Steve Patterson

Mayor Steve Patterson has lived in Athens since 1998 and served as an Associate Professor at Ohio University until becoming Mayor in 2016. A retired Major in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, he served over 20 years in both enlisted and commissioned ranks. He is active on numerous boards, including as Immediate Past President of the National League of Cities and Chair of both SOPEC and the Outdoor Recreation Council of Appalachia. Most recently, he contributed to the Transatlantic Dialogue on the Industrial Heartlands Project, joining a Study Tour for Midwest Policy Makers to Industrial Core Regions of Germany in June 2025.

A wide-angle, high-perspective photograph of a vast open-pit mining operation. Multiple pieces of heavy industrial machinery are active across tiered dirt terraces, including large yellow haul trucks and hydraulic excavators in yellow and orange. The scene captures the scale of resource extraction, with steep, excavated rock walls in the background and a dusty, industrial atmosphere.

Buried Villages, Fragile Democracies: Coal, Community, and the Unsteady Politics of the Climate Transition

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The transition away from fossil fuels is as much about democratic resilience as it is about energy. Steve Patterson explores the “political whiplash” of shifting national policies and the enduring struggle to protect community heritage from the erosion of both physical landscapes and institutional norms.
Steve Patterson
Debate, Project Report

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