Walter Coward, Jr.

Walt Coward "holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Iowa State University. His career has combined five years in Laos with International Voluntary Services and serving as research director for the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines with an academic career first briefly with Pennsylvania State University and then sixteen years at Cornell. At Cornell University he served as Professor of Rural Sociology and Asian Studies, Chair of the Department of Rural Sociology and Director of the International Agriculture Program focusing in human ecology and the connections between rural social organization and natural resource management most notably in irrigation in Montane Asia. Walt then spent nine years with the Ford Foundation as Director of the Foundation’s Rural Poverty and Resources Program and later as the Senior Director of the Foundation’s Asset Building and Community Development Program. At Ford he played a particular role in building a global field of environment and development, integrating it with the Foundation’s grantmaking in Rural America and especially the American Southwest. After retiring from Ford, Walt rejoined Cornell to inaugurate a research program on environment and development issues in mountain regions. Walt has played a significant role in reforming the international agricultural research institutions (CG system), and serves on the board of Hispanic Leadership in Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA)."


 * Director, Christensen Fund