Troy Abel
Associate Professor
Dr. Abel is an Associate Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Environmental Studies and the graduate program in Geography. His teaching and research interests focus on the dynamic tensions of environmental science and democratic politics in a variety of arenas including community-based environmental protection, environmental justice, and international conservation projects. He holds an appointment with the faculty of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment where he annually teaches environmental policy, environmental regulation, environmental impact assessment, and environmental policy analysis. Service-learning is one of his central teaching philosophies and the core of his Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action (R.I.C.A.) study abroad program in Costa Rica.

Andy Bach
Associate Professor
Dr. Bach is an Associate Professor of Environmental Geography at Western Washington University. He received my doctorate in geography from Arizona State University in 1995. His Master's and undergraduate work in geography was completed at the University of California, Davis. His major research areas include geomorphology and pedogenesis, natural resources management, Quarternary studies and climate change in the western United States. His graduate students and colleagues have been focusing research efforts in the Ozette Region and Elwha River of the Olympic Peninsula, the Nooksack River watershed and Mt. Baker in Whatcom County, and the Potholes Coulee area of central Washington. Topically, projects have looked at the paleoenvironments of these areas, especially reconstructing the Missoula Flood. Dr. Bach has been using pedogenesis to examine landscapes and trying to understand how soils begin to form in these environments, and how climate change might affect the rate of soil development. He currently teaches Introduction to Physical Geography, The Pacific Northwest, Climatology, Map Reading and Analysis, and two soils courses.

Gigi Berardi
Professor
Dr. Berardi received her BA in biology with high honors from John Muir College, University of California San Diego and my MS and PhD in Resources, Policy, and Planning from Cornell University. She also holds a MA in dance (now, World Arts and Cultures) from UCLA. She taught at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, from 1994-1995, and is now professor and project director (after seven years as chair of the Department of Environmental Studies) at Huxley College, Western Washington University, where she focuses on community vulnerabilities and cultural ecology. Her research and writing includes study and review of Food and Farm Systems, Native American Studies and Tribal Education, and Performing Arts.

Patrick Buckley
Associate Professor

Stefan Freelan
GIS Specialist
Mr. Freelan's role at Huxley College is to provide assistance to Huxley faculty and students with regards to spatial analysis, geographic data sets, software and other things GIS-related. He is affiliated with the Institute of Spatial Information and Analysis (ISIA), working on maps, web maps, spatial analysis and technical aspects of faculty and student research. He also maintain the ISIA and Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL) websites. Stefan teaches a few classes each year for the Department of Environmental Studies, including Introduction to GIS and Computer Cartography and he offers a quarterly GPS workshop.

Rebekah Green
Resilience Institute Assistant Director
Dr. Green is the Associate Director at the Resilience Institute. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University where she combined structural engineering and anthropology to study physical and social vulnerability in the squatter settlements of Istanbul, Turkey. She completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Columbia University’s Earth Institute where she studied hurricane recovery in low-income neighborhoods of New Orleans. Dr. Green is an active member of Risk RED, a non-profit organization aimed at improving public education for disaster risk reduction. She has worked with community organizations in Asia and Latin America, as well as national and international agencies and organizations. At the Resilience Institute, Dr. Green researches community resilience to natural hazards. She teaches Disaster Risk Reduction Planning Studio, Perception of Environmental Risks, Human Ecology and Sustainability, and is adviser for The Planet magazine. She is also currently co-teaching an interdisciplinary course on the Science and Management of Contaminated Sites.

Dave Knutson
Information Technology Specialist

Diane Knutson
Admin Services Manager
Diane Knutson has worked in administrative support for over 23 years. She is here to help Environmental Studies students and faculties with all their administrative needs.

Michael Medler
Associate Professor & Department Chair
Dr. Medler teaches GIS and statistical courses as well as graduate level natural resource courses. He received a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona and an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon. His current research centers on developing techniques for mapping and analyzing complex biophysical processes such as forest fires, avalanche hazards, and other disturbances. He is also very interested in the relationship between fire and human evolution.

Jean Melious
Professor

John Miles
Professor
Currently Dr. Miles is working on a major study of the role the wilderness idea has played in national park history in the United States. Wilderness was an idea that contributed to the national park movement, especially through the advocacy of John Muir. Yet, ever since the National Park Service was created in 1916 that agency has struggled with how it should incorporate the concept of wilderness into its thinking. It was, for instance, opposed to the Wilderness Act in the early stages of the effort to pass that legislation. Then, after the Act was approved by Congress, it was slow to do the review of its road less lands required by that legislation. What was behind the long ambivalence of this agency about the idea of wilderness? That is the question Dr. Miles hopes his study will answer.

Scott Miles
Associate Professor and Resilience Institute Director
Dr. Miles spent his career learning about and working on disaster risk reduction, sustainable development, social vulnerability, science-intensive decision support, and collaborative planning. He was a member of the U.S. Geological Survey Western Region Earthquake Hazards Team for six years, where he developed hazards information tools for public decision-making using GIS. He received my Ph.D. in geography from University of Washington, where he studied the synergy between modeling, disaster mitigation, and deliberative democracy. He received a post-graduate diploma from the University of Edinburgh in GIS, with a focus on environmental modeling. My MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering is from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he focused on geotechnical earthquake engineering and numerical methods. At the USGS, he led development of a GIS-based model of earthquake-induced landslide hazards for use within collaborative planning situations. He has also worked for several years on a project funded by the Multi-disciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, developing a conceptual and prototype computer model of community recovery from disasters. Now Dr. Miles is particularly interested in how modeling can facilitate stakeholder involvement, as well as how stakeholders can aid in the development of hazard and risk models (or similar tools). In addition, he is researching participatory methods for social vulnerability assessment and building community resilience.

Debnath Mookherjee
Professor
Dr. Mookherjee is a Professor of Geography in the Department of Environmental Studies: Policy, Planning, Education and Geography. He received a B.Sc (with Distinction) and M.Sc degrees in geography in India at the University of Calcutta, and a Ph.D. at the University of Florida. He has authored and/or co-authored numerous articles in professional journals, proceedings, and books that reflect his interests in the fields of urbanization process and urban forms, comparative urbanization, and regional development planning. His teaching and research interests focus on understanding the diversities of spatial phenomena in the context of urbanization and regionalization processes. He examines the physical, socioeconomic, and cultural issues – such as resource use conflicts, food security, and urban sprawl—that arise as communities transition from rural to urban.

Gene Myers
Professor
Dr. Myers teaches in Huxley's general education (lower-division) offerings, its College Core, and in the environmental education undergraduate program. He serves as advisor to students in this program, especially in the Community Education and Mass Communications option in Environmental Education. He also helps with Huxley's Minor in Sustainable Design, offered jointly with Western's Engineering Technology Department.

David Rossiter
Associate Professor
Dr. Rossiter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies. He received his PhD in Geography from York University in Toronto, Canada in 2005. A broadly-trained cultural-historical geographer, Rossiter teaches courses on human geography, geographies of Canada, natural resource spaces, and post-colonial landscapes; his research focuses on contested lands and resources in British Columbia and the US Pacific Northwest. His past research projects have explored the human geographies and political ecologies of: early industrial forestry in BC; anti-logging campaigns in BC; the intersection of aboriginal claims and environmental politics in both BC and Washington State; and the spaces of the BC-WA border. He is currently in the midst of a multi-year research project investigating historical geographies of nature and recreation in the mountainous North Shore region of Vancouver, BC. In the spring of 2011, Rossiter was appointed to a four year term as Editor of American Review of Canadian Studies.

Paul Stangl
Associate Professor
Dr. Stangl received his BS in liberal arts from Kansas State University, his MCRP (city and regional planning) from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in Geography from University of Texas, Austin. His research interests include pedestrian planning, new urbanism, urban landscapes, memory and meaning, and Europe and Berlin. He teaches history and politics of planning, processes and methods in planning, planning for sutainable communities, planning studio and campus planning studio.

Theresa Tripp
Secretary Senior
Ms. Tripp has been working at WWU since June 2008, first at Woodring College of Education, and since summer 2009 at Huxley College of the Environment. She is responsible for office administrative duties and provides logistical support for the Environmental Studies department and the Resilience Institute. She has been part of the Western community since 1984, earning her BA in Recreation in 1987. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and biking with her daughter Lauren.

Wendy Walker
Senior Instructor
Dr. Walker teaches courses in environmental education, interpretation, curriculum, and outdoor education. She divides her time between Huxley College and consulting work in interpretive writing and planning. Her current projects include developing training workshops in environmental education for government agency employees. She recently wrote a photo-essay book, Washington National Forests, and is a recreation guide to Washington National Forests. She has also written essays, environmental education curricula and work with schools in developing environmental education programs. Dr. Walker was awarded Western Washington University's prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009.

Grace Wang
Associate Professor
Dr. Wang's research activities throughout her professional career fall into three interrelated themes of research and involvement. These are the human dimensions of natural resource management, community-based resource management, and cultural resources management. In her human dimensions research, she has focused on stakeholder issues and attitude identification. Using different social science approaches -focus groups, key informant interviews, sample surveys and questionnaires - She has coordinated research which has implications for the management of natural resources. Specifically, she's identified attitudes or resource users including hunters and anglers.

Nicholas Zaferatos
Associate Professor
Simply stated, Dr. Zaferatos approach to effective teaching is by inspiring his students. He seeks to help them to understand and appreciate both the difficulties and the importance of planning as a process that endeavors to guide society towards a better future. He helps students attain the necessary skills as well as a conceptual understanding about the complexities and the competing interests that occur in the public interest domain. He introduces them to the necessary methodological skills and theoretical context and help them to shape their own philosophical orientation that they will need in order to make successful contributions to public policy as they prepare to enter professional planning practice.

Tom Terich
Emeritus

Bert (Herbert) Webber
Emeritus