Louis E. Swanson, Jr.

Colorado State University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lou-swanson/

Biographical Abstracts

Lou Swanson is an emeritus vice president for engagement and emeritus professor of sociology at Colorado State University (CSU), where he spent the latter part of his career advocating for university-community engagement and global citizenship.

Swanson first learned of the need for and rewards of community engagement as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia. He gravitated toward community engagement during his graduate training, which included social demography and the sociology of agriculture and community studies. Swanson professionally internalized university engagement as an Experiment Station rural sociologist at the University of Kentucky (UK), where he worked with UK’s Cooperative Extension Service.

He joined CSU in 1997, where he served as department chair, associate dean for research (College of Liberal Arts), vice provost for outreach and strategic partnerships, and vice president for engagement. He retired from CSU in 2019.

During his 13-year tenure as a vice provost for outreach and strategic partnerships and then vice president for engagement, Swanson oversaw several engagement divisions: CSU Extension (director), CSU Online, Office of Community and Economic Development, Colorado Water Center, and international programs in China and Ethiopia.

He served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) representing the Council for Engagement and Outreach, was a member of the Western Extension Directors Association (2010–19), and represented WEDA nationally on APLU’s Extension Committee on Operations and Policy (ECOP).

Swanson received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from St. Andrews Presbyterian College, a Master of Technology in International Development at North Carolina State University, and a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology at Pennsylvania State University. He also served as a resident fellow at Resources for the Future and in 2009 was recognized as an Outstanding Alumni in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Pennsylvania State University.

Areas of Expertise

• University-wide engagement - cultural and structural opportunities and challenges
• Land-grant university Extension services - cultural and structural opportunities challenges
• Global higher education and transdisciplinary teaching, research, and engagement
• Structure and transformation of U.S. agriculture and rural communities, rural public policy and development
• Social demography and the sociology of community