Greetings!
Thank you for visiting my site. Currently, I serve as the Director of the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy (ESE) at Northern Illinois University, where I'm fortunate to serve a highly collaborative group of five jointly-appointed faculty, 46 faculty associates, affiliated doctoral students, and 118 undergraduate majors. ESE is the home of Environmental Studies, NIU's only cross-college, transdisciplinary undergraduate degree. Our highly successful students can emphasize in Environmental Justice, Environmental Policy and Law, Sustainable Food Systems, Biodiversity and Environmental Restoration, and Sustainability and Energy. In the past year, we have brought in nearly $150,000 in external resources through donations and grants from our many stakeholders to support student research fellowships, scholarships, and other needs.
ESE is also a highly active research institute with participation in over $5 million in active funded grants and contracts from sponsors such as National Science Foundation, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Our faculty generate over 200 scholarly and creative products each year, and their work is impactful: the average ESE associate has 930 citations and an h-index of 13. To support transdisciplinary scholarship, we started in Spring 2023 a Transdisciplinary Working Group seed funding program and have committed $20,000 to this initiative already.
I'm also an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University, where I help coordinate our globally renowned specialization in Local Government Management (ranked #3 nationally by U.S. News and World Report) and Public Service Law and Management. I teach Master of Public Administration courses in law, planning and zoning, governance, and performance management. I have won awards at both Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University for teaching and mentoring.
My research has received over $4.5 million in external funding from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, U.S. Department of Transportation, Regional Studies Association, and Illinois Innovation Network. This work has funded 35 paid undergraduate research experiences and 12 graduate students since 2018 at my home institutions. I focus on decision-making by and among local government managers, administrators, and elected officials as they tackle major policy problems, especially decisions regarding collaboration in sustainable infrastructure systems. You can read more about my research here. My scholarship has been published by Routledge, and can be found in Land Use Policy, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Transport Policy, Cities, and Journal of Urban Affairs.
Please get in touch with me if you're interested in working together or in having me share my passion and knowledge with the public through a community meeting, media engagement, or any other avenue.