My teaching strives to incorporate strategies to engage students
in meaningful ways with both theory and practice.
Course work and group projects expose students to diverse pathways towards creating
more inclusive, informed, and sustainable futures
while demonstrating the value of personal and collective agency.
in meaningful ways with both theory and practice.
Course work and group projects expose students to diverse pathways towards creating
more inclusive, informed, and sustainable futures
while demonstrating the value of personal and collective agency.
Teaching Experience
At Bucknell University, I am the director of the Place Studies program in the Center for Sustainability and the Environment. I support, facilitate, and conduct teaching and research on how we imagine, sustain, understand, and engage with place. I work with faculty and students on projects related to sustainable communities, energy landscapes, and regional human-environment histories. I also direct the university's Coal Region Field Station, a collaboration with communities in Pennsylvania's anthracite region headquartered in the Mother Maria Kaupas Center in Mount Carmel. Projects supported through the field station focus on community revitalization, local history and culture, and post-coal futures. I also teach the course "Considerations in Sustainability: Re-Envisioning Waste."
At Emory University, I taught in Interdisciplinary Studies for the Sustainability Minor. I taught discussion and project based courses including "Sustainability Dilemmas: Reconciling People and Place," "Energy Choices and Society," "Foundations in Sustainability," and "Sustainability Leadership in Practice."
At Allegheny College, I taught discussion and project based courses in the Environmental Science/Studies department from 2012-2014. Courses taught included "Political Ecology," "Understanding Third World Environmental Issues," "Environment and Development in Mountain Regions," "Environmental Problem Analysis," and "Environmental Research Methods" (a team-taught course).
At Penn State University, I taught lecture courses in Geography, taught 6th grade science as an NSF GK-12 fellow, and co-taught a small service learning class. Geography courses taught included "World Regional Geography," "Introduction to Human Geography," "Cultural Geography," and "Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems." I was also a teaching assistant for several geography classes including Urban Geography, Geography of International Affairs, Cultural Geography, and Physical Geography.
As an NSF GK-12 Fellow at Penn State, I taught 6th grade science in the Philipsburg School District in Pennsylvania. The program partnered graduate students with K-12 educators to enhance science education by incorporating research and open-inquiry science into classrooms.
In the Classroom
HOINA is a children's home for abandoned, orphaned, and special needs children in Southern India. For four years, I co-taught a year long course at Penn State that centered on a three week service learning experience at HOINA in Chennai and Visakhapatnam.
As a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois, I engaged students in small discussion based classes to accompany their lecture courses in "Contemporary Issues in Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences" and "Introduction to Environmental Social Science."