Faculty

Meet the Environmental Studies Faculty

Knox is distinctive for the range of faculty who have developed courses in various aspects of environmental studies. Knox faculty teaching in the program come from the disciplines of anthropology, biology, chemistry, economics, history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Their academic interests are listed below, with additional information and e-mail contacts on each person's linked profile page.

Peter Schwartzman, Chair
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies
Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1997
"I am dedicated to understanding how society can solve the multitude of challenges we face using existing innovative social and technological structures and knowledge."

Katherine A. Adelsberger
The Douglas and Maria Bayer Endowed Chair in Earth Science
Ph.D., Washington University, 2008
"As a field geologist I spend a lot of time digging holes and walking around in the desert; it's not real science if you're not getting dirty!"

Brooke B. Thurau 
Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
M.S., Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, 2004

Cooperating faculty from other programs

Stuart Allison
Professor of Biology
Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1991
"I am fascinated by how plant communities recover from disturbance, in particular from human disturbance."

Diana Beck
Professor of Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1997
"I am continuing to work on how children learn science-the cognitive processes of science learning"

Steve Cohn
Professor of Economics
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1986
"I am writing a critical commentary on introductory macroeconomic textbooks that offers a chapter-by-chapter critique of standard neoclassical texts from a heterodox economics perspective."

Linda Dybas
Watson Bartlett Professor of Biology
Dr. re. biol. hum., University of Ulm, Germany, 1976
"I use fruit fly larvae for research on the effect of environmental stresses such as elevated temperature and dietary alcohols."

Lance Factor
George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 1970
"I take seriously the search for an environmental ethic that will treat animals and habitats as possessing significant worth."

Tim Kasser
Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1994
"My primary interest concerns people's values and goals, and how they relate to quality of life."

Frank McAndrew
Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University of Maine, 1981
"I am also interested in environmental psychology, which is the study of the relationship between people and their physical environments, both natural and human-made."

Richard Stout
Professor of Economics
Ph.D., Indiana University, 1984
"My new interest is modeling oxygen uptake and maximal effort of cardiac patients participating in rehabilitation programs prescribed to restore as much cardiovascular function as possible."

Jon G. Wagner
Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
Ph.D., Indiana University, 1975
"My present research interests converge on how we as a culture envision the development of social cooperation, from its beginnings in human evlution to the utopian experiments of the present and our pop-culture fantasies of the future."

Lawrence E. Welch
Professor of Chemistry
Ph.D., Iowa State University, 1988
"My students and I have done a wide variety of experiments over the years, starting with electrochemistry and chromatography, but now moving more toward spectroscopy."

Mary Crawford
Professor of Chemistry
Ph.D., Purdue University, 1999
"My laboratory uses kinetic and mechanistic approaches to determine the products formed and the rate constants of reactions of the hydroxyl radical and the chlorine atom with various anthropogenic substances."

Konrad Hamilton
Associate Professor of History
Ph.D., Stanford University, 1998
"Most of my work focuses upon how social change movements create lasting political change. In environmental studies I am most interested in environmental justice."

Jennifer Templeton
Associate Professor of Biology
Ph.D., Concordia University, 1993
"The focus of my studies is on learning, memory, and foraging behavior, and involves experimental work in the field and lab."