I am interested in organizations that deal with food, from community-based gardens to soup kitchens. Homelessness is also a critical subject for landscape architects as we design public space. My goal in receiving this sustainability fellowship is to receive training and tools to make every studio and hopefully every site-based class deeply grounded in community-engaged learning.

I am interested in ​forests in the German and American (Oregonian) cultural imagination. Like Germany, Eugene has a long “green” tradition reflected in the arts, literature, educational programs, political activism, and in the sciences. My course will examine the links between forest management, environmentalism, and political activism in both Eugene and Germany.

As the previous Executive Director of the Great Lakes Environmental Finance Center, an EPA Region 5 sponsored technical assistance center, I saw the need for a real understanding of sustainability across a range of state and local management positions. As part of my role as the head instructor for the Capstone projects, I have been meeting with Lane County Government officials and City of Eugene officials over the last year.

Engaging with communities is always the center of my curriculum. For example, in Fall 2017, students in LA 4/510 Urban Sustainability participated in a term-long service-learning project to directly work with the City of Eugene’s Public Works. All students played active roles in applying the knowledge they learn from lectures to real community issues and ultimately to their civic responsibility and professional careers.

One of my primary goals is making the information we discuss in class concretely real for my students and having the opportunity to work within the community on actual projects would go a long way towards this goal. My proposed course focuses on the “species problem,” looking across social and scientific communities at the ways we conceptualize species boundaries, think about endangered versus invasive species issues, and where we identify the next steps in species-based conservation to be.

It has been argued that sustainability is a communication problem. In my course, students learn the principles of contemporary communication to deliver information about sustainability. By collaborating with local organizations, students will share what they learn with other members in the community.

My course addresses food in terms of environmental sustainability as it looks at the impacts of various forms of farming and food distribution on soil, water, air, animals, and ecosystems. It also looks at economic sustainability as it examines issues connected to subsidies, food-aid programs, and food pantries. I think there many ethical concerns about how the university relates to the community partners and I am also sensitive to how different students are situated differently with relationship to the various organizations in which they might be placed.

My work is focused on passive heating, and course projects could address community needs directly while promoting public awareness of the potential of passive heating. These projects could entail the evaluation of solar site resources for a partner’s future projects, the design and performance modeling of passively heated spaces or greenhouses, and the investigation of existing passively heated spaces, followed by suggestions for redesign and improvement. I’ve begun a collaboration between my ENVS 202 class (Introduction to Environmental Science) and the Willamette Resources and Educational Network (WREN) for a Eugene wetlands restoration project to be completed in Spring 2017.