Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and the Antarctic peninsula among others.

Gunter spoke, along with former Vice President Al Gore and noted environmental writer Rick Bass, at the prestigious Stonecipher Symposium on Technology, Communication, and Culture in March 2002.  He was on the 2006 Screening Committee for the $200,000 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and serves as a continuing manuscript reviewer for Choice, Global Environmental Politics, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and Wadsworth presses.  On the Rollins College campus, Gunter serves as director of the International Relations Program as well as the advisor for the Rollins Washington Semester Program and Model UN student organization.  He also served as Rollins first faculty-in-residence and director of Living & Learning Communities at Rollins, a series of programs which focused on linking academic and social aspects on campus. 

Before returning to academia, Dr. Gunter worked for several years in Washington, D.C., first as a legislative correspondent in the U.S. House of Representatives and then as an editor for a public policy newswire service in the National Press Building.