Faculty & Staff

I joined WPI in 2011 as a scholar and teacher with training in public health, environmental policy, and international development studies. My research and teaching interests focused on the environment-development nexus, where tensions between sustainability and livelihoods often lead to contentious policy debates. My work on soy production and land inequality, expert roundtables and certification, and sustainability rating systems for cities, advanced ideas around how global discourses about sustainable agriculture and sustainability indicators take shape, are mobilized, and have influence at ...

I possess a strong commitment to student education, and a goal of mine is to stimulate students' critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Recently, students and I have been on a journey to open classroom content and discussions in an interdisciplinary and inclusive way. Students are challenged to rethink their role as active knowledge producers beyond the class as students become co-authors of open educational resources. For example, students are co-authors of multiple texts, like Extinction Stories and Climate Lessons. More examples include educational resources like lesson plans on ...

I am a geographer with a focus on the cultural landscape, meaning landscapes that are shaped by people. I am interested in development, how and why places change, and why certain traditions endure. I study this mainly through vernacular architecture (traditional regional design). My research was based in the Indian Himalaya and explores what connections forest policy and cash crop markets have with the decline in architectural woodcarving and vernacular design. I hope to better understand how modernization and preservation can be balanced to sustain culturally distinct landscapes. Previous to ...

Fabio is the director of the Venice and Santa Fe Project Centers, as well as the founder and director of City Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory dedicated to Urban Technology and Information Systems. In addition to a number of scientific papers, his work has been repeatedly featured in National Geographic magazine (most recently in the August 2009 issue), MIT’s Technology Review magazine, the Smithsonian magazine, Wired, New Scientist and Science. He was also featured on BBC Radio and in a National Geographic video completely dedicated to his work in his hometown of Venice, ...

John-Michael holds a diverse academic background with degrees in psychology, water management, environmental studies, and geography – which rightly embodies the interdisciplinary approach to research cultivated in the DIGS. His work follows a common theme that values community-driven and action oriented research to address complex development challenges related to sustainable livelihoods, informal economies, waste management, environmental contamination, community representation, and INGO legitimacy. Involving communities and local stakeholders within all phases of the research process is ...

Corey Denenberg Dehner is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Interdisciplinary Global Studies Division. She is Director of the Worcester Community Project Center and founder and Co-Director of the Massachusetts Water Resource Outreach Center. At WPI, Corey serves on the Sustainability Board; is a member of the WPI Project Inclusion Rubric Steering Committee; and Co-Chair of the Project Inclusion Faculty Subcommittee. A public interest lawyer in her previous life, Corey was drawn to academia by its capacity to help facilitate attitudinal changes both on campus and off. Corey thrives on ...

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Global School, Co-Director of the Global Lab, and Co-Director of the Namibia Project Center. I'm a strategic, multilingual, relationship-builder and global experiential learning expert with hands-on experience creating, launching, leading, and evaluating education projects, digital learning products, education programs, and educational institutions in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. 

Katherine Foo, PhD MLA, is co-director of the Berlin Project Center and an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Integrated and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research focuses on urban environmental governance and landscape visualization for social and environmental justice. She is passionate about fostering institutional change to empower community groups by building academic-civic partnerships.  Through engaged, inclusive practices like participatory mapping, scenario development, and design-build ...

For twenty years I conducted research at Clark University on the social aspects of environmental risks, with a focus on the topics of risk communication, public trust, and vulnerability. After a brief sojourn at the EcoTarium (a museum of science and nature located in Worcester), I began teaching at WPI in 2006. I have taught more than 600 students in ID2050 and advised more than 100 IQPs in the UK (London and Worcester), US (Nantucket, Washington, DC, and Worcester), Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and Switzerland. As center director, I am responsible for identifying project topics and ...

Before coming to WPI in 2004,  Bob worked for a number of years as a Fellow at Resources for the Future, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC that conducts research and policy analysis on environmental quality and natural resources,  and as the Brownfields Director at the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO).  His broad substantive interests include regional food systems, contaminated site cleanup and revitalization, community participation in environmental decision-making, ethnographic filmmaking, and more recently, development projects in squatter settlements in Southern ...

My teaching, research, and community engagement is integrated through my participation in WPIs Global Projects Program, where I help students prepare for and conduct projects in places such as London, Venice, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Washington and Worcester. Through the WPI Cape Town Project Centre (2007-15), my work was an exercise in Shared Action Learning (SAL), which as described to students and others is a way to think about and engage in partnerships for sustainable community development. SAL emphasizes Sharing among partners of ideas, knowledge, resources, inspiration and compassion; ...

I am an economic anthropologist who conducts both interdisciplinary and applied research. I study global issues from an ethnographic perspective examining local phenomena and placing it within their global context. My work has covered a variety of topics from spirituality and health to remittance strategies of Peruvian migrants. My dissertation research, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, examined the use of microfinance loans on rural livelihoods in Nicaragua. My current work is on the social and solidarity economy and its intersection with sustainable development. I ...

Stephen McCauley is a geographer whose work focuses on exploring how cities change and how urban futures can be inclusive, green and resilient. His broad substantive interests include climate change preparedness, urban resilience, energy system innovation, community participation in environmental decision-making, citizen science, and GI Science for urban planning. His current work addresses urban heat island dynamics and green infrastructure and other planning interventions that can mitigate the vulnerabilities associated with extreme heat in cities. At WPI, Stephen co-directs (with Lorraine ...

Ruth's work spans the WPI campus from advisors to researchers to the classroom. Providing guidance to students, faculty and researchers in the community on the ethical conduct of human subjects research and advising IQP's. 

Professor Pfeifer’s research focus in philosophy is on contemporary continental philosophy, social and political philosophy, global justice, and development ethics. He teaches philosophy courses, international studies courses, and for the Great Problems Seminars program. In addition to a number of chapters in edited collections, Professor Pfeifer's work can be found in journals such as Human Studies, The European Legacy, Crisis and Critique, Continental Thought and Theory, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory. He is also the Co-editor (with West Gurley) of Phenomenology and the Political ...

Kent Rissmiller completed studies in political science at Muhlenberg College (AB) and Syracuse University (PhD). Along the way, he also completed a JD at the University of New Hampshire Law School, where he worked in the Energy Law Institute. Professor Rissmiller also worked for three years as an attorney for the Public Service Commission of Nevada, where he was involved in setting rates and policies for electric and water utilities. At WPI, Professor Rissmiller teaches government, law, and public policy. He also directs the Pre-Law program and oversees the Law and Technology minor. One of his ...

Laura Roberts is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Integrative and Global Studies department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Director of the Worcester Community Project Center (WCPC). The WCPC is one of 50+ WPI project centers around the world, where students engage in hands-on, community-based research projects exploring topics situated at the intersection of society and technology. In this role, Professor Roberts facilitates global learning opportunities with local community organizations where students investigate pressing global issues without stepping on a plane. Prior to ...

  The overarching goal of my teaching and research is to contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of environmental governance and policy. More specifically, I focus on the building of individual, organizational and institutional capacities to participate in collaborative efforts to address complex social and environmental sustainability problems through the application of science and technology. My academic and professional background includes experience in molecular biology, microbial ecology, wildlife biology, sustainable forestry and most recently environmental policy and ...

William San Martín (He/Him/El) is an interdisciplinary scholar of earth-systems sciences and global environmental governance trained in history, international politics & relations, and science & technology studies (STS). His work focuses on international development; Latin America & the Global South; socio-environmental (in)justices; and science, technology & the human environment. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Earth Systems Governance Project. William is a former Fulbright Scholar (2011-2015); a Visiting Scholar and a Postdoctoral Associate jointly ...

Ingrid Shockey is an environmental sociologist whose work concerns natural literacy and the interplay of human-wilderness relationships. These domains include topics in biodiversity loss, climate change perceptions, and our sense of place and identity with respect to the landscape. Her work has focused most recently on mountain ecologies and economies in the western Himalaya. She manages and curates two undergraduate student Project Centers, serving as co-director for the Wellington Project Center in New Zealand (since 2012) and directing the WPI-IIT Mandi India Project Center at the Indian ...

Sarah Stanlick, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies and the Director of the Great Problems Seminar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She was the founding director of Lehigh University’s Center for Community Engagement and faculty member in Sociology and Anthropology. She previously taught at Centenary College of New Jersey and was a researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School, assisting the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. She has published in journals such as The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, The ...

Prof Stoddard is a human-environment geographer who is interested in the intersection of nature, society, and justice, particularly in the context of climate change. She looks at the ways in which we can design for climate resilience, in terms of infrastructure, location specific practices, and through community resilience. Stoddard also looks at the vulnerability and resilience of food systems to disasters (climate, disease outbreaks, etc.), and the impacts for humans, animals, and ecosystems. She looks at the ways in which technology, policies, and social movements ...

Sarah Strauss was born and raised on the east coast. During high school and college, she was deeply involved in biomedical research, and expected her career path to lie in this direction. She enjoyed the philosophical traditions, though, and so although she worked in molecular biology laboratories, she also majored in comparative religion. During her final year in college, she discovered medical anthropology, and that changed everything. A career in anthropology would allow her to pursue all of her research interests, from health and human biology to myth and religion. After graduating, she ...

Two overarching questions direct Dr. Traver’s career: What is the nature of teaching? What is the teaching of nature? The majority of Dr. Traver’s sixteen years at WPI deals with the development and administration of education programs that involve science and engineering content and related teaching and training of teachers. Currently he focuses on project-based undergraduate engineering education with emphasis on related instruction and on project design and delivery for sustainable development. These include the establishment of the Asuncion (Paraguay) Project Center, a founding and ...

  Seth has been part of the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division since 2002, as teacher, advisor, and co-director of project centers. He is the co-Director of the Boston Project Center and was the co-Director of the Bangkok Project Center from 2011-2018. He enjoys exposing students to contemporary problems in environmental and public health policy making and challenging them to apply insights emerging from research to practical applications. He loves share his curiosity with students about the ways that people are impacted by different technological and natural systems. A ...

As a Senior Fellow in WPI’s Center for Project-Based Learning, which I established in 2016, I work with colleagues across campus to help advance project-based learning at colleges and universities around the nation and the globe. We also support project-based learning here on the WPI campus. Most of my scholarly and professional activity has centered around experiential and international education. Through my involvement in organizations such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the American Society for Engineering Education, I work to promote WPI’s approach to ...

Project-based learning is an enormously powerful approach to education. I've been changed by it; I've watched students be changed by it. I've seen faculty develop a renewed sense of joy in teaching from using it. And now, after over a decade of using PBL with students, I'm embarking on a new phase of helping faculty implement PBL through the work of the Center for Project-Based Learning. The good news - working with faculty on PBL is as much fun as working with students!