Practice Areas
Education
- Texas A&M University Ph.D
Robert (Bob) A. Thomas, Ph.D
- Charlotte Office
- TEL: (704) 331-3625
- FAX: (704) 378-1995
robertthomas@mvalaw.com
vCard
Robert Thomas is the senior environmental advisor for the Government, Policy and Regulatory Affairs team. In that role, he advises clients on strategic communications concerning environmental policy. He utilizes relationships with independent scientific consultants and researchers to add third-party credibility to clients' environmental initiatives.
Dr. Thomas is an academician, a business/environmental community liaison, and a media source for environmental news. He was Founding Director of the Louisiana Nature Center, where he served as the liaison for the community in information pertaining to science education, environmental issues, and natural history.
Dr. Thomas is presently Interim Director of Loyola’s School of Mass Communication, is professor of Mass Communication, holds the Loyola Chair in Environmental Communications, and is Founding Director of the Center for Environmental Communications at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a member of an environmental center design team at Eskew+Dumez+Ripple in New Orleans.
Dr. Thomas received his Ph.D. in Vertebrate Zoology from Texas A&M University and holds adjunct professorships at the University of New Orleans, Tulane University, and Louisiana State University. He is the past President of the Association of Nature Center Administrators and is a member/chair of several academic, business, and civic boards (such as the Louisiana Children’s Museum) and committees. He served on the Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums and as Chair of the Environmental Advisory Committee for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The top two honors accorded nature center administrators have been received by Dr. Thomas: The Elsie Naumburg Award (1983, Natural Science for Youth Foundation) and the Professional Leadership Award (2001, the Association for Nature Center Administrators). He was also named Conservation Educator of the Year (1986, Louisiana Wildlife Federation) and awarded the Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation Education (1994, The Garden Club of America).
Dr. Thomas’s activities at Loyola include a teaching program in environmental communications and biology, many activities relating to coastal issues communication, working in the realm of environmental intervention where industry and communities collide, environmental communications programs in tropical areas (principally Belize, Trinidad, Guatemala, and the eastern Caribbean), nature-based tourism, and environmental education and landscaping.
He has published many papers in the fields of herpetology (reptiles and amphibians; specializing in the Neotropical snake fauna) and nature center administration. As mentioned, his most avid interests are in environmental communications, restoring America’s WETLAND (Louisiana’s coastal wetlands), tropical natural history/interpretation, and nature center-based environmental education. Along with his wife and other colleagues in the Department of Special Education and Habilitative Services at the University of New Orleans, Bob has contributed actively in the field of curriculum development for environmental education.