UNLV history professor Hal Rothman has been selected as the recipient of the UNLV Alumni Association's annual Outstanding Faculty Award.

"Presenting this award to Hal Rothman is a real pleasure," said Fred Albrecht, UNLV vice president for university and community relations. "Hal is a professor who excels both in teaching and in research. Students find his lectures informative and challenging. When it comes to research, writing, and publication, he is no doubt one of the most prolific writers on campus and has published works in a number of scholarly arenas."

Among Rothman's areas of expertise are the American West and environmental history.

Rothman, who has taught at UNLV since 1992, serves as editor of the scholarly journal Environmental History. In 1999, his book Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West received the Western Writers of America's Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction. Among his other books are Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century; The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the U.S. Since 1945; and I'll Never Fight Fire With My Bare Hands Again: Recollections of the First Forest Rangers of the Inland Northwest.

He is frequently quoted as an expert in newspapers and magazines nationwide and has been interviewed for several national television and radio programs.

Rothman has received numerous awards during his years at UNLV, including the Marjorie Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award, the Marjorie Barrick Research Scholar Award, and the William Morris Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the College of Liberal Arts.

Rothman said he is honored to have been chosen to receive the association's outstanding faculty award.

"It's a lovely award," he said. "To be chosen by the UNLV Alumni Association from a faculty as deserving as ours is truly an honor."