Thomas J. Baerwald serves as Senior Science Advisor in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.  In that capacity, he assumes a number of major responsibilities.  He is one of three program directors for the Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) Program.  He has served as a program director for the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) since the initial CNH competition in 2001.  He served as a lead program director coordinating the Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences (IBSS) competition from 2012 to 2016.  Baerwald has served on cross-foundation working groups that have coordinated NSF's environmental research and education activities.  From 2003 to 2008, he was one of the program directors managing NSF's Human and Social Dynamics interdisciplinary competitions.  For roughly a dozen years from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, he was a coordinator for environmental social and behavioral science activities, assisting in the conduct of interdisciplinary efforts that engage social and behavioral scientists in the studies of interactions among human and natural systems.

 

Baerwald has worked at NSF since 1988.  Over that time, he periodically served in higher administrative roles, including Acting Director of the Division for Social and Economic Sciences, Interim Director for the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Coordinator for NSF Global Change Research Activities, and Deputy Assistant Director for the Geosciences.  Baerwald has announced that he will retire from NSF at the end of 2018 following more than 30 years of federal service.

 

Prior to his service at NSF, Baerwald established and directed the Geography Department at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul.  He taught as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota and Macalester College.  From 1991 to 2008, he was co-author of a secondary school world regional geography textbook.

 

Baerwald earned a B.A. in geography and history from Valparaiso University and both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geography at the University of Minnesota.  When he conducted basic research of his own, Baerwald specialized in studies of contemporary metropolitan development processes and urban transportation.

 

Baerwald has been an active member of a number of professional societies.  He served three-year terms on the Council of the what was then known as the Association of American Geographers (AAG), first as West Lakes Regional Councillor from 1985 to 1988 and as later as a National Councillor from 2003 to 2006.  Baerwald served as Vice President of the AAG from 2006 to 2007, as President from 2007 to 2008, and as Past President from 2008 to 2009.  Baerwald served on the Executive Board of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) from 1987 to 1989, and he chaired long-range planning committees of both the AAG and NCGE.

 

Baerwald has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.  He has received AAG Distinguished Service Honors, and in 2018, he was selected to be among the first group to be designated as Fellows of the renamed American Association of Geographers.  He received an Alumni Achievement Award from Valparaiso University, and he has received a Director's Superior Accomplishment Award and other honors from NSF.