Image: Anza-Borrego Desert Overlook in Mount Laguna, 2018

I have been an instructor of record since 2011. With extensive experinece in university teaching and curriculum design, I have contributed to the development of undergraduate and postgraduate courses and degree-awarding programs which integrate a focus on environmental policy and climate justice through multi-disciplinary education pathways. I have taught at the University of Durham in the UK, Princeton University, in the University of California system, in the California State University system, the California community college system, as well as accredited courses for incarcerated students in the New Jersey prison system where I co-developed an interndiscplinary climate and enviornmental justice course with the Prison Teaching Initative. At Princeotn University I co-led the Environmental Nexus in which students are introduced to the ethical, political, scientific, policy, and technological dimensions of the nexus of climate change, biodiversity loss, sustainable food production/land use, and water use and management. I provided an additional focus to the course by centralizing climate justice across the nexus as well as an examination of climate adaptation policy with a special focus on how questions of human and non-human species climate-related mobility and immobility present a frame for understanding the relationship between international governance duties and place-based considerations and community-level decision making. Most recently, I have developed a course on climate change and environmental policy and philosophy at Durham University that utilizes normative theorizing as a foundation for engaging with scientific, law, social-scientific, and policy-related approaches to climate change mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage as well as biodiversity loss. I also co-direct the new MA in Environmental Studies/Humanities at Durham University and have also been responsible for designing several summer school exchange programs for post-graduate students that foster international and interdisciplinary education on sustainability , cultural and natural heritage, and environmental politics.

I have taught a range of introductory and upper-division courses as well as graduate seminars. These include classes on environmental politics and governance, climate justice and adaptation, environment and society, environmental ethics and philosophy, political philosophy, ethics of technology, environmental law, natural and environmental resource economics, comtemporary moral problems, bio-medical ethics, applied ethics, environmental humanities, and feminist philosophy. If you would like a copy of any of my syllabi or descriptions of my engaged pedagogical assignments, please feel free to email me with a request.

My approach to teaching enables students to cultivate a range of skills and engage in two modes of thought. These include critical and imaginative processes from which they conceive how to bring about just social change in the context of the pressing challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss, and structural inequality. For example, in a semester-long project for my climate justice and politics class, students must work together in small teams to face a scenario of 3 degrees C atmospheric warming in the year 2100. They are tasked to develop a viable policy proposal for a country of their choosing. They are then asked to co-write a policy brief and present their work to the “international community” in in-class final presentations. In the proposal they have the choice to decide on a range of policy interventions for issues such as food systems management, transportation, energy systems, and what societal and governmental institutions should be developed to achieve just aims and equitable conditions. This project prompts students to argue for their proposal by (a) drawing from the ethical and political philosophical work they have read throughout the course to justify their policy proposals, (b) critically engage the scientific and technological information they have learned, and (c) draw from humanistic inquiry and speculative fiction to imagine new solutions to the challenges their country faces.

To effectively support the plurality of skills and to engage the experiential knowledge of my students, I take a student/learner-centered approach to teaching and learning, and I implement inclusive pedagogical practices and principles. By utilizing inclusive pedagogical practices, I aim to support students from marginalized groups in higher education. As a selected member of UCI’s Pedagogical Scholars Program Pedagogical Fellow early in my career I adopted a focus on innovative pedagogical practices and have continued to lead workshops and trainings to support colleagues and graduate teaching assistants in adopting and utilizing such practices in and beyond the classroom. Additionally I have co-organized conferences and have contributed to the development of resources for teaching in an inclusive and pluralistic way. You can find out more about such work on my Organizing page.