2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Political Science (BMC)
Allen, Michael
mhallen@brynmawr.edu
Anderson, Nell
nanderso@brynmawr.edu
Civic Engagement
(BMC)
Barber, Donald
dbarber@brynmawr.edu
Geology (BMC)
Berkowitz, Alan
aberkow1@swarthmore.edu
Chinese (SC)
Cacho, Laura
lcacho1@swarthmore.edu
Office of Sustainability
(SC)
Bio
Teach and research in International political economy and law, including human use and
governance of natural resources and systems. Teach in Bryn Mawr summer school in
Singapore(2013) and China(2014), included visits to Cambodia and Malaysia.
I am the Director of Praxis and Community Partnership Programs in the Civic Engagement
Office at Bryn Mawr College. I work closely with faculty and students in building
connections to local community partners and in incorporating Praxis components into the
curriculum.
Don Barber uses geological techniques to investigate how coastal environments respond to sea
level rise, storms and human shoreline modifications. The accelerating pace of coastal change
now necessitates community outreach as part of our research agenda to engage stakeholders in
developing adaptation strategies. This coming fall ('14), in collaboration with Prof. Tom
Mozdzer (BMC Biology Dept.), Barber will teach an upper-level science 360° course cluster
titled "Temperate and Tropical Coasts in Transition," with field excursions to the US MidAtlantic coast and the coral reefs of Belize.
For many years I have encouraged students to study Asia’s increasingly important role in
global environmental health, but until now I have had little personal exposure to Asia or its
environmental issues. Therefore I feel fortunate to take the opportunity to co-teach a summer
course at Tianjin University on sustainability leadership and the historical development of
ecological awareness. My 3-week visit to China this summer will take me into new territory
both literally and figuratively, and I welcome any and all input from my Tri-Co colleagues
regarding this endeavor! Thank you!
I teach classes in Chinese language, literature, and humanistic culture, including traditional
philosophy, religion, and aesthetics. All of my classes concern China, Taiwan, and Chinese
traditions in Asia and beyond. Research and teaching interests address the cross-section of
traditional literature and thought; individualism in conduct and portrayal; and with relation to
environmental studies, mountains, tea, and culinary traditions. I have spent prolonged periods
in residence in China and Taiwan, and have traveled extensively in Asia; and I maintain
contact with colleagues and institutions in both China and Taiwan. I have professional
proficiency in all aspects of Chinese, including Classical Chinese, and have a reading
knowledge of academic Japanese. I also am fully fluent in all aspects of Italian and French.
I am the Director of Sustainability of Swarthmore College. I have a BA in environmental
sciences from the University of Virginia and a MCP from UC-Berkeley. For the past six
years, I have worked as a consultant to city and state governments across the United States
and Australia, as well as to a number of private clients, to determine and implement strategies
to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In my role at Swarthmore College, I am interested in
partnering with the Environmental Studies program to offer students opportunities to apply
research and teaching on campus and with community partners. I am particularly interested in
using the campus as a living laboratory to test ideas and pilot projects that assist in achieving
the College's sustainability goals.
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Cheng, Xuemei
xcheng@brynmawr.edu
Clark McCauley
cmccaule@brynmawr.edu
Cohen, Jody
jccohen@brynmawr.edu
Collings, Peter
pcollin1@swarthmore.edu
Department/Institution
Physics (BMC)
Psychology (BMC)
Education (BMC)
Physics & Astronomy
(SC)
Dalke, Anne
adalke@brynmawr.edu
English and Gender
Studies (BMC)
Di Chiro, Giovanna
gdichir2@swarthmore.edu
Environmental Studies
(SC)
Bio
My research interests are in the general area of nanoscience and nanotechnology. In particular,
I am interested in the fabrication, characterization and application of nanomaterials. I have
established expertise in the fabrication of nanoscale metallic , and complex oxide materials;
characterization of magnetic, electrical, and optical properties of nanomaterials. I collaborate
in teaching and research with my collaborators in Nanjing University, Fudan University,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Political radicalization, terrorism, genocide and intergroup conflict in general
A Term Professor at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, Jody Cohen’s focal areas are urban,
multicultural, and environmental education. She is a qualitative researcher who does action
and participatory action research, and is currently involved in an action research project on
community organizing around education issues in Philadelphia. Jody also facilitates reading
and writing courses in a women’s correctional facility. Praxis/community-based learning is
central to her work, and figures in most of her courses. At Bryn Mawr, Jody has been deeply
involved with the 360° Program, which supports the development of transdisciplinary
teaching and learning clusters focused on core themes or questions. Through this program she
has become involved with environmental studies, and has designed and taught environmental
education courses as part of two 360°s, “Perspectives on Sustainability” and “Eco-Literacy.”
Currently she is working with Anne Dalke in English to co-design an Emily Balch Seminar
for freshwomen focusing on the intersection of identity and environmental justice work.
ENVS Director
Anne Dalke is Term Professor of English, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bryn Mawr
College. During the 2011-2012 academic year, she received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Change Master Fund award for her contributions to social betterment through scholarship. Her
areas of research include emergent pedagogies and assessment practices, feminist theory and
narrative traditions, revisionary work in the canon of American literatures, and the
intersections between science and literature. She also has a long-standing commitment to
various forms of digital dialogue, and a more recent one to prison education. Her newest area
of interest is that of ecological imaginings.
Giovanna Di Chiro is the Lang Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College
(2012-2015). She has a background in biology, environmental studies, feminist studies,
community-based action research, and community organizing. She has published widely on
the intersections of environmental science and politics with a focus on gender, race, economic
disparities, and human rights. She is co-editor of the volume "Appropriating Technology:
Vernacular Science and Social Power" and is completing a book titled "Embodied Ecologies:
Science, Politics, and Environmental Justice." Di Chiro teaches environmental studies and
gender studies and collaborates with environmental justice organizations to conduct
community-based research on environmental health concerns and on developing culturally
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Mathematics (BMC)
Donnay, Victor
vdonnay@brynmawr
Dostal, Robert
rdostal@brynmawr.edu
Philosophy (BMC)
Everbach, Carr
ceverba1@swarthmore.edu
Engineering (SC)
Gardner, Will
wgardne1@swarthmore.edu
Modern Languages and
Literatures (SC)
relevant sustainability initiatives in low-income communities.
Bio
Victor's mathematical area of research is chaotic dynamical systems. This interest has evolved
into mathematical modeling of environmental and sustainability issues such as epidemiology,
marsh growth, energy use. In his Differential Equations course he includes environmental
examples. He has taught courses on Math and the Environment and his students have done
Praxis/Service Learning projects connecting math and sustainability on campus and in the
community. He teaches a course on Changing Pedagogies in Math and Science Education, has
been involved in several NSF grants focused on K-16 math and science education, and has run
summer institutes for teachers on math and sustainability. He was Chair of the Advisory
Committee for Math Awareness Month 2013 - the Mathematics of Sustainability. Since 2010,
he has been Chair of Bryn Mawr's Sustainability Committee and in 2013 became Director of
Bryn Mawr's Environmental Studies program.
Been teaching at Bryn Mawr College since Fall 1980. I have taught a wide variety of courses
including ethics, the history of philosophy (ancient, modern, contemporary), literary theory,
and seminars on Kant, Hegel, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. My research interests are in
phenomenology and hermeneutics, Kant and the post-Kantian German philosophical tradition.
I have been traveling to China regularly since 2002 for family reasons (4 times to the
mainland and twice to Taiwan) and have become interested in the history, culture, and
philosophical tradition of China. This semester I taught Environmental Ethics for the first
time. It was part of a 360 "China and the Environment." We took 9 students to China for 2
weeks and had a variety of experiences with high-level consultations and visits to factories,
cities, and villages.
Professor Carr Everbach has taught in the Engineering Department of Swarthmore College
since 1990. Earning a B.A. in Applied Mechanics/Acoustics from Harvard in 1982 and
M.S./Ph.D. degrees from Yale in 1986/89, Prof. Everbach was an F.V. Hunt Fellow of the
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) as a postdoc to study lithotripsy, the breaking up of
kidney stones by acoustic shock waves. At Swarthmore, Everbach won an NSF Presidential
Faculty Fellowship to support his research an teaching in biomedical ultrasound. Chairing the
Biomedical Acoustics technical committee of the ASA, Everbach was made a Fellow of the
ASA and has published dozens of papers with his undergraduate students. His current
research area is breaking up and dissolving blood clots using ultrasound and microbubbles, a
method known as ultrasonic thrombolysis. Carr was a founder of Swarthmore's
Environmental Studies program and oversees the Macalester-Pomona-Swarthmore
Consortium study-abroad program "Globalization in the Environment" at the University of
Cape Town, South Africa. Interests in Energy, Sustainability, and Technology.
I teach courses on Japanese language, literature, and film. In the spring semester I participated
in the 360 course cluster "Perspectives on Sustainability: Disasters and Rebuilding in Japan."
My primary research focus is on Japanese modernist/avant-garde literature and film of the
1920's and 30's. I have also been researching postwar visions of the "Future City" in Japanese
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Hager, Carol
chager@brynmawr.edu
Political Science (BMC)
Heckert, Megan
mhecker1@swarthmore.edu
ENVS (SC)
Hoang, Rachel
rhoang@haverford.edu
Jiang, Yonglin
yjiang@brynmawr.edu
Biology (HC)
East Asian Studies
(BMC)
Le, Benjamin
ble@haverford.edu
science fiction. My most recent article explores connections between Japanese science fiction
and the Metabolist architectural movement.
Bio
I am interested in citizen participation in environmental issues. My current research focuses
on the local development of renewable energy technologies and on land use (sprawl,
demographic change), particularly in Germany and the U.S. I also work on the role of citizen
protest in promoting environmental policy change. Asia connections: While my research
focuses on the U.S. and Europe, in my teaching I use case studies from Asia including China,
India, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Japan. Also, I am co-editor of a forthcoming volume
entitled "NIMBY is Beautiful: Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation
Around the World," which includes case studies of China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
I have been teaching GIS at the Tri-Co for the last 2 years and have also taught the ENVS
intro class at Bryn Mawr. I have incorporated community based learning into the advanced
GIS class both times it has run (with varying levels of success).
I joined the Biology department at Haverford in 2005. My research and teaching interests lie
at the intersection of several fields of biology that relate to genetics: developmental biology,
evolutionary biology and cell biology. My research focus is to study how cells change shape
during embryonic development.
In my research lab we are investigating underlying
molecular mechanisms in the fruit fly and how these function in other insects. Ultimately we
hope to understand how these molecular pathways have evolved and how they relate to similar
cell shape changes that drive other developmental events such as neural tube closure in
vertebrates. I am currently co-authoring a textbook of Introductory Genetics with a focus on
connections to the modern fields of genomics and evolutionary biology (with Prof.s Meneely
and Okeke and Kate Heston at Haverford College). In my work on this textbook I have
deepened my interest in bringing cutting edge knowledge of genomics and genetics to
students beyond the biology major. I would now like to develop a course with a focus on the
areas of genetics most relevant to environmental science that could contribute to the
Environmental Studies Program.
I'm in the Department of Psychology at Haverford College, where I teach classes in social
psychology, close relationships, statistics, and research methods. My training is as an
experimental social psychologist and my research area is romantic relationship processes. In
particular, my work revolves around the construct of commitment, including the antecedents
and consequences of commitment, the structure of general models of commitment, and the
role of commitment (and other variables) in predicting relationship stability. Current and
recent research examines the role of social networks in predicting commitment and the
cognitive underpinnings of relationship commitment. In addition, I am interested in
relationship maintenance during interpersonal separation.
Psychology (HC)
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Lindell, Steven
slindell@haverford.edu
Computer science (HC)
Lion, Janice
jlion@haverford.edu
Mosteller, John
jmostell@haverford.edu
Natarajan, Samyuktha
Snatarajan@brynmawr.edu
Center for Peace and
Global Citizenship (HC)
Institutional
Advancement (HC)
Sociology/ education
(BMC)
Okeke, Iruka
iokeke@haverford.edu
I am Haverford's molecular microbiologist. My research focuses on bacterial colonization and
antimicrobial resistance. I teach two half credit courses that count towards the ENVS
concentration (Biol124: Perspectives in Biology: Tropical Infectious Disease and Biol310:
Molecular Microbiology). I have also co-taught - with Jonathan Wilson - an environmental
module on the phyllosphere in our junior level inquiry-based lab course (Biol300). That
course has led to a student focused research collaboration on plant-associated bacteria with
Jon Wilson's lab. I have no connections to Asia in my research and teaching but my work has
strong connections to Africa.
Biology (HC)
Judith Owen
jowen@haverford.edu
Bio
I have been passionately interested in the scientific and technological aspects of
environmental sustainability for 45 years, since I was 10 years old. My particular interests
center around energy and public policy, very similar to the course that Jerry Gollub used to
teach. Although our department is currently overwhelmed by enrollments, I still would be
interested in finding out what ways we might contribute to the environmental studies program.
Janice received her B.A. in Anthropology and Women's Studies from Franklin & Marshall
College. Prior to joining the staff of Haverford in 2005, she served as director of programs at
Greater Philadelphia Cares where she created a social change leadership program for
emerging civic leaders, and managed a staff of AmeriCorps members who organized small
and large-scale volunteer projects. She has also completed specialized trainings including
Facilitative Leadership, anti-racism and coalition building, Anti- Violence Program, Temple
University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program’s faculty training, sexual assault and
domestic violence counseling. Janice is currently enrolled in Bryn Mawr College Graduate
School of Social Work and Social Research with a concentration in community practice.
Biology (HC)
I am a biochemist and immunologist by training, having received bachelor's and
master's degrees with honors in Biochemistry, from Cambridge University and a
Ph.D. in Immunology (Adviser, Norman Klinman, HC '58) from the University of
Pennsylvania. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wistar Institute in Viral
Immunology with Peter Doherty, I came to Haverford in the Fall of 1981, never to
leave. At Haverford, I teach at all levels in the Biology curriculum, and offer a course
"Writing in Public Health" in the First Year Writing Program. Part of this course has
always pertained to environmental health, and I will be expanding that aspect of the
course next year, prior to offering the full-length sophomore level course that I will
plan this summer. No connections to Asia (beyond friends who live there, and no use
of service learning or praxis in my teaching.
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Peck, Jennifer
jpeck1@swarthmore.edu
Economics,
Environmental Studies
(SC)
Record, Sydne
sydne.record@gmail.com
Biology (BMC)
Rock, Michael
mrock@brynmawr.edu
Economics (BMC)
Bio
Jennifer Peck is joining the Environmental Studies Program and the Economics Department at
Swarthmore College as an Assistant Professor in September 2014. At Swarthmore she will
teach Environmental Studies courses in environmental economics. She is currently a
Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Postdoctoral Research
Associate at MIT. She is also a faculty fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about
Islam and Muslim Societies. Her research focuses on the development of resource-rich
countries and the political economy of global oil markets. Because of her interest in oil
markets and extractive industries, much of her research focuses on the economies of the
Middle East. Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and a B.A. from Swarthmore
College.
This fall I will be starting a computational ecology professorship at Bryn Mawr College. One
of the most pressing questions confronting society is: how will the world’s ecosystems and the
services that they provide respond to global change? Unraveling this question requires an
integrated approach accounting for variability in abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic processes
at multiple spatial scales. My research incorporates ecology, statistics, and computer modeling
to ask how these processes work to structure ecosystems across a wide range of
spatiotemporal scales. In this pursuit, I collect observational field data, perform manipulative
experiments, and build ecological models for forecasting into the future. Given that the future
is unknown, I look for clever ways to validate model projections using historical data (e.g.,
paleoecological records) and employ computer simulations and Bayesian statistical techniques
to account for uncertainty. My work primarily focuses on forest and early successional
ecosystems, but could easily be applied to other systems. To date I have worked on systems in
central America, southeast Asia, western Europe, and throughout the United States. I look
forward to joining the Tri-Co community and am excited to become involved with Tri-Co
Environmental Studies. In particular I want to explore synergies between my research on
mangroves in Malaysia and other faculty and student interests in connections between Asia
and Environmental Studies.
I do research on various aspects of development in various East Asian countries. My latest
book (Oxford University Press) focuses on the impact of technological upgrading in China's
energy intensive industries on energy use and CO2 emissions. I am currently working on
another book tentatively titled Dictators,Democrats and Development in in Southeast Asia. As
is well known rapid growth was ushered in in several of these economies by developmentally
minded autocrats. More recently there have been more or less successful moves toward
democracy. The question this book addresses is: What is the impact on growth and
development of this political shift. In addition, I have been a regular participant in the ongoing academic debate about the impact of selective interventions on growth and development
in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. I also have a book on the impact of pollution
management agencies on the pollution abatement behavior of firms in six East Asian
economies.
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Rothenberg, Madge
mrothenb@brynmawr.edu
Provost's Office (SC)
Scarrow, Rob
rscarrow@haverford.edu
Chemistry (HC)
Schmink, Jason
jschmink@brynmawr.edu
Chemistry (BMC)
My research interests are in evolutionary biology, genetics and genomics. I am
currently beginning a project to examine the evolution of natural yeast populations,
comparing current populations to samples that were collected a decade ago in the
same locations. While my primary research organism is yeast, the computational and
statistical approaches I use have allowed me to work across a variety of organisms,
and I hope to continue to do so in the future.
Shapiro, Joshua
jshapiro01@brynmawr.edu
Vecsey, Chris
cvecsey1@swarthmore.edu
Viscelli , Steve
sviscel1@swarthmore.edu
Bio
As Director of Institutional Grants at Bryn Mawr, I will be involved in writing a joint Bryn
Mawr-Swarthmore proposal for the Luce Asia and the Environment Initiative, which will be
used to create new linkages between these two areas throughout the tri-colleges.
I've taught at Haverford College now for a quarter century and was involved in the working
group that brought Environmental Studies to Haverford and helped form the tri-college ES
program. My teaching and research are in the area of bioinorganic chemistry and in particular
the chemistry of metal ions and how the unique chemistry of metals is used by biological
systems (i.e. cells within our bodies). There are some connections with environmental
toxicology, both because some metals can act as toxins when present at too high
concentrations, and because there are many metalloenzymes involved in detoxification of
environmental pollutants.
My research centers around using transition metals such as palladium, nickel, and gold, to
catalyze reactions in organic chemistry. I became interested in Green Chemistry during my
graduate studies.
Biology (BMC)
I am finishing the 1st year of a 3-year visiting assistant professorship in neurobiology at
Swarthmore College. My primary research focus is on the cellular and molecular mechanisms
that control sleep, and have studied both mice and fruit flies. I do not have any direct
connections to Asia in my research or teaching, but I am interested in this workshop for a few
reasons - (1) how we interact with the environment is governed by the brain, and many
environmental factors in turn alter brain function. (2) I am initiating a new course at
Swarthmore in the upcoming spring semester about epigenetics, a growing branch of genetics.
Epigenetics can mean many things, but in my broad view it refers to the study of mechanisms
of gene regulation that are independent of the actual DNA sequence of the genetic code. These
mechanisms of gene regulation are often affected by environmental conditions and
experience, and in some cases can be inherited by future generations.
Biology (SC)
Sociology (SC)
My academic research interests are in political and economic sociology. My most recent
project focused on labor markets in the trucking industry. I also do policy related research
with a think tank called the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. My work there focuses on
increasing energy efficiency in freight logistics to address climate change. I teach a methods
course and a course on social problems and policy that have CBL components.
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Wallace, Mark
mwallac1@swarthmore.edu
Religion (SC)
Wang, Tao
twang1@swarthmore.edu
Weinberg, Bob
rweinbe1@swarthmore.edu
White, Helen
hwhite@haverford.edu
Economics (SC)
History (SC)
Bio
MARK I. WALLACE, Ph.D. graduate of The University of Chicago, is Professor of Religion
and member of the Interpretation Theory Committee and the Environmental Studies
Committee at Swarthmore College. His teaching and research interests focus on the
intersections between religious thought, critical theory, and environmental studies. He is the
author of Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future (Fortress, 2010), Finding God
in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature (Fortress, 2005), Fragments of the Spirit:
Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Creation (Continuum, 1996; Trinity, 2002), The Second
Naïveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology (Mercer University Press, 1990, 1995),
editor of Paul Ricoeur's Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (Fortress,
1995), and co-editor of Curing Violence: Essays on René Girard (Polebridge, 1994). His
research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American
Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He regularly teaches
courses that analyze how Asian religious and philosophical traditions can aid earth-centered
sustainable practices, and he is co-founder of the Chester Swarthmore Learning Institute, a
gathering of urban and religious leaders committed to empowering their local communities
through environmental justice programs, among other activities.
Tao Wang is an assistant professor of economics at Swarthmore College. His research interest
rests in the intersection of international trade and environmental economics. His recent work
analyzes how climate change policies helped shape certain patterns of world trade and how
trade policies will potentially affect greenhouse gas emissions. Professor Wang currently
teaches international economics as well as introductions to economics and econometrics.
Before joining Swarthmore, Wang worked as an economics fellow at the Environmental
Defense Fund. He studied at Tsinghua University, The Ohio State University and Princeton
University.
I teach a variety courses about European and Russian history, and the chief focus of my
research is the history of Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union.
Research Interests: Studying the fate and persistence of human-derived compounds in the
marine environment. No connections to Asia. No real service learning/praxis/community
learning at this time.
Chemistry (HC)
Specialist in contemporary Chinese politics, and teach courses and seminars on East
Asian politics. Have done research and writing on China's one-while policy, and teach
a course on global demographic issues.
White, Tyrene
tyrene.white@gmail.com
Political Science (SC)
Wilson, Jonathan
jwilson@haverford.edu
Biology and
Environmental Studies
(HC)
I work to reconstruct the physiology of extinct plants using mathematical modeling,
experiments with living plants, and paleontological methods.
2014 Tri-Co Environmental Studies Workshop – Participant Bios
Name
Department/Institution
Wright, Nathan
nwright@brynmawr.edu
Sociology (BMC)
Bio
I am a sociologist of culture specializing in how things change and how they stay the same.
My main projects are on religious change and persistence, especially among the LDS Church
historically and around LGBTQ issues currently. Other projects have explored literature,
geographic mobility, and the internet; religion and voting behavior; BBC Radio DJ John Peel
and popular music production, distribution, and consumption; religion and secularism in
Turkey; and the production of college textbooks. In the summers, I teach in the International
Summer School Program from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. Last year's
program was in Singapore and this year's program will be in Tianjin, China. For ES in the TriCo, I teach a 100-level course in Problems in the Natural and Built Environment. It is a Praxis
1 course that invites folks from Philadelphia (Philadelphia Water Department, urban farmers,
green developers, green manufacturers, etc.) to come speak to the class about their work in the
city.