Professor Brian Chalkley has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to the development and promotion of environmental and geographical sciences, and education for sustainable development, in Higher Education Institutions in the UK and internationally. As the Director of the national Higher Education Academy’s ‘Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Subject Centre’ for almost a decade, he is well known for his support of the professional development of hundreds of academics in the environmental and geographical disciplines, and through outreach into the other subject areas, teachers in university departments more widely. He has made notable contributions also to the promotion of sustainability in skills for graduate employability, and sustainable development education in schools, and has been the author of many high quality books, articles and web resources. He had joint overall responsibility for Plymouth’s four successful bids for national Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, including the ‘Centre for Sustainable Futures’ and the ‘Centre for Experiential Learning in Environmental and Natural Sciences’. His commitment to sharing good pedagogic practice is further illustrated by his education publications, his national and international conference presentations, and by his role on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE). In 2002 Brian was awarded a UK National Teaching Fellowship, and in 2006 was made a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. More recently he has been awarded an Adjunct Professorship by the University of Western Australia, and the Royal Geographical Society’s Taylor and Francis Prize for his contributions to geographical education.