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Meadows learned his lessons well at MIT, where, while working on a Ph.D. in management, he absorbed, sponge-like, much of the wisdom and technique of systems dynamicist Jay Forrester and eminent psychologist Dan Marquist, an expert in organizational behavior. "Management is the most interdisciplinary of degrees, " Meadows explains.

Meadows won't tell you, without some prodding, that he suspects our species is ultimately too short-sighted and irrational to save itself and the planet. To borrow and revise a phrase from Pete Seeger, he prefers to think globally and act locally and globally. When he is not at UNH, he can be found anywhere on earth, planting the seeds of what he hopes will become a worldwide grassroots campaign to avert environmental disaster. His efforts were boasted by a recent $300,000-grant from Japan's Sasakawa Foundation to develop a workshop to train international leaders in the concepts of teambuilding, systems thinking, and sustainable development, which he has already tried out in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Hungary, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

Gillian Martin Mehers, academic director of a Rockefeller Foundation program that trains environmental leaders around the world, works closely with Meadows and describes his workshops as "extremely intense." "I think Dennis is personally convinced, as I am, that we have enough knowledge to solve the world's environmental problems and achieve sustainable development, but that there needs to be a major shift in perspectives and behavior towards more collaboration, trust and shared goals to achieve it," she says.

One of Meadows's favorite ways to engage people in critical issues is through game playing. His most well known game is Fishbanks, and it works like this: groups break into teams, which are given a few fishing boats and some money. The teams must devise strategies as to where they will fish and the size of their fleet. He has played Fishbanks hundreds of times around the world, with leaders from the United Nations and the World Bank, with New England's agricultural secretaries, with teachers and children. The result is nearly always the same: the teams quickly go bankrupt and deplete the entire fishery.

While it's game that, unfortunately, nearly everybody loses, players have a good deal of fun while learning valuable, if painful, lessons about the human condition. "People come to see that their natural inclination toward selfish, short-term gain ultimately works against them, destroying the resource that could have sustained them. And it gives them a chance to practice more sensible, life-sustaining behaviors," Meadows explains.

Just as Meadows is helping to construct international networks, he is simultaneously building systems of support on the UNH campus and across the state. Two years ago, he collaborated with the N.H. Charitable Fund to create and locate at UNH the Center for Public Policy Research, which, headed by well respected former legislator Doug Hall, provides research and analysis to state decision-makers on critical issues such as public education and the criminal justice system. Last year Meadows similarly helped launch New Futures, a privately funded venture led by John Bunker, aimed at assisting the state in dealing with one of its major public health threats: drug and alcohol abuse.

Both centers will draw on the intellectual capital of the University, using faculty expertise and research to serve the state. Meanwhile, Meadows is also revitalizing the UNH Survey Center, so it can form a productive triad with the other centers. "The criminal justice system is bankrupting New Hampshire," Meadows explains, adding that some 80 percent of prison inmates have substance abuse problems. "I think the centers can work collaboratively to help the state develop better policies and solutions than what now exists."

Meadows envisions another center at the University: the Center for Public Service within the next five years. The center would offer shared space to Cooperative Extension, the Institute on Disability, the Institute of Policy and Social Science Research and other groups that serve the public. "It would put 100 people together under circumstances where they could explore areas of collaboration and economies of scale," Meadows explains. "Helping to make that center happen is going to become my major preoccupation next spring."

Jan Nisbet, director of UNH's Institute on Disability and another powerful force on campus, offers key insights into the way he works. "Most people work within the system or outside the system, and some people perceive Dennis as one who can freely do both," she says. "But I see him as someone who understands the connections between systems and people, and who brings them together to creatively solve problems."

"Dennis is sort of a human cyclone," relates one staff member. "When we know he's coming over, this low-pressure system begins to build and there's a lot of tension. He comes in like a storm with this incredible whirlwind of mental energy that leaves us kind of dazed afterward."

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