[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFGh-tMVChE&w=560&h=315]
During his tenure at CSU Professor Rick Knight advised 55 graduate students, served on hundreds of graduate committees, taught 15 distinct courses (13 of which he developed), and taught over 10,000 undergraduate students. If all Knight’s students lined up to say thanks for his dedicated service the line would wrap out of the Lory Student Center, down College avenue to Harmony Road, and back.  

Knight is a certified Wildlife Biologist (The Wildlife Society), a certified Ecologist (The Ecological Society of America), is an elective member of the American Ornithologist’s Union, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Gamma Sigma Delta, and Sigma Xi.

Knight has been awarded:

• Warner College Students Choice for Outstanding Faculty Member (1995, 2005, 2007, 2012, and 2015)
• The Jack E Cermak Outstanding Advisor Award (1993),
• The Board of Governor’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2007)
• The Harry E Troxell – Distinguished Service-to-Students Award in 2008 and 2016.
• The Quivira Coalition’s Outstanding Leadership Award (2008)
• The Colorado Book Award for Anthology (2008)
• The Association for Publishing & Media 2012 “EXCEL Award for General Excellence in Journal Publishing” for editing an issue of Rangelands on ecosystem services. Gold award category (2012)

The Warner College community gathered to celebrate Knight’s 30+ years of dedication and service to students, the Warner College of Natural Resources and the CSU community. Knight was a beloved professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, will be dearly missed.

“I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until “retirement,” but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.” ~Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (1971)