Matthew "Matt" R. Auer is an American academic administrator and environmental scholar. Auer served as the dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine before being appointed the current Dean of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs in Athens, Georgia; he assumed office on July 1, 2017.^[1]

Auer had also previously served as the Dean of the Hutton Honors College at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and was a professor at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Auer earned an AB in Anthropology, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1988, a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a Ph.D. in Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale University in 1996.^[2]

He is the former Dean of the Hutton Honors College at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.^[3] At Indiana University, he taught environmental policy, public policy, and public administration at Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

From 2005 to 2008, he was editor-in-chief of the public policy journal, Policy Sciences, and he has served on the Executive Council of the Society of Policy Scientists.^[4] Auer was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2023.

Auer served as Senior Adviser to the U.S. Forest Service from 2001 to 2006. During that time, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Forum on Forests and to the International Tropical Timber Council, the governing body of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). For the United States Agency for International Development and other bilateral aid agencies, he has developed, implemented, and evaluated energy and environmental programs in, among other countries, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Estonia, Poland, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. He has also served as a Presidential Management Fellow at USAID.

Auer was appointed as the Dean of Faculty of Bates College on July 1, 2013. Auer has received more than a dozen teaching awards including the President's Award.^[5] On February 1, 2017, it was announced that Auer was appointed to a senior level position within the University of Georgia by the college's president, Clayton Spencer.^[6] Auer focused on recruiting faculty from diverse and underrepresented groups and strengthening computational sciences curricula at the college.^[7]

In early February 2017, the University of Georgia announced that Auer had been named dean of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. He assumed office on July 1, 2017 following an induction ceremony.^[8] Priorities during Auer’s term have included increasing the size of the faculty, new curricula, and theory-to-practice research impact.^[9]

• Auer, Matthew. 2021. “Considering Equity in Wildfire Protection,” Sustainability Science, 16: 2163-2169.
• Auer, Matthew, Zhang, Yuman, Lee, Priscilla. 2014. “The Potential of Microblogs for the Study of Public Perceptions of Climate Change,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5: 291-296.
• Auer, Matthew. 2011. “The Policy Sciences of Social Media,” Policy Studies Journal, 39(4): 709-736.
• Auer, Matthew. 2008. “Presidential Environmental Appointees in Comparative Perspective,” Public Administration Review, 68(1): 68-80.
• Auer, Matthew. 2006. “Contexts, Multiple Methods, and Values in the Study of Common-Pool Resources,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 25(1): 215-227.
• Auer, Matthew. 2004. (Ed.) Restoring Cursed Earth: Appraising Environmental Policy Reforms in Eastern Europe and Russia. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Auer, Matthew. 2000. “Who Participates in Global Environmental Governance? Partial Answers from International Relations Theory,” Policy Sciences, 33(2): 155-180.