This article was originally published in the fall 2025 issue of Res Gestae.
“Despite temporary defeats and shocks that rattled a social mover to his ultimate particle, that larger motion was always like that of a comet or a glacier forward.”
Renowned writer and environmentalist Wallace Stegner used those words to describe geologist and ethnologist John Wesley Powell in his 1954 biography “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.” More than 70 years later, Professor Robert Keiter, who served as the first director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment, used those same words to describe the center’s progress at its 30th anniversary during the annual Stegner Symposium.
What started as an idea in the 1990s is now a nationally recognized center that conducts influential research and informs policy on critical environmental issues. The Stegner Center is also home to Utah Law’s environmental law program, currently ranked seventh in the nation.
Keiter said that the center bears Stegner’s name because it aspires to continue his remarkable legacy.
“Just as Wallace Stegner perceptively conveyed the larger picture of Western settlement and development, the Wallace Stegner Center aspires to carry on in that same tradition to develop meaningful and respected conference series, research publications and educational programs that see the West and beyond,” he explained. “In Wallace Stegner’s tradition and in the best tradition of the academy, we can promise to think clearly, examine critically and write truthfully about the natural resources and environmental matters that confront us today.”
Building a career in civil rights and academia
Raised in Maryland, Keiter headed to the Midwest for higher education, earning his bachelor’s degree in history with honors at Washington University in St. Louis. When he graduated in 1968 amid the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, law school felt like the next step because it would give Keiter tools to make meaningful contributions both in social justice and the nascent field of environmental policy. The following year, he enrolled at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.
“I had the opportunity to learn and appreciate constitutional law and the efforts at the time in legal service programs and public interest organizations to promote social justice within our society. I also took the first environmental law class ever offered at the law school,” he remembered.
When Keiter graduated with honors from law school in 1972, he began a fellowship with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund in West Virginia, spending two years pursuing law reform litigation involving civil rights and institutions like the state’s mental health and prison systems. He then ran a legal service program in northern Idaho, where he got involved with the University of Idaho College of Law’s clinical program.
“The idea of teaching law began to germinate in my mind for a few reasons. One, I thought I would enjoy the opportunity to teach students. Two, I would have the independence to pursue research and writing in the subjects that interested me. And three, I would have a little more independence than I had as a practicing attorney,” Keiter said.
He taught at Southwestern Law School for two years until 1978, when the opportunity to move back to the Mountain West presented itself with an offer from the University of Wyoming College of Law in Laramie. His wife, Linda, had finished a graduate degree in library science and was soon hired to run the university’s science library.
“I began teaching constitutional law and overseeing a civil clinical program at the law school. Within a few years, I was approached about a Glacier National Park research project on legal options to confront external activities adversely affecting the park,” Keiter said. “I spent a summer in Glacier country researching the problems and ultimately writing about that. It was a really meaningfulv experience and convinced me to shift my professional activities and focus more toward natural resources, environmental law, and public land law.”
Researching national parks around the world
That experience in Glacier National Park also led to years of research on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and numerous articles (later books) about the area.
“I was on the forefront of addressing the emerging concept of ecosystem management from a legal perspective, and that opened doors both nationally and locally. In the process, I met the late Professor Bill Lockhart, who approached me about moving from Wyoming to Utah,” Keiter recalled. “Upon investigating the opportunities here, I became convinced that this was a larger professional playing field.”
He worked as a visiting professor at Utah Law in fall 1992 to see if the school was a good fit before he and Linda moved from Laramie to Salt Lake City. Shortly before joining the University of Utah officially, Keiter received a Fulbright scholarship to work at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal, for six months.
“My interest in the outdoors had taken me, my wife and a couple of other family members to the Himalayan Mountains several times before that on long trekking trips, one of which circumnavigated the Annapurna mountain range, another that took me to Everest country for three weeks, and a third one that took me to what’s called the Dolpo region of Nepal,” he explained. “The Fulbright scholarship gave me an opportunity to teach law there and to research Nepal’s national parks and the evolution of the country’s national park system. It was rewarding to get a broader international perspective on how that sort of system evolves in a developing country—and it has evolved in ways that are very significant for conservation purposes.”
Leading the Wallace Stegner Center
Wallace Stegner passed away in 1993, not long before Keiter began teaching at Utah Law. At the time, the law school’s environmental program had morphed from an energy law center in the 1970s to a general land, water and energy program, and it needed some rejuvenation. A colleague, Professor Bonnie Mitchell, suggested renaming the program to honor Stegner, who had deep ties to Utah.
“It turned out that other folks at the university and in the community—Dave Livermore with The Nature Conservancy, Greg Thompson of the Marriott Library, and the late Lowell Durham of the Tanner Humanities Center—had thought about that, too, and we collectively decided to pursue it,” Keiter said. “I got in touch with Stegner’s family (widow, Mary, and son and daughter-in-law Page and Lynn Stegner) to broach the idea of establishing a center in his name at the law school. They were initially puzzled because Wallace Stegner was not a lawyer, but we approached it from the perspective that the law rested on high moral principles and that Stegner reflected those principles with his commitment to protecting the environment and conserving the Western landscape.”
With the Stegner’s family’s blessing, the University of Utah announced the creation of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment and the transfer of Stegner’s papers to the Marriott Library Special Collections in fall 1994. A year later, Keiter and his colleagues also established an annual symposium series that continues to this day.
“When I arrived at Utah Law, I had no idea I would be involved in establishing and leading a center, but perhaps as much by default as anything else, it ended up in my lap,” Keiter said. “It’s been rewarding to work with many colleagues in the center over the years, including Dean Bob Adler, Bill Lockhart, and Susan Poulter, among others. I’m grateful for the opportunity to help grow and observe the growth of an institution that I’m confident will persevere long beyond my retirement.”
Since its inception in 1994, the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment has expanded to include the Young Scholars program, in which early-career scholars offer lectures at Utah Law and meet with students and faculty. The Law and Policy program provides research and analysis on emerging issues that affect public lands, climate change, resource management, agency decision-making, and indigenous peoples, while the Environmental Dispute Resolution program helps people work through conflict and fosters collaboration around environmental, natural resource, and broader public policy issues.
In July 2024, Professor Brigham Daniels and Professor Lincoln Davies were named co-directors of the Stegner Center. Daniels currently focuses on climate change and leads the center’s Great Salt Lake Project, which analyzes legal pathways to restoring the Great Salt Lake. Davies is a renewable energy expert who has written extensively on utility regulation and regulatory and technology innovation, among other topics.
“It is a tremendous honor and privilege to help lead the Stegner Center—on the incredible foundation that Bob Keiter built, with the visionary leadership and undaunted advocacy Brig Daniels brings, and with the incredible faculty and staff who make the Center so great,” Davies said in a 2024 announcement about the co-directorship. “Together, we will continue to work toward even greater impact for good in Utah, in the West, and in environmental law and policy more broadly.”
Keiter, who referred to himself as a “reluctant director” when he took the helm years ago, is pleased to see the center’s progress.
“The Stegner Center now has 10 full- or part-time employees, all of whom are supported by funds from outside the university or the state,” Keiter said in his March Stegner Symposium address. “I look forward to the Stegner Center going forward confidently into the next 30 years.”
A half-century of academia
Over the decades, Keiter has formed many friendships both inside and outside the law school, including with the Stegner family. He is also proud to see former students who’ve enjoyed successful and meaningful careers themselves.
“Many of our students were attracted to Utah Law because of the Stegner Center. I feel they had a solid law school experience in a field they were interested in learning about and ultimately practicing law in,” he said. “I’ve been at this for almost 50 years now, and the best part is seeing students come to grips with the law—whether it’s natural resources law or constitutional law—and to ignite some passion and a real fervor about that field of law.”
But Keiter is quick to mention that teaching is not a one-way street.
“My students have challenged me in class and shared information and experiences that helped refine my understanding of and appreciation for the law and change some of my views about how it operates or should operate,” he said.
Natural resources and public land law research has also been a fulfilling part of his career, and Keiter is still publishing his work, which now includes eight authored or edited volumes. His latest book, “Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone: Controversy and Change in an Iconic Ecosystem,” reflects his nearly 40 years of research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and explores both conservation successes and controversies. In the book’s preface, Keiter recalled a trip during college through Yellowstone National Park with a friend and an unexpected encounter with a large black bear.
“While researching and writing this book, I regularly found myself returning to the fact that more than 50 years had elapsed since my initial exposure to Yellowstone and its bears. Though then awed by the park’s raw beauty and wildness, I had scant knowledge about its wildlife, ecology, or management, or its relationship to the surrounding landscape. And I was not alone,” Keiter wrote. “That has changed dramatically, however, throughout the region.”
Although he has begun a phased retirement at Utah Law, Keiter plans to continue writing (he has several projects underway) and teaching for at least a couple more years. However, he does look forward to having more free time for exploring the West.
“I hope to retain my good health and spend as much time as I can hiking, skiing, and just enjoying the great outdoors we have here in Utah and the surrounding Western states,” Keiter said.