Biography & Experience

Career Narrative 

I’ve long been intrigued by purposeful approaches to places and landscape networks that are attuned to their region and are inclusive, convivial, resiliently adaptive, and biodiverse.

I started out in professional practice: 3 years with the multi-disciplinary AE firm of Totten Sims Hubicki Associates, and +5 years with the Toronto-based environmental design firm of Hough Stansbury Woodland. Particularly formative was my work with HSW principals Michael Hough and Jim Stansbury. Daily practice was guided by notions of design from first principles, interdisciplinarity, critical contextual research, and inclusive and reflective design through time.

We led many ground-breaking projects. For instance, Michael Hough and I led two master planning projects (Don River Restoration, Toronto Brickworks) that were named "Most significant and influential landscape architectural projects, decade 1988-1998” (OALA, Ground, vol. 43)—two of only 4 projects that were so honored. Jim Stansbury and I led on the Massasauga Provincial Park management plan for a 131 sq. km. Precambrian Shield archipelago, since designated a Category II Protected Area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. And I was primary author/designer on the inaugural plan for what would become Toronto's Rouge National Urban Park—with 79 sq. km. of committed land, the largest park of its kind in North America. 

My interest in regenerative urban ecosystems was further honed while collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University colleagues on Pittsburgh's Nine Mile Run, a seminal implemented stream restoration project in the U.S.

By nature I'm a generalist. As landscape complexity is better understood and socio-cultural diversity increases, standard arguments for disciplinary boundaries lose coherence. At the same time, the proliferation of branded trends contributes little to effective and meaningful environmental design. In my experience, robust, equitable, and catalytic ideas are most likely to be generated when professionals are engaged with people in their places. In these contexts we make progress in becoming (to quote David Orr) “specialists at things whole.”

Yet my appointment at Penn State in 1993 provided an opportunity to focus on several linked themes that seemed underdeveloped in the academy, including the interplay between environmental design and the synthetic ecologies, my ongoing fascination with nature in cities, and socially inclusive spatial design that welcomes imaginations from across the spectrum of stakeholders.

Much of my work has been interdisciplinary, exploring idea spaces between fields—John Elder calls them “dangerous ecotones.” I've partnered with disciplines across the spectrum of natural and social sciences and the arts. Since 2005 I've contributed as ecological designer to climate change and globalization discourses that promote local-level creativity, justice and resilience. Throughout, we especially seek collaboration not just 'for' or 'in' but with underserved communities.

I’ve worked with a diversity of scholars on extended research visits to northern India and south-central Nepal, central Ghana, northeastern Tanzania, and many countries in Europe. These forays confirmed my sense that, while cultures and locales vary, there are universals in human nature and quotidian values.

These efforts to interweave design, applied ecology and social concerns have taken place at various venues, including the Penn State Center in Pittsburgh; PSU's Center for Watershed Stewardship, the Penn State University and State College Borough Tree Commissions, Graduate Ecology Program and AESEDA; CMU's Studio for Creative Inquiry; Chris Hoadley's dolcelab; AiB in Bonn and BAC in Barcelona; Queen's and York Universities; and Universities of Rio de Janeiro, Oregon, Florida and Wageningen, among others.

My retirement from Penn State in July, 2024 provides me the space to explore new possibilities. I look forward to firming up old alliances and forming new ones!

Fellowships, Honorary Appointments, Commissions

• Distinguished Professor Emeritus status granted by PSU President N. Bendapudi, July 2024-current

• Commissioner, University Park Tree Commission, PSU, 2012-2024

• Distinguished Honors Faculty, Schreyer Honors College, Penn State  University, 2021-2023

• University Faculty Scholar Medalist Review Panel, 2022-2023; A&A College Distinguished Professor Nominating Committee, 2022

• Evan Pugh University Professorship Committee, 2019-2022

• Distinguished Professor Nominating Committee, 2022

• Commissioner, State College Borough Tree Commission, 2005-2016

• Astorino Fellow, for sabbatical research on convivial greenstreets, L. Astorino Endowment, Penn State University, 2014-2015

• Fine Outreach for Science Returning Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, 2010-2013

• Public Scholarship Fellow, Provost appointment, Penn State University, 2011-2012

• Fine Outreach for Science Fellow, Global Connections Project, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009-2010

• Visiting Scholar Readership, American Academy in Rome’s Ross Library (during my TeverEterno? sabbatical), Spring 2008

• Heinz Faculty Fellow, Center for Watershed Stewardship, Penn State University, 2002

• Heinz Faculty Fellow, Center for Watershed Stewardship, Penn State University, 1999-2000

• Research Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, Studio for Creative Inquiry, Nine Mile Run project, 1997-1999

• CMHC Graduate Fellow, Queen's University, 1984-1986

Prior Affiliations

• Professional Landscape Architect, with seal, Province of Ontario

• Registered Professional Planner, with seal, Ontario Professional Planners Institute

• Full Member, Ontario Association of Landscape Architects

• Full Member, Canadian Institute of Planners

• International Member, Canadian Institute of Planners

• Society for Ecological Restoration

• Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture

• Constructed Environment Research Network

• International Association of Community Development